Job title: Senior Content Strategist
Company: Facelift bbt GmbH
I work in: Semi-independent team adjacent to product marketing department. Formerly demand generation.
I’ve been working there since: 2020
My contact:
LinkedIn, bpo@facelift-bbt.com
What I do:
Description of what you do: I’m responsible for overseeing the content strategy for Facelift. For my first three years at the company, I worked primarily within the marketing and demand generation departments in an editorial and creative capacity. I have also worked as Facelift’s social media manager. Today, I coordinate all of these responsibilities as well as cross-departmental collaboration. At the moment, my primary objective is bringing social media orchestration and communication orchestration – as well as the framework I’m developing – to the world. Facelift has recently expanded from a purely social media tool to a broader strategic content and communications tool, and as such I have become one of its primary SMEs. This has contributed to a stronger role in product development, design, and purpose, as well as heavy association with brand.
Why I love my job:
I have been given the opportunity to grow in my career more than I would have elsewhere. I have been pushed to become one of the architects of the Communication Orchestration Framework, and to collaborate on brand voice, messaging, and vision. Facelift also supported and even subsidized my education at FH Joanneum.
Important skills in my job:
Content and editorial planning, copywriting, content design, brand strategy, general demand generation and digital marketing.
My biggest success in my career so far: I am one of the two “architects” of Communication Orchestration and the Communication Orchestration Framework that supports it. This is a new industry category, and I am going to be writing a book about the subject. This category sort of illustrates an industry problem that we see in communication tech, and offers a way to tackle it, particularly for larger enterprises.
I learned this during my studies for my professional life:
The most valuable takeaways that I got from the COS program were the ability to overcome professional imposter syndrome, and the ability to talk about and advocate for the work that I do at a strategic level. The ability to see content as a strategic business asset with a greater role at an organization. It gave me the ability to talk about what I do with authority, advocate on behalf of my team, and to understand the role that content has in branding and messaging.
The job opportunities in my field:
It can be very challenging to find typical openings for jobs in content strategy for a number of reasons. Most critically, hiring managers and departments within companies are often not aware of what it means or implies, and associate it with content marketing, SEO, copywriting, etc. This is particularly true where I live in Germany, where content professionals face an uphill battle in being recognized for the reality of their work (and being paid accordingly!) As a result, many content strategists become either freelancers or open their own agencies so that they are better able to communicate what they do and take control over their environments. In my case, I had to force a content strategy position on my company, demonstrating to them the value and portraying it as the natural evolution of my previous role in content marketing. In some ways, I got lucky, because it was a transitional time at the organization. So to jobseekers, I would say that the key is selling your worth through data, KPIs, and ROI. Content experts of all kinds often struggle with the ability to prove the value that they bring to an organization, because in many cases it can be hard to quantify. The ability to do this is something I would look for when hiring content personnel for my team, regardless of their specific role.
Jobseekers also must demand to be seen and heard. It’s very common that we are not comfortable “rocking the boat” or insisting that our voices be present at the “adults table” of our organizations. I have never been able to convince a company to give me this, I’ve always had to take this, and push myself into new situations with new people until they accept it as normal (or don’t, that’s their problem 
)
An interest in, and proficiency with artificial intelligence tools is also critical right now. This means more than just being good at using generative AI, even moreso, it means having a fundamental understanding of how it works, why it matters, and other applications that AI can have within an organization. It also means knowing its limits, how to edit, and how to make sure that its low-quality creations don’t stay low-quality. It means staying on top of trends, and implementing AI at every possible opportunity, and really becoming a “centaur”. Being able to confidently state skills and experience with AI is essential for any content expert right now trying to be recognized whether it’s at an agency or a company.
I obviously have a lot to say on this subject – happy to mentor or talk more about it.
How I got my job:
I’ve been working in social media management and marketing for about 12 years. I found Facelift on LinkedIn in 2020 and applied unsolicited. I have never gotten a content job in my life by applying to an open position. Every single one I’ve had was an unsolicited application, during which I had to express my value as a native English speaker and expert in my domain. They hired me to be a social media manager and content marketing manager (two roles, one person, it was a lot). This was not an established position and the responsibilities and expectations were never clear.
Leadership really wasn’t sure what to do with me, so it was a complicated and often frustrating experience. COS helped me set it straight myself with assistance from new leadership that was more able to see the value of having content experts and a content software company.
Me about my job:
As anyone who was in COS22 can attest, I complained a lot about my job for a while. I struggled to make it work for me the way I wanted, and dealt with a lot of demotivation. While no job is perfect, things eventually changed and I’m quite happy where I am now. This has everything to do with my new role, being seen for what I do, having a voice that people listen to, and overcoming a sense of imposter syndrome that had followed me into an uncertain job position.
I have the opportunity to define a whole new category, not something I expected, and I don’t think I’d be able to do it as well (or at all?) without the Content Strategy program at FH Joanneum.
