Content Manager vs Content Strategist: Roles, Skills & Key Differences

If you have ever looked at a content job description and thought, wait. Isn’t that just what the other role does. You are not alone.

“Content manager” and “content strategist” get used interchangeably all the time. Sometimes by founders. Sometimes by recruiters. Sometimes by the same company in two different job posts. And then you join the team and realize one person is basically running a mini media company, and the other is building the map everyone is supposed to follow.

So let’s clear it up without turning it into a textbook.

This guide breaks down what each role actually does day to day, the skills that matter, who owns what, and how to hire for it. Also when you should combine the roles, because sometimes that is the only practical answer.

What a Content Manager does (in real life)

A content manager is the person who makes content happen.

Not in a vague “I love content” way. In a production and execution way. They’re responsible for shipping.

Typical responsibilities look like this:

• Running the content calendar and making sure deadlines are real
• Coordinating writers, editors, designers, SEO folks, and sometimes stakeholders who suddenly want “just a few changes”
• Editing drafts for clarity, tone, formatting, and basic SEO hygiene
• Publishing content in the CMS, adding internal links, images, metadata, schema if needed
• Updating old posts, fixing broken links, consolidating content that overlaps
• Monitoring performance, then making tactical improvements based on what’s working

A good content manager is part editor, part project manager, part QA person. They keep the machine moving, and they notice when the machine is about to break.

Common KPIs for a Content Manager

This varies by company, but usually includes:

• Output consistency (posts shipped per week or month)
• Content quality signals (time on page, scroll depth, engagement, low bounce where relevant)
• Basic SEO outcomes (indexation, improvements after updates, internal linking coverage)
• Workflow speed (time from brief to publish)
• Content ops health (fewer bottlenecks, fewer rewrites, fewer “where is the draft” moments)

And yes, sometimes they get measured on traffic. Even when they do not own strategy. That happens a lot.

What a Content Strategist does (in real life)

A content strategist is the person who decides what to publish, why it matters, and how it all connects to business outcomes.

They are upstream.

They’re thinking about:

• Audience segments and what each one needs
• Search intent, topic clusters, and how to win categories over time
• Brand positioning through content, not just keywords
• The content funnel (awareness to consideration to conversion)
• What the company should stop publishing because it is noise
• How content supports product marketing, sales enablement, and lifecycle content

They do not just come up with “topics.” They build a system.

Typical responsibilities:

• Building a content strategy tied to goals (organic growth, pipeline, trials, demos, retention)
• Creating a keyword and topic roadmap, often with prioritization frameworks
• Defining content pillars, templates, briefs, and quality standards
• Aligning content with product positioning and messaging
• Auditing existing content and making decisions (keep, update, merge, delete)
• Setting measurement plans and reporting on what content is doing for the business

A strong strategist spends a lot of time saying no. Or not yet. Or this is the wrong angle. Which is surprisingly hard in busy teams.

Common KPIs for a Content Strategist

More outcome oriented, like:

• Organic growth across target topic clusters
• Share of voice for priority queries
• Conversion rates from content (newsletter signups, trials, leads, demo requests)
• Pipeline influence (in B2B, even if attribution is messy)
• Content ROI (what we invested vs what we got back)
• Reduced content waste (fewer random posts, fewer duplicated topics)

Content Manager vs Content Strategist: The core difference

Here’s the simplest way to think about it:

• The content strategist designs the plan.
• The content manager executes the plan.

Strategy decides what and why.

Management handles how, when, and with who, plus making sure the final thing is actually good and actually published.

But real teams overlap. Especially in startups. So the better question is not “which one writes.” Both can write. It is “who owns direction” vs “who owns delivery.”

A quick side by side comparison

Focus

• Content Manager: Production, workflow, publishing, quality control
• Content Strategist: Planning, research, prioritization, positioning, measurement

Time horizon

• Content Manager: This week, this month
• Content Strategist: Next quarter, next six months, next year

Primary output

• Content Manager: Shipped content, maintained content library, a functioning calendar
• Content Strategist: Roadmap, briefs, content architecture, growth hypotheses, auditing decisions

Tools they live in

• Content Manager: CMS, editorial tools, Grammarly, project management, internal linking tools
• Content Strategist: SEO tools, analytics, keyword research, competitive research, dashboards

Who they collaborate with most

• Content Manager: Writers, editors, designers, dev, CMS admins
• Content Strategist: SEO, product marketing, sales, leadership, analytics

Skills that matter (and the ones people assume matter)

Content Manager: must have skills

• Editorial judgement. Not just grammar, but knowing what is confusing, what is fluff, what is missing.
• Project management. Deadlines, dependencies, stakeholder wrangling.
• On page SEO basics. Titles, headers, internal links, search intent checks, content formatting.
• CMS competence. Publishing without breaking things.
• Process building. Templates, checklists, style guides, briefing formats.

Nice to have:

• Light design or formatting sense
• Basic HTML familiarity
• Experience updating and pruning old content (this is underrated)

Content Strategist: must have skills

• Keyword and topic research with prioritization. Not “here are 500 keywords.” But what matters first.
• SERP analysis and intent mapping. What Google is rewarding and why.
• Content architecture. Clusters, internal linking logic, canonicalization, avoiding overlap.
• Business alignment. Knowing how content supports the funnel and revenue.
• Measurement and iteration. Building feedback loops from performance data.

Nice to have:

• Positioning and messaging chops
• Competitive analysis frameworks
• Ability to write briefs that produce consistent quality, even with different writers

Who owns what? (This is where teams get messy)

To minimize confusion, it's crucial to explicitly define ownership within your team.

Here's a clear division that often works well in SEO-driven teams:

Content Strategist usually owns

• Audience, funnel, and content positioning
• Keyword strategy and topic selection
• Brief templates and quality standards
• Content audit decisions (update, merge, remove)
• Performance reporting and strategic iteration

Content Manager usually owns

• Editorial calendar execution
• Assigning writers and managing deadlines
• Editing and QA
• Publishing and updating content in the CMS
• Internal linking implementation and on-page checks
• Keeping the production engine running

In practice, internal linking is shared. Strategy might define the linking model, manager implements it. Same with content updates. Strategist decides what to update, manager executes.

If you do not define this, you get the classic problem: a strategist assumes content is being updated, a manager assumes strategy is handling it, and nothing happens.

How this maps to SEO content specifically

SEO content tends to create even more overlap, because “SEO” touches both strategy and execution.

A strategist might:

• Build topic clusters
• Define which pages are “money pages” vs supporting articles
• Decide internal linking direction
• Decide content refresh cycles
• Create briefs optimized for intent

A manager might:

• Ensure articles match the brief and do not drift
• Ensure on-page SEO elements are correct
• Publish and interlink properly
• Maintain content hygiene over time

This is also where automation platforms can alleviate some of the repetitive execution work, especially in areas like publishing, internal linking, and maintaining consistent production.

If you are running a large content program and want to automate parts of the workflow, it’s worth looking at something like SEO Software, which is built for hands-off content marketing. It scans your site, generates a keyword and topic strategy, creates SEO optimized articles, schedules and publishes them. Essentially, it handles much of the operational workload that typically burdens a content manager while still allowing a strategist to steer the overall direction.

You can see what that looks like in their pages on content automation and their content audit workflows.

Furthermore, adopting an agile content structure can further streamline these processes by promoting flexibility and efficiency within your SEO teams.

Which role should you hire first?

Depends on what problem you actually have. Not the title you think you need.

Hire a Content Strategist first if

• You are publishing but results feel random
• You have traffic but it is not the right traffic
• Your blog is a pile of unrelated posts
• You do not know what to write next, or why
• You need a roadmap tied to business goals

Hire a Content Manager first if

• You have a solid plan but nothing ships consistently
• Writers are late, drafts are messy, publishing is chaotic
• Updates and internal linking never happen
• You have too many stakeholders and no one controlling the process
• You are losing time to content ops instead of growing

And yes, plenty of companies hire the wrong one first, then wonder why it didn’t fix things.

When one person can do both (and when they shouldn’t)

Early stage startups often have one “content person” doing everything. That can work, but there are tradeoffs.

One person can do both if

• You publish 2 to 6 pieces a month
• The product is simple to understand
• Your keyword strategy is not massive
• You do not have many stakeholders
• You are okay moving a bit slower

Split the roles if

• You publish weekly or more
• You are doing content refreshes at scale
• You have multiple products or audiences
• You need consistent briefs, consistent quality, consistent reporting
• You want to build a content engine that runs even when someone is out for a week

A subtle sign you need to split: the same person keeps bouncing between big picture planning and last minute fixing of intros, images, and metadata. They never get to think. Or they never get to ship. Sometimes both.

Job title confusion you will see (and what it usually means)

• SEO Content Manager: Usually a content manager with stronger SEO responsibilities, sometimes owning the calendar plus keyword planning.
• Content Marketing Manager: Often a mix of strategy and execution, plus distribution (email, social, partnerships).
• Head of Content: Usually owns strategy, team structure, and outcomes. Might still write, but less.
• Editorial Manager: Heavier on editing and brand voice. Less on SEO strategy.
• Content Operations Manager: Process and production at scale. Tools, workflows, governance.

So if you are hiring, look at the responsibilities, not the label.

What to ask in interviews (to tell who’s actually good)

Questions for a Content Manager

• Walk me through your process from brief to publish. Where do things usually break?
• How do you edit for clarity and structure? What do you look for first?
• How do you handle stakeholders who want changes late?
• Show me an example of a content update you managed. What changed and why?
• What does your publishing checklist look like?

Questions for a Content Strategist

• How do you choose which topics to prioritize for a new site?
• Pick a keyword. Talk me through intent, angle, and what the page should include.
• How do you build a cluster and internal linking plan that actually makes sense?
• How do you measure success when attribution is messy?
• Show me a content audit you have done. What did you remove, merge, and refresh?

You are listening for how they think. Not just tool familiarity.

The “AI content” factor: how roles change with automation

AI has changed both roles, but in different ways.

A content manager can use AI to:

• Speed up first drafts
• Create outlines and variations
• Repurpose content
• Handle formatting, meta descriptions, social snippets
• Scale updates and rewrites

A content strategist can use AI to:

• Speed up research
• Expand topic ideation
• Cluster keywords faster
• Draft briefs faster
• Run faster content experiments

But AI doesn’t magically fix unclear strategy or messy execution. It just amplifies whatever you already are.

If your issue is consistency and publishing overhead, automation helps a lot. That’s where platforms like SEO Software are positioned. It is built to replace a chunk of agency style content production with a fixed workflow. Strategy, generation, scheduling, publishing. And since comparisons matter, you might also want to peek at how it stacks up against common tools, like SEO Software vs Surfer SEO and SEO Software vs Jasper.

So. Which one are you?

This is the part people quietly wonder about.

If you naturally think in calendars, systems, deadlines, and clean publishing, you probably lean content manager.

If you naturally think in audience intent, content clusters, positioning, and what to do next quarter, you probably lean strategist.

Both are valuable. And honestly, the best teams respect the difference.

Because when a strategist has to spend three hours resizing images and fixing broken embeds, strategy suffers. And when a manager is forced to invent a roadmap with no support, execution becomes random.

Final takeaway

The content strategist owns direction. The content manager owns delivery.

If you want predictable organic growth, you need both roles in some form. Maybe two people. Maybe one person plus good tooling. Maybe a lean team with automation taking care of the repetitive parts.

If you are trying to scale content without scaling headcount in the same way, take a look at SEO Software. It’s built for hands off content marketing, with automated strategy, article generation, scheduling, and publishing. The kind of stuff that usually eats up your week.