Where does your yellow brick road go compared to mine?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Who\u2019s responsible for what, when, and with whom? And where does your yellow brick road go compared to mine? I\u2019m gonna\u2019 dig into this a little deeper and see if I can find any answers (preferably ones I like\u2026).<\/p>\n
The Who<\/h2>\nContent Strategists: Front-End & Back End<\/h3>\n
A content strategist, in the words of strategist Ann Rockley writing for the Content Marketing Institute, \u201ccome[s] in two main types: front-end and back-end.\u201d* The front-end strategists<\/strong> \u201ctypically have a love for the content and the customer experience. They make recommendations about the content itself.\u201d<\/p>\n According to Rockley, this could include answering questions like these (paraphrased):<\/p>\n Back-end strategists<\/strong> \u201chave a love for structure, scalability, and technology.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n They answer questions like these (paraphrased):<\/p>\n One of the things I love best about content is the structuring, organizing, delivering, and processes. Who doesn\u2019t want to make sure it\u2019s all structured beautifully (also called information architecture<\/strong>^) and that it\u2019s sorted in the most effective way?<\/p>\n Interestingly, this differs slightly from the description of a content specialist. After perusing job descriptions for a content specialist, I found these main defining points:<\/p>\n Next up, those search engine optimizers.<\/p>\n A search engine optimization analyst or specialist or consultant, or just plain SEO, \u201canalyzes and reviews websites and their incoming links in order to provide expert advice, guidance, and recommendations…seeking to earn more natural search engine traffic and higher ranking positions.”** This involves things like:<\/p>\n What I see here, and what I\u2019ve experienced, is that an SEO has a keener understanding of the data surrounding web metrics and how to interpret this data. They also understand information architecture, competitive analysis (obviously), and technical website function in order to improve the quality of websites.<\/p>\n The descriptions I have found for this specialty are, interestingly, the most nebulous. Here is a great definition I found from UX Designer<\/a>:<\/p>\n “\u2026the term UX designer describes a wide ranging responsibility to ensure that an end product achieves its core (often business) objectives whilst providing its users with the most effective, efficient and enjoyable experience as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n The definition of a UX expert is the most nebulous.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n More granularly, this might break down to skills defined by these roles:<\/p>\n The blog post What is UX Design? 15 User Experience Experts Weigh In<\/a>\u00a0on User Testing Blog has some interesting thoughts from several user experience experts.<\/p>\n Of course, if you want to get real-time with this, you can also examine the more recent rush to list positions for UX writers. UX Booth has this article<\/a> showing job listings from Amazon, Dropbox, and Paypal (all the cool kids are doing it\u2026).<\/p>\n If you made it through all those job descriptions, I\u2019m impressed! Now in this who\u2019s-doing-it, let\u2019s examine how everything works together\u2014or if it does.<\/p>\n Now that we\u2019ve got all the players, let\u2019s take a look at the cross-overs between responsibilities. I\u2019ve created this nifty Venn diagram to illustrate the patterns I\u2019m seeing:<\/p>\n That\u2019s a lottttttttt of overlap. And I don\u2019t think any one area ultimately owns any one of the shared tasks.<\/p>\n So when do these experts work together, and do you need all of them on your yellow brick road? I think it all depends on what you are trying to achieve and the skill sets you have on your team. From my experience, collaboration between job roles is the best way to achieve a great product (or perhaps it\u2019s just my preferred working method?).<\/p>\n The overlap between content, SEO, and UX is considerable.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n There must be a product owner who represents the user (and there\u2019s another wrench to throw into the mix\u2026), but the product owner should not dictate the methods or tactics<\/a> used by the experts\/specialists (and this includes all of the above: content strategist and specialists, the SEOs, and the UX peeps). This leaves the experts to think about and analyze user needs and craft a product to meet those needs.<\/p>\n The best thing you can do for your experts and specialists, IMO, is to clearly define roles. I work pretty amicably with my co-workers, and many of our skill sets overlap, but sometimes it helps to understand who is handling what, if only for organization\u2019s sake.<\/p>\n As Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman write in their book First Break All the Rules: What the World\u2019s Greatest Managers Do Differently<\/em>, the key to having happy employees, successful employees is (in part) ensuring they know the answers to these questions:<\/p>\n I also recommend spending time actually trying to understand what your employees do before either hiring more people or assuming you know the extent of their work. It\u2019s possible they are already doing things you aren\u2019t even aware of that match the skill sets you think you need. It\u2019s equally possible to give an employee the chance to get training and grow to fulfill a need you think you have.<\/p>\n Where does your yellow brick road go and with whom? Who do you all work with to craft your products? What are their titles compared with their roles and how do they overlap? Do your experts know where they are going?<\/p>\n Lemme\u2019 know if you\u2019d care to. I\u2019d love to hear more about how these skill sets work together in other organizations and what you think the essence of each role is.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n *Why You Need Two Types of Content Strategist https:\/\/contentmarketinginstitute.com\/2016\/02\/types-content-strategist\/<\/p>\n ^\u201dInformation architecture (IA) focuses on organizing, structuring, and labeling content in an effective and sustainable way.\u201d It also involves these things:<\/p>\n Source: Information Architecture Basics https:\/\/www.usability.gov\/what-and-why\/information-architecture.html<\/p>\n **What Does An SEO Consultant Do? http:\/\/www.contentmarketingspot.com\/search-engine-optimization\/what-does-an-seo-consultant-do\/ via @seoincolorado<\/p>\n ^^ Also from UX Designer http:\/\/www.userexperiencedesigner.co.uk\/new-what-is-ux-designer-ia.htm<\/p>\n ***There are 10 more of these Qs, but I think you get the gist. And read the book. It\u2019s not half bad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A Musing on the Age-Old Question: Who Does What, When, & With Whom? Question for you: What\u2019s your job title? And now next question: What do you actually do? I find navigating the area of job roles and responsibilities rather interesting. In a recent conversation with my colleague about what constitutes the SEO\u2019s responsibilities as … Continue reading Content Strategists, SEO Analysts, UX Experts, Oh My!<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":446,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,8,13],"tags":[19],"class_list":["post-443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-content","category-seo","category-strategy","tag-managers-role"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jenbrassjenkins.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jenbrassjenkins.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jenbrassjenkins.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jenbrassjenkins.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jenbrassjenkins.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=443"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/jenbrassjenkins.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":448,"href":"https:\/\/jenbrassjenkins.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443\/revisions\/448"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jenbrassjenkins.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jenbrassjenkins.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jenbrassjenkins.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jenbrassjenkins.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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SEO Analysts<\/h3>\n
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UX Experts<\/h2>\n
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The What<\/h2>\n
![\"Venn](\"http:\/\/jenbrassjenkins.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Overlapping-Roles-m.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nThe When<\/h2>\n
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