Content Marketing Specialist

JOB DESCRIPTION

We are seeking a strategic, research-driven Content Specialist, Content Marketing to join our team. This role is crucial in researching, planning, and producing content that earns high-quality backlinks, co-citations (being cited alongside trusted entities), and high-quality brand mentions (linked and unlinked) from authoritative websites and publications. The specialist will be familiar with trends and hot topics in education, test prep, and career licensure and will identify content ideas that are new and interesting to prospective linkers, journalists, and industry publishers.

The ideal candidate has strong SEO instincts, editorial judgment, and the ability to translate trends, data, and SME insight into outreach-ready content that publishers want to reference.

Additionally, we are looking for someone proactive, collaborative, and AI-driven, someone who thrives in a fast-paced, performance-driven environment and uses AI tools to accelerate research, ideation, and content production without compromising quality.

KEY RESPONSIBILITES

• Content Research & Planning: Research and plan content designed to engage target audiences and earn links, mentions, and co-citations from high-quality websites.
• Trend & Topic Discovery: Identify interesting topics, monitor trends, and analyze audience interests across education, test prep, and career licensure.
• Co-Citation Strategy: Identify the publications, experts, institutions, and sources we want to be cited alongside; structure content with credible sourcing and “publisher-ready” references.
• Mention-Building: Develop content angles that encourage brand/entity mentions (including unlinked mentions) and support link reclamation opportunities.
• Pipeline Management: Manage the content production pipeline, including sourcing SMEs and top-notch writers/reviewers, and ensuring deadlines and quality standards are met.
• Writing & Editing: Write and edit articles, reports, and outreach-friendly assets (e.g., stats pages, explainers, resource guides, comparisons).
• Outreach Collaboration: Partner with outreach specialists, prospectors, and other strategists to ensure a smooth pipeline from content creation to placements (links + mentions).
• Data & Insights: Delve into data to develop unique, newsworthy perspectives that increase pickup by journalists, bloggers, and industry publishers.
• Prospect-Led Ideation: Research prospects to identify audiences/segments and generate content ideas that match publisher interests.
• AI-Enabled Production: Use AI to accelerate ideation, outlining, summarization, and QA, while maintaining editorial and factual standards.

Key Competencies

• Strong editorial judgment and attention to detail (accuracy, sourcing, clarity).
• Ability to balance speed and quality to meet deadlines without compromising standards.
• SEO fluency, including content strategy for authority-building (topical relevance, intent, entities, and on-page best practices).
• Research strength: trend scanning, competitive analysis, prospect/publisher analysis, and source vetting.
• Collaborative mindset and comfort working cross-functionally with outreach and production teams.
• Analytical thinking: ability to find, interpret, and frame insights into compelling narratives.
• Familiarity with AI tools and other tools such as Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Canva (or similar).

Requirements

• Minimum 3–5 years developing marketing content for link building (and/or digital PR-style link acquisition)
• Excellent written and spoken English language skills
• Prior work experience in a remote setting
• Deep familiarity with the US education system and media interests