gainful.io

Job Description

Ellipsis is the marketing agency for WordPress businesses. WordPress powers nearly half of all websites, and we serve the WordPress product and service ecosystem.

Our flagship service is Content Growth, our best-in-class done-for-you SEO Content service. We produce ~50 pieces of content per month for clients. All our content aims to achieve a top ranking in Google.

As our new Head of Content, you’ll own Content Growth, its growth, and its success. You’ll manage and grow the Content team, and manage and scale the content production process.

Content Growth drives excellent results for our clients. This is powered by the combination of our robust process and our in-house technology. FALCON AI is our proprietary tech we’ve built to make Content Growth so good. This is all designed and built in-house. FALCON AI was featured in the New York Times earlier this year, and is patent pending.

As our new Head of Content, you’ll both leverage and shape the future of FALCON AI to power Content Growth. We are a process driven company, and leverage a lot of robotic process automation to make content production easier. You’ll also leverage and shape this.

Our content team consists of Content Managers, who own the work and relationship with their clients, and Content Specialists, who help with the process. This is currently a team of 3, and you’ll lead this team. All of the content team will report directly to you. An important part of this role will be nurturing the existing team, and hiring and onboarding new team members into both roles or any new ones we identify we may need.

Our content process is a mature and (fairly) well-documented production workflow. As Head of Content, you’ll own this process and drive improvements in all areas. You’ll identify and improve weak spots, own OKRs and KPIs for content production quality and outcomes, and ensure Content Growth remains the best-in-class solution for our clients.

SEO requirements are taken care of by our Strategy team. You’ll own the overall SEO results from Content Growth, and will work closely with the Strategy team to ensure continual improvement here. You’ll also liaise with Sales and the Managing Director to understand content capacity needs, plan hiring, and set budgets.

We currently serve ~15 clients on Content Growth and produce 60+ posts/month. We plan to significantly scale this in the next year, and as Head of Content you will drive this.

Success in this role will require getting fully immersed and up to speed with Content Growth in your first 6 months, and then at least doubling Content Growth’s revenue and team in the next 12 months. It’s an exciting period for Ellipsis, and we’re looking for the right person to take the team through this critical period.

Ellipsis is a 100% remote company, and always has been. We’re based across Europe, and regularly meet for team meetups and conferences. We’re aiming to become a B Corp in 2022.

The Head of Content reports directly to the Managing Director, and will join our Senior Management team. This is an exciting opportunity to join a growing company doing great work and working on interesting challenges at a time when you can influence and help shape its future.

This position can be broken down as follows: 

50% Leadership and management of the content team and process

25% Strategic planning and reporting

25% Client work on your own clients

You will own Content Growth, the content team, and the content process. You’ll be responsible for the overall success and growth of Content Growth. To support the above, you need the following skills:

• Leadership: success in the Head of Content role will have a huge impact on the business. You have the opportunity to build and lead a world-class team as we scale.
  
  This will require both nurturing and leading the existing content team, growing the team, and ensuring Content Growth remains a best-in-class service for clients (both client experience and client outcomes).
  
  You’ll also be part of our Senior Management team, where we shape the future of the business and get peer support to make the best possible decisions.
  
  
• Data and analytics: you’ll be dealing with both production and analytics data, and KPIs coming out of these.
  
  We plan our capacity across Google Sheets and Tableau; you’ll own the updating and improvement of this setup, and leverage it to ensure we have a bottleneck-free production workflow that can deliver work on-time and on-budget and can meet our hiring/sales needs.
  
  We collect a lot of data for each Content Growth client; as you’ll be responsible for overall outcomes from Content Growth, you should be happy triaging and analysing this data to get the insights we need to improve.
  
  
• Content and clients: whilst we’re a growing team, we’re still a small company (10 people). In small companies, it’s a necessity to wear many hats. Whilst you’ll spend most of your time leading the content team, you’ll also have your own clients where you’re the project lead.
  
  You should be happy being in the weeds doing client work, talking to your clients, and doing great content work. We find this also goes a long way to give the role a deep sense of understanding of what should be improved.

Requirements: hard skills 

• You either have experience as a Head of Content or similar, or you can demonstrate you're ready to step into this role. We’re open to experience from agency, technology company, and B2B settings.
• Significant experience in content marketing, including time leading a team, and time in the weeds doing content production and client work. You will be the ultimate point of escalation for both team members who need help, and clients who need problems solved.
• Strong understanding of SEO Content production, going beyond writing. You understand what research and effort is needed for great rankings, and have had experience experimenting with different techniques which have given results.
• Impeccable English editorial skills. You’re the ultimate escalation point for grammar and editorial questions!
• Hunger for data and analytics. We use Google Sheets, Tableau, and Airtable to manage our internal content analytics; working with these to improve outcomes should excite you.
• Project and production management. With ~60 posts/month – and that number increasing on your watch – content production must go smoothly. You’ll both keep abreast of the project management, and continually identify and remove bottlenecks in the production process.
• Availability to work on European time (GMT/CET). The content team is based in Europe. Realistically, being based in the UK or EMEA is a significant advantage; we are however happy to consider candidates with significant overlap with European working hours.

Requirements: soft skills

• Fantastic communication skills: Leadership in remote work relies on mutual trust, so frequent and clear written communication is essential.
• High level of self-awareness: Ellipsis will harness all of your experience to improve Content Growth; you’ll in turn have a lot to get up to speed with and will need to have the self-awareness to understand where to push for improvements and where to defer.
• Proven organisational skills: Content Growth is a complex production process, and it’ll get more complex on your watch as we scale. You must be extremely organised. You’ll need to be up to speed with all of our content work day-to-day, alongside the leadership and management requirements of the role.
• Effective prioritisation: The scope for this role is wide! You’ll need to juggle your different responsibilities and the priorities of the business. You’ll need to understand the tradeoff of different tasks, and delegate and prioritise effectively to make them happen.
• Self-driven work ethic: This role requires you to take on board a lot of information about how Content Growth our clients work to start, and then you’ll have a lot of autonomy to run the Content team.You need to be self-motivated.

Bonus points if you have:

• Experience in a remote-work environment
• Digital marketing agency experience
• WordPress industry experience (we’re very happy to train for this if you don’t)
• Advanced skills in Google Sheets, Excel, and/or Airtable
• Deeper SEO expertise beyond basic keyword research

Compensation and benefits: 

• This is a full-time, 100% remote role. Work from home, or the beach! 
• Competitive, full-time salary with pension, benchmarked to UK rates and based on experience. We expect this to be £50k to £65k/year
• 28 days of paid holiday
• Regular team retreats (in fun places! ~3 per year)
• You have the unique opportunity to grow and shape a significant part of the business, and enjoy the personal development and additional responsibilities this will entail
• Maternity/paternity leave, and sick pay
• Sustainable business: we are aiming to become a B Corp by the end of 2022

The application process: 

It’s important we find the best candidate for this position, and our selection process will reflect this. You’ll be required to attend at least three interviews (by video call) and carry out a (paid) freelance project with us before we make an employment offer.

We’re fortunate to receive a large volume of applications, so make your application stand out. Please pay special attention to the main responsibilities of this role, and “how to apply”.

We do great work for clients and are building an ethical business that lets everyone do their best work. If you think you could be the next person to join our team, please apply :) 

Applications are open until EOD, 19th September 2022. We'll be in touch with all applicants after this date.

If you're on the fence about applying, go for it! We will look very favourably on quality applications; we value this more than perfectly matching the list of requirements.

How to apply:

Please apply through Workable. We will decide who progresses to the next stage based on the form you submit, and your CV. Please give us a good reason to select you!

Taking the time to research the role, what we do (including recent blog posts, Content Growth, and FALCON), and what you can do for us will increase your chance of success. Your cover letter is where you have the space to do this.

Ellipsis is an equal opportunity workplace and is committed to equal employment opportunity.

We will then interview some candidates and notify everyone, whether we're proceeding or not. Expect to hear from us after applications have closed!