Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Word Manager

🎯 Role Definition

The Word Manager is a senior editorial and content operations leader responsible for defining and enforcing tone, style, and correctness across all written customer- and product-facing communications. This role blends content strategy, editorial governance, people management, CMS operations, SEO copy oversight, and cross-functional program leadership to ensure consistent, on-brand language across web, product UI, marketing, help center, and localized content. The Word Manager partners with product, marketing, localization, legal, and analytics teams to improve search visibility, conversion, readability, and accessibility of the company's written content.

Key search-optimized responsibilities and focus areas: content strategy, editorial standards, style guide governance, CMS workflows, SEO copywriting, localization, copy QA, content analytics, stakeholder management, and content production operations.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

Senior Content Strategist / Senior Copywriter
Editorial Manager / Lead Content Editor
UX Content Designer / Product Content Lead

Advancement To:

Head of Content / Director of Content Strategy
VP of Content & Editorial
Head of Brand and Communications

Lateral Moves:

Product Content Lead
SEO Content Lead
Localization Program Manager

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Define and own the company-wide editorial style guide, including tone of voice, grammar conventions, terminology, capitalization, punctuation, and accessibility standards; maintain and publish the guide and drive adoption across product, marketing, and support teams.
Lead a team of editors, copywriters, and content strategists: hire, coach, set objectives, run performance reviews, and develop career growth plans that measurably raise editing and writing quality.
Create and operationalize a repeatable content production process that includes intake, prioritization, assignment, editing, review, approval, and publishing across the CMS and product repos.
Manage and optimize content governance and workflows in the CMS (e.g., WordPress, Contentful, Drupal), including role-based permissions, templating, content lifecycle, and release coordination with engineering and product teams.
Oversee editorial QA and copy review programs: define checklists, run pre-publish audits, monitor live content for correctness, and coordinate rapid remediation of inaccurate or noncompliant copy.
Partner with SEO and analytics teams to develop and enforce SEO copy best practices: keyword intent mapping, on-page optimization of headlines and meta tags, content clustering, and performance monitoring that improves organic traffic and conversion.
Drive content measurement and reporting: define KPIs (engagement, time on page, conversion lift, readability scores), establish dashboards, run A/B tests on copy, and iterate based on quantitative and qualitative insights.
Lead content localization and transcreation efforts: coordinate with localization vendors and internal language leads, define source content readiness guidelines, and ensure translated copy retains brand voice and legal compliance.
Collaborate with Product and UX teams to establish content-first approaches to features: write and review UI copy, error messages, help text, onboarding flows, and microcopy that improve task completion and reduce support calls.
Develop and maintain reusable copy components, content templates, and pattern libraries for marketing pages, product surfaces, emails, and in-app notifications to ensure consistency and speed of production.
Act as the editorial escalation point for legal, compliance, and regulatory reviews, ensuring copy meets industry and geography-specific disclosure requirements and coordinates sign-off workflows.
Manage editorial calendars and cross-functional editorial planning: prioritize content projects based on business objectives, campaign cycles, product releases, and SEO opportunities.
Conduct regular content audits and lifecycle reviews to identify technical debt, outdated messaging, inconsistencies, and opportunities to consolidate or canonicalize content.
Run training programs, style clinics, and writing workshops for cross-functional teams to scale strong copy practices across non-editor contributors and minimize rework.
Partner with customer support and community teams to capture voice-of-customer insights and incorporate common questions, tone, and language into help content, FAQs, and error messages.
Lead crisis and rapid-response communications for copy updates across product and marketing channels during incidents, outages, or time-sensitive announcements.
Champion accessibility and inclusive language in all written materials: ensure plain-language phrasing, screen-reader compatibility, descriptive link text, and compliance with accessibility standards (WCAG).
Define and manage content budgets for freelance talent, agencies, localization, and tooling; track spend, vendor SLAs, and drive vendor performance.
Implement and maintain content automation and tooling (e.g., macros, templates, editorial plugins, terminology management tools) to scale editorial throughput and reduce manual errors.
Conduct user research and content testing (usability tests, read-alouds, tree tests) to validate copy effectiveness and iterate according to user feedback and performance data.
Serve as brand guardian for word-level consistency across naming, product descriptions, taglines, and external communications; approve exceptions and maintain a central change log.
Drive collaboration with marketing, product marketing, and growth to ensure content supports lead generation, conversion funnels, and retention goals.
Review and sign off on content for external channels (press releases, blog posts, social copy, partner materials) to ensure alignment with brand voice and messaging hierarchy.
Establish disaster recovery and rollback processes for published copy errors, including staging workflows, rapid rollback procedures, and communication protocols for affected stakeholders.
Mentor junior editors and writers, provide editorial feedback on submitted drafts, and directly contribute high-priority content when required.

Secondary Functions

Support ad-hoc data requests and exploratory data analysis.
Contribute to the organization's data strategy and roadmap.
Collaborate with business units to translate data needs into engineering requirements.
Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies within the data engineering team.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

Expert-level copyediting and proofreading skills with deep knowledge of grammar, punctuation, and style guide development (AP, Chicago, in-house style).
Content strategy and lifecycle management across web, product UI, email, help center, and knowledge base.
Strong working knowledge of CMS platforms (e.g., Contentful, WordPress, Drupal) and experience managing editorial workflows, templates, and permissioning.
SEO content strategy: keyword research, on-page SEO, metadata optimization, content clustering, and experience using SEO tools (e.g., Google Search Console, SEMrush, Ahrefs).
Experience with localization and translation management tools (e.g., Transifex, Smartling, Lokalise) and managing transcreation workflows.
Familiarity with analytics and experimentation platforms (e.g., Google Analytics, Looker, Optimizely) to measure content performance and run A/B tests.
Proficiency with content design and microcopy for product UX, including writing for accessibility and international audiences.
Basic HTML/CSS familiarity to troubleshoot content rendering issues, manage markup in CMS, and collaborate with engineering on templates.
Experience with version control or content staging processes and publishing automation (CI/CD for content, branching in headless CMS).
Use of editorial and productivity tools (e.g., Styleguides, Grammarly, Hemingway, Figma for copy prototypes, Slack, JIRA, Confluence).
Project and budget management skills: roadmapping, prioritization frameworks, vendor management, and SLA enforcement.
Experience building taxonomy, metadata schemas, and content tagging systems to support search and personalization.

Soft Skills

Strong leadership and people-management skills; ability to motivate, mentor, and scale a team of writers and editors.
Excellent stakeholder management — communicates candidly with product, marketing, legal, and engineering and negotiates content trade-offs.
Meticulous attention to detail and an obsessive commitment to quality and clarity in written content.
Strategic thinking with the ability to translate business goals into editorial initiatives and measurable content outcomes.
Data-informed decision maker who balances qualitative feedback and quantitative performance metrics to iterate content.
Adaptability and calm under pressure when responding to live incidents, product launches, or compliance changes.
Excellent verbal and written communication skills for running workshops, presenting roadmaps, and advocating for editorial investments.
Collaborative mindset — builds strong cross-functional relationships and fosters a culture of shared ownership for content.
Time management and prioritization skills to balance long-term strategy with day-to-day editorial needs.
Coaching and feedback giver — supports continuous improvement for writers, editors, and non-editor contributors.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

Bachelor's degree in English, Journalism, Communications, Marketing, Technical Writing, or a related field.

Preferred Education:

Master's degree in Communications, Rhetoric, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), or an MBA with a focus on marketing or product management is a plus.
Certification in technical writing, content strategy, or SEO is advantageous.

Relevant Fields of Study:

English, Journalism, or Communications
Marketing, UX Design, or Human-Computer Interaction
Technical Writing, Information Architecture

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 5–10+ years in content, editorial, or copy roles with progressive responsibility; 3+ years managing teams or cross-functional programs.

Preferred:

Proven experience building and running editorial operations at scale (consumer web, SaaS, or enterprise environments).
Demonstrated impact on SEO, conversion, or product usability through content initiatives.
Prior experience working with localization programs, legal/compliance reviews, and cross-border content teams.