As a content marketer, you've likely sensed the ground shifting beneath your feet. Teams are restructuring, SEO isn’t the sure bet it once was, and then there’s the constant threat of what AI might do to our jobs.
So I sat down with Megan Morreale, former Head of Content Marketing at Reddit and Taboola, and now running MM, which is focused on helping content marketers navigate their careers. I wanted her perspective on how content marketing is changing and was hoping for positive news, but she told me: "Content marketing is dying."
I knew right away I had my headline. I was also taken aback. But as Megan explained her perspective I realized her view was more nuanced — and hopeful.
She thinks the demand for content skills is stronger than ever. Companies still need talented folks to write, strategize, and analyze. They just don't need a catch-all "content" department anymore.
If you're a content marketer wondering about the future of your role, this is essential reading. Megan will give you a whole new perspective on your skills — and a roadmap for the next phase of your career.
Note: This interview was lightly edited for clarity and readability.
Tim: Can you give a brief overview of your career in content and marketing and how you got to where you are today?
Megan: I started out in journalism right out of college, writing for local newspapers in New Jersey. I always really loved interviewing people. I met a guy who ran a tech meetup and did some coverage around his meetup. Turns out he owned a PR agency, and I ended up starting there, specifically covering his meetup, and then broke into PR and content from there. That's where I realized I could use my skills like writing, social media, content creation, and website creation if I took a marketing path.
Do you still think that journalism and PR are useful skills to learn for content marketers?
Absolutely. I see a lot of content marketers come from writing backgrounds. What's most important to get from those roles are the interview skills, investigative skills, fact-checking, and the ability to get down to the emotions of what someone is saying. That helped me impress in the marketing world.
What did you have to unlearn going from journalism into content marketing?
I had to unlearn the gut reaction to rely only on things that are timely. In content marketing, a lot of the focus is on SEO and evergreen content. The distribution teams, like social and PR, were focused on the timely hook, while SEO and growth teams were interested in continuously driving results, not what's in the news today. That was probably the biggest learning curve.
Learning how to sell in content without interrupting the reader was also a bit of a learning curve, but not as big as trying to kick the habit of asking "Why is this timely all the time?"
What did Reddit's marketing organization look like when you started? How did it change? And what do you think that means for the content industry?
The team I was on at Reddit was a growth team, split between paid and organic. I ran the organic side as head of content marketing, overseeing web, UX, SEO, email - pretty much all organic channels except social media, which sat on the PR team. The paid side handled all paid advertising.
Part of the reason for moving on is I could feel the need for the team to shift. Since my exit, they're going forward with a different structure where a growth team lead houses paid, web, SEO, and lifecycle (covering email), allowing paid and organic to work more closely together.
It speaks to this new world where I think content marketing is dying. Not the skills - they're always going to be relevant - but content marketing as a standalone department within an org is going to go away.
Content marketing came about when it did all the online stuff businesses didn't know how to do - blog writing, tweeting, emails. The operation wasn't as large as it is today. Over the last ten years, digital marketing has become ingrained in everything a marketing organization does. It makes more sense to have standalone functions for all the things that used to fall under the content marketing umbrella.
Reddit is just one example of an org going that way. I've been seeing this happen throughout the industry.
Is there a certain point where you had this realization for the first time that content marketing is dying? When did you start thinking about that?
When I was a senior content marketing manager at Taboola, the team was doing really well, hitting all our goals. When it came time to talk about promotions and team structure, I wanted a director title.
My VP at the time was really honest with me. He said, "I don't think I can make the case to leadership for a director of content marketing. I just don't think the business needs [that]. But if you'd like to be our director of online marketing and focus on branding campaigns, owning web, SEO, email, all of those things, then we can make the case for that."
I was basically doing that anyway, so I wasn't upset about the change in title. Maybe that would have been different at other organizations, but I did think there is often a ceiling for this.
I've noticed a lot of content marketing roles stop at senior manager or director. Eventually you need to get broader into the whole digital marketing world to grow.
It wasn't until I started job hunting at larger enterprise companies, upwards of thousands of employees, that I realized content marketing roles just don't often even exist there.
Do you see this play out at all levels or only at larger companies? Do you think it also makes sense for smaller startups and teams?
You'll definitely still see content marketing roles in smaller companies, but you often hear from content marketers that everybody's burned out. There are so many reports that say there's a ceiling for content marketing. You end up [being] that catch-all person for things that don't fit neatly in every other marketing department and it's frustrating.
If you're looking at a startup role for content marketing and the volume of work is going to be reasonable, then go for it and you'll still wear all of those hats. There are people whose best skill is wearing all of those hats and making it work together.
But I genuinely tell people to beware the catch-all mid-market content marketing roles that are opened because somebody's screaming that there's nobody paying attention to email and the website. They don't really want to think through who they should hire or what they really need. So they throw up a content marketing role and then you just end up a services org for the rest of the marketing team. If that's something you're interested in, then go for those roles. But most content marketers I talk to want to be more strategic and creative than that.
How would you then recommend content marketers develop their careers today? What paths do they have?
Content marketing really comes down to two sides: the creative side and the strategic side, which requires more traditional digital marketing skills like SEO, social media platforms, email.
Most content marketers lean one way or the other. You're usually really great at making content or you're really great at the channel strategy.
If you lean more towards channel strategy and like analytics, reporting, staying on top of trends, making sure segmentation works, and how to reach audiences, I would look for roles on growth teams that are often hiring individual contributors to be strategy for different channels. Those channel managers are given resources to create the content for that channel, whether that's hiring an agency, a freelance team, or often hiring their own in-house creators like copywriters, designers, developers.
If you lean more towards the creative side and are more senior than an individual contributor on a growth team, I would hunt for roles on product marketing teams or what’s called an "audience team." That's where the narrative and storytelling sits. They hand off "This is the story we want to tell" to the growth teams to figure out how to activate it in the market. They work closely, but those people are more in the weeds doing the writing, messaging and narrative building.
You get kind of stuck in this no man's land because you're a bit of everything and a bit of nothing in a way.
You also end up straddling your own goals. Content marketers often own SEO. That's not typically something that sits on an events or product marketing or PR team. But then you also create all the content for events, PR, product marketing. So you're half a services org and then half trying to meet your own goals.
I've never really seen another team that that happens to. Brand teams are more clearly a services org. They're there to serve the goals of other marketing teams - PR, product marketing, growth. They have their own goals and sort of have the internal strength to say, "No, I'm not doing this because I need to hit my own goals."
Content marketing as a department gets stuck with both somehow because "content" is in the name of the department. They're the content marketing team. They make the content.
I think smart leaders are seeing that this doesn't make sense. So they're creating individual roles for channels. Now if you own SEO, you own SEO. Maybe you're great at making content for SEO, but you're not making content for PR and product marketing and events and all of these other teams too. You focus on SEO.
What advice would you give to a CMO or marketing director who has a content team that's not super effective or runs into some of these issues? What's the best approach for them to think through the types of goals they should set or what they should do with the team?
In my experience, it usually comes down to there being too many goals. When you ask leaders what is most important right now - awareness, consideration, customer retention - they say all of it. So they create a content marketing role that's supposed to focus on the entire funnel.
In reality, most companies have one thing that is most important to focus on first. If you're new to the market and nobody knows about you yet, you should be focusing on awareness. You may need to hire for SEO and social before focusing on web, UX, and lifecycle, which don't work well unless you have volume of traffic and people signing up or buying in the first place.
Or maybe you do have enough traffic or sales to sustain yourself for a while, but people are churning. Then focus on lifecycle, UX, and getting more conversions out of the traffic you already have.
[It's important to] really dive into the funnel, see where it's broken, and then focus on the parts that are broken. That will benefit your team the most.
Let’s talk about the company you’ve just launched. How are you going to help content marketers with your new business?
I'm helping people hunt down contacts for referrals and follow-up strategies, and craft resumes to get noticed. I'm also helping them leverage their social media. For example, if you've just been laid off and can use your social media to get the attention of hiring managers, there are strategic ways to get noticed and at least have that screening conversation.
Companies want to know that you want them specifically. Their best candidate is somebody who really wants to work for them. There are ways you can signal that in the job application process that are often easy tweaks to resumes, referral asks, or follow-up strategies.
So I'm focusing on the path from "I want this job" to "I have a screening call," and selling some consulting hours to help get people there.
What excites you about the future of content marketing, even though you think the traditional 'content marketing' role is dying?
The hook of "content marketing is dying" sounds doom and gloom, but it's really not. Content marketing is evolving. Content skills have always existed, and now organizations have realized their importance to the extent that they're hiring individuals for specific parts of what a content marketing role used to be.
It's becoming so specialized that the word is almost meaningless because it could be so many different things. Even more so now that there's a whole "content creator" world, and then we do content marketing, and everything is content. It just doesn't mean anything.
The good news is, if you are in a content marketing role, you're really marketable. Part of the problem is people keep seeking content marketing roles. If they leverage that marketability in roles closer to revenue, often higher paid, in better positions in an org, they will be much happier than roles just labeled "content marketing" today.
To keep up with Megan's insights on content marketing, follow her on LinkedIn. Visit meganmorreale.com to learn more about her new business which helps content marketers take the next step in their careers.
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