Content Marketing Assistant (aka Multimedia Master🎬 aka Repurposing Ninja 🧩 aka Wizard of Reach 📣)

This is a contract position (15-20 hours per week). So, it’s a great option if you have a full-time gig and want some extra spending money for weekend shenanigans… or to get your dog braces. Or whatever else. About half of our full-time team started out as contractors, so who knows where you’ll wind up. 😃

We’re looking for someone to toe the line that ties Content Marketing to Business Development. That means: we need our awesome content to do two things: make us famous 😎 and drive sales. Easy, right?

We want you to help us to get the greatest use from our content.

We use content to educate, to show up in search results, to generate leads, and to gently guide prospects right to the doorstep of our sales team and nudge them to knock. So, here’s the deal:

We have a ton of great content already, with more on the way from our writing team. And it’s not doing anybody any good sitting in the cloud 30 days after we do our first (and sometimes our only) publish + push. We have processes for optimizing and distributing our content so that each piece gets 90 days in the spotlight before we scale them back. Having said that, here’s a summary of your objectives:

#1 Research 🧐  Your thing is about helping us to capitalize on emerging trends and to identify content voids in the market that will help us cement our authority and expertise. We’ve legit been running influencer campaigns and collecting data since 2013. We want to make sure we’re up to snuff this year (and beyond).

#2 Review Each piece of content that comes down the pipeline will need an extra pair of eyes on them. This includes articles, infographics, social graphics, and even videos. You’re our official quality control person for content.

#3 Repurpose 🙃 Help us find all the cool ways we can use our existing content and data. Your aim is to reach our buyers wherever they may be in the purchase process, whether they’re binge-watching explainer videos or bookmarking a bunch of articles. This also includes stuff like segmenting larger blog posts and republishing smaller versions to LinkedIn Pulse or Facebook Instant Articles. Or maybe, targeting specific blog subscribers with high-value content you know they’ll like. Or finding the right posts and graphics to share in different industry-specific LinkedIn groups.

#4 Distribute ✌️ THIS IS THE BIG ONE. After we create content, we need to aim for a crapload of different places to put it. Not to worry – I’ve already put together a pretty good starter list of places to put our content. So, part of your job is digging up all those niche groups, forums, hashtags, etc, and joining/following them. This gives us a way to identify their pain points and it gives them access to our content and strategies.

#5 Measure   📊 YOU MUST LOVE ANALYTICS to do this job effectively. Or… maybe you hate analytics. Maybe it’s the broccoli of marketing for you, but you get how it’s important, so you have no problem doing it. Either way, your Mondays mornings will basically end up being a quick check of analytics across our branded channels  and dropping that info into spreadsheets for our Impact Dashboard (just came up with that name just now)

And then there’s social media…

SOCIAL MEDIA is a pretty important part of this role too, and falls under both Repurpose and Distribute. We don’t need you to manage our social media – it’s more like making sure that the content you repurposed for social media actually makes its way to the social media scheduler.

We’ve identified some quarterly goals we want to reach, so I’ll keep my eye on the analytics and make suggestions. You would make sure that we have a steady stream of content going to our main platforms: Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Twitter, TikTok, Facebook, and social platforms for specific industries. AND that the content we post to social supports our content calendar.

📣 You’ll be working with the Marketing team to distribute content to every nook and cranny of the web. We want to over-index on every piece of pillar content we create. And then be one submission shy of over-indexing on every other piece of content…

🩳 You’ll create condensed forms (micro-content) of long-form pillar content for redistribution on LinkedIn Pulse, Medium publications, Facebook, our email list, and across other platforms.

📅 You’ll be working with the Marketing team to plan, create, and schedule multimedia content for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.

📚 We need you to curate the MOST compelling snippets of content from our books, blog posts, and other assets to repurpose on social.

🧠 Understand each social media platform well enough to post the right kind of content at the right times. As you are probably aware… or maybe not… in the marketing space, infographics do really well on Twitter. BUT great images from our past campaigns perform best on Instagram. While our LinkedIn audience is all about timely (seasonal, topical) strategies, our Facebook audience loves getting their hands on influencer marketing insights. Your job is to pull from our existing content exactly what each audience wants, and present it to them in a way that is most appealing to them.

👷🏽‍♂️ Help us plan and deploy strategies that will fulfill specific business goals.

🖥 Work with the Social Media Content Creator to plan and post video content.

👾 And of course, a big part of that is finding smart ways to use our content to grow our audience, engagement, and value across all 5 social media platforms.

Here is a fun visual breakdown of the qualities and characteristics (related to this role) that we find important when hiring.

Influencer Marketing – Learn the inner workings of the fastest-growing segment of digital marketing.

Performance Metrics – Influencer marketing is more than just huge followings and attractive influencers. You will learn how we use data to figure out the REAL success of an influencer, long before we measure the success of a marketing campaign.

Growth Hacking for Marketers – The Shelf is all about data. So, you will work with our team to test great (and not so great) ideas for the sole purpose of totally crushing it on social and in search.

Brand-Building with SEO and Outreach – Brush up on your charisma and creativity to dream up BOSS content ideas for BOSS authority sites.

Data Analysis – More numbers. We love numbers. Measure the performance of projects – large and small – to collect and analyze campaign data.

Inbound Marketing – Help us come up with cool ways to catch the eye of the best brands in the world.

Tools – We use A LOT of tools. Seriously, it will be like Mission Control on your laptop.

Content Development and Marketing – We’re not talking any old blog posts here. We want that big, bright brain of yours to dream up content angles that people will be searching 6 to 18 months from now.

• We’re a team of 50.
• We’re growing.
• We’re about as scattered as a team can be… East Coast, West Coast, the middle of the country… a bunch of us are in Canada, 1 in Ukraine, 1 in Russia… we like to keep our options open in terms of company retreat locations.
• About half of us are really funny.
• We’re currently working with some pretty amazing brands: Famous Footwear, Zenni Optical, KISS, Lenox, a big chain of malls (I don’t think I’m allowed to say who), a big toilet brand (again… I don’t think I’m allowed to say who, but you probably sit on this brand every morning), Honest Co., Hershey, Yelp… just to name a few.

We’re a pretty down-to-earth bunch, so if you’re interested in applying, in lieu of an elaborate cover letter, you can email me at sorilbran@theshelf.com, and include bullet points with the info requested in the next section…

• The job you are applying for.
• A link to your Linkedin profile.
• What job site sent you our way.
• Your location.
• Your phone number.
• A rundown on how experienced you are with the influencer marketing space… Have you worked with them? Have you done client work in the influencer space? Stuff like that.
• A summary of why you feel like you’d be good for this role.
• Your availability (and whether or not this is going to be the case each week, or if you are needing flexibility).
• Your hourly rate.

Tips on how to get your application noticed (assuming that’s what you’re shooting for):

• Applications that are submitted using a job site (instead of being emailed to the above email address) will not be considered.
• Please don’t have typos. (#FunLittleTip: Install Grammarly. It’s a game-changer.)
• It would be great if you could try to sound cool. We write in a colloquial, one-with-the-people-while-still-being-basically-grammatically-correct style. And while this style of writing is not a requirement, keep in mind that we receive a decent number of applicants every day, and 90% of those applications are boring AF. The ones that have a fun “voice” and quirky writing style immediately stand out. In a good way.
• Lastly, put yourself in the shoes of the person in charge of interviewing… What do you think that person would want to hear? Talk about that stuff and leave off anything that isn’t super relevant.

Generally speaking, a lot of you will probably find this job post in line with your skill set, and I bet a lot of you probably have the skills necessary to perform the requirements of this role. But… the characteristics that define what it’s like to actually work with you are also very important to us. Think of these requirements more in terms of culture-fit requirements:

🕺 Our company has a very fast-paced environment. It might feel disorganized from time to time because we’re also a small company. We need each employee to be the type of person who can go with the flow. Who can adjust quickly. Who is able to embrace chaos with open arms when it decides to waltz through the door.

🏎 Due to the aforementioned fast-paced environment, you should be the type of person who is able to execute quickly… within time constraints. WHILE still maintaining quality. We don’t ask for the impossible. But what we don’t want to see are projects that are slapped together and riddled with issues when we’re in a time crunch. Instead, we’d like to see people make adjustments and figure out how to make it work. We’re looking for resourceful people who approach projects with that there’s-more-than-one-way-to-skin-a-cat attitude.

📈 I’ve never interviewed anyone who has said that they have bad work ethic… but there’s a big difference between people who show up and do what gets assigned to them, and those who take initiative… Those people who take pride in their projects and who go above and beyond because they have that drive for personal achievement and growth. We don’t want to micro-manage. We want to work with self-motivated people who are neurotic about quality.

✅ People who don’t proofread drive me nuts!

👿 While I feel like I shouldn’t have to mention this, we’ve worked with people in the past who ran around like a bunch of crazed loose cannons… yelling at coworkers, constantly complaining, deploying the cold-shoulder on a regular basis… passive aggressive. So if you’re not a nice person… that won’t really work for us. We really need everyone to exude positivity.

👂 You need to be receptive to feedback. This is a quality that we find candidates have trouble self-assessing. But try hard, because we give feedback when needed. We’re too small of a company to just let people do whatever they want to do. (Side-note… no one loves feedback. That’s fine. I don’t either really. But will you take it nicely? Will you incorporate it? Are you going to be passive aggressive while doing it? Have you ever been told not to “cut off your nose to spite your face”? These are questions you should ask yourself).

😺 Influencer marketing is constantly changing, so we’re looking for people who are curious and eager to learn. Let’s say, for example, a client mentions in passing how they’re doing whitelisting on Instagram (and we’ll assume you don’t know what that means). Are you going to just nod your head and say you understand it when you don’t? Or, are you going to jot down a note, do some research, and become a whitelisting expert for the next client conversation? Because we need the latter.

👩🏽‍💻 If you’re working remotely, you need to actually be working. No one likes a freeloader.

👆🏾 Are you ambitious? It’s not a requirement, but if you are… there’s lots of room for career growth. Plus, we like to hire our managers from within the team, so there is a very clear path to the next level (if that’s of interest to you).

Here at The Shelf, we truly believe it’s our differences that have allowed us to come together and form such a cohesive and all-encompassing whole. Our mission as a company is to help our clients stand out amongst the crowd… to be different and impactful. And since we’re a team made up of diverse people with all different backgrounds and experiences, we’re able to do this naturally. 🙋🏽‍♂️🙋🙋🏾‍♀️🙋🏼‍♂️🙋🏼‍♀️🙋🏾‍♂️🙋🏽‍♀️🙋🏾

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer and do not discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of race, color, sex, age, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression, status as a veteran, and basis of disability or any other federal, state or local protected class.

I could honestly go on and on (because I’m long-winded, in case you couldn’t tell that by now), but I’m going to stop here. The point is, you gotta have the chops AND play well with others. And if you’re giddy already, feeling like this job description is just so dead-on-b*lls accurate for you, perfect! We can’t wait to hear from you.

If you’re lacking a skill or two but still feel pumped, feel free to mention it in your cover letter. We’re a small company that’s big into personal growth and supporting up-and-coming go-getters!

It’s also worth noting right here that we have our hands full running campaigns, guys. So, we will only contact those candidates who are most likely to be a good fit for the role. We’ll respond quickly when that’s the case. But if you don’t hear from us, please don’t feel slighted. Rally on – there’s a role out there that’s probably a better fit for your awesome skillset.

Oh, and one last thing… Please add the word Toggle to your subject line when applying so that I know you read this entire post.