The Content Marketer’s Guide to Performance Reviews

The problem is nobody really likes performance reviews. They’re stressful, awkward, and ineffective (according to some). Yet it seems they are necessary.

So how should managers go about performance reviews in their content marketing teams? Read on to learn some basic theories and see the insights that some marketing managers shared with us.

We’re going to cover:

​​A performance review (also called performance evaluation or appraisal) is a process where managers assess an employee’s work performance to identify their strengths and weaknesses, offer feedback, and assist with goal setting.

A common misconception about performance reviews is that they are meant to benefit only the businesses or managers and not the employees. However, properly conducted reviews (in any form) can offer an immediate lift for all “sides.”

For businesses (and managers conducting the reviews), performance reviews are a tool for optimizing the performance of staff, strengthening leadership, creating a better alignment with the strategy, and understanding the perspectives of employees.

For employees, reviews are a way to get an overview of their strengths and weaknesses and progress. During reviews, employees can also voice criticisms, discuss career opportunities with managers, or get a raise.

A performance review, in general, is a multi-layered phenomenon, such as the obvious business performance side of things, different management theories, company policies, HR and, of course, the psychological aspect of giving and receiving a performance review in a modern workplace.

In the past, when businesses tried to prioritize some aspects over others or balance them, new types of performance reviews emerged. These days, it seems there is no consensus for a single, right way to do a performance review. Each way has its advantages and disadvantages.

If you’re interested in how performance reviews evolved, see this timeline. 

Among all of the alternatives, here are the types of performance reviews that seem to be most relevant to evaluating the work of content marketers.

Within those types, with the exception of real-time feedback, there are three commonly used techniques for gathering and passing information: checklist (aka forced choice), scorecard, and free form (aka an essay). Let’s take a quick look at some simple examples.

Example 1. A scorecard technique used in the rating scale method. Here, the manager marks the score of an employee for a given period of time, e.g., the last three months. In the end, all of the points can be summed up to constitute a general score.

Example 2. A checklist technique used in the self-assessment method. The employee is handed a questionnaire with forced-choice questions. There is no scale here, only “black” and “white.”

Example 3. A free-form essay technique. This can be used as a standalone technique or as a supplement to the other techniques.

With some basic theory out of the way, let’s look at the practical side of things. Let’s see how some of the marketers we asked conduct performance reviews for content marketers and how they feel about the idea in general.

Some of the methods listed in the section above are decades-old, some have been transplanted from other fields (e.g., military), and some were designed for corporations.

This means that what we have just discussed may potentially be outdated and/or not suitable for startups and SMBs. After all, marketers may have adopted different methods over the years that work well, especially in the area of content marketing.

So in our search for the answer to doing performance reviews for content marketers, we decided to go further than just understanding the theories.

What’s more, we also wanted to learn what particular metrics are being used to assess the performance of content marketers.

So we asked marketing managers to answer these two questions in a quick survey on social media:

In some cases, we’ve added an additional question: How do you determine if a content marketer deserves a raise?

Two disclaimers to note here. First, marketing is a broad field with various specializations. Hence, we decided to limit the scope of the survey to just content marketing. Second, the survey was conducted on social media in an open forum. So we chose not to rule out the possibility of respondents being influenced by existing responses.

All in all, we’ve got 20 responses to questions #1 and #2 and 10 responses to the additional question #3, plus some comments. Here’s what we found:

I think every reader will make their own conclusions after studying the survey results. Some will treat it as a sign that the “traditional way” of doing performance reviews is still the way to go.

Others may flinch at the mere sight of any kind of scorecard, and they may treat the small but significant percentage of managers who don’t use any metrics or do performance reviews as the most important group.

Here’s my take on the subject. It’s based on the data from the survey, the research I did for this article, and my personal experience as a marketing manager a couple of years back. I tried to distill them, and this brings us to the following tips…

Finding one definitive answer to the problem of performance reviews seems impossible until you try it out on your own turf. Whatever you do, you may want to consider these tips.

One undeniable conclusion from our survey is that managers assess the performance of content marketers differently. There sure are patterns and commonalities but no unanimity.

Reason? Very prosaic: People are different, and organizations are different. What could work in a 500+ corporation may fail miserably in a startup. While some content marketers like to have strict guidelines and follow exactly what is expected of them, others perform best if they are left with a lot of room to move.

Then we have different styles, strategies, and types of content marketing. One team may focus on writing SEO content; another may focus on social media, sales enablement, or video marketing. They won’t have the same process, challenges, and objectives.

In all of those differences and complexities, I think nailing the right performance review method boils down to one thing: How can you as a manager help your team members achieve their goals?

In other words, nobody needs (and trusts) a manager who only judges people. Your performance reviews should be constructive and ideally benefit both “sides.”

So don’t just blindly copy what someone else is doing. Instead, take any advice for a “test drive” and see what happens. Observe your team, get feedback, and look at the impact of your decisions on the performance and quality of content.

What often concludes a performance review is the possibility of a raise for the reviewee.

If you want to reward employees by giving them a raise, you probably can’t go wrong with the answers our respondents gave. But if raises are a part of an incentive plan in a creative field like content marketing, things become a bit tricky.

Incentive plans are essentially “carrot and stick” systems: rewards and punishments used to induce a certain behavior or a certain level of work performance. Using direct punishments (pay decrease, demotions, etc.) is probably rare. But in a workplace, a lack of reward practically equals punishment.

A number of studies (e.g., here and here) have shown that incentive plans may do more harm than good. Here’s why:

Let’s make things clear here. Rewarding content marketers with raises and bonuses for great work is nothing short of doing justice to their inputs.

But it doesn’t work the other way around. Introducing a reward system to improve the quantity and quality of content is probably a bad idea for the reasons mentioned above.

You may want to do this instead: provide training, give useful feedback, and leave room for self-determination. Other than that, you may want to review your recruitment process, which brings us to the next tip.

From my experience, if you hire the right people, all you need to do in terms of performance reviews is to regularly talk to them. No awkward pressure, no formalities, no scores. In fact, casual chats work best.

The reason for this is the right person for the job will have the intrinsic motivation to excel at their role. They will want to do the job as best as possible. They may even be more concerned about their performance than the manager.

So if they understand that you, as a manager, are there to help them achieve their goals, remove roadblocks when needed, remove yourself from a given process when needed, or even step in when needed, you will gain their trust.

Otherwise, you will become another dark cloud in their blue sky. Another problem to solve and obstacle to avoid. You won’t earn their trust. And without trust, you won’t see their true potential.

If your recruitment process is broken and you end up hiring people who don’t really fit the role or the company culture, you will likely struggle with performance reviews as a result. This means you will have to devise some complex system of assessment instead of simply having regular chats.

A good idea may be to ask your employees to prepare their own performance reports. Here’s why:

For example, if your strategy is based on content designed to rank on search engines, content marketers on your team can use an SEO tool like Ahrefs to track things such as keyword rankings, search visibility, backlinks, or organic traffic growth. This data can then be aggregated for any period of time and discussed with a manager.

In Ahrefs’ Rank Tracker, tags can help to filter articles by author. This way, all writers can easily monitor the performance of their work.

Last but not least, let’s take note of the small details that can make or break your performance reviews. Without further ado, here’s a short list of things worth remembering:

Our initial plan for this article was to include a template for performance reviews. A one-size-fits-all solution all content marketing managers and heads of content departments can use to measure the performance of content marketers.

I’m glad we didn’t go in that direction.

If we did, we would lose all that diversity in opinions on the topic and different practices of conducting performance reviews.

So to reiterate the question from the introduction: How should managers conduct performance reviews of their content marketing teams? Well, it seems that they should find their own way because no one will answer this question for them.

Sure, there are methods and techniques, but they don’t come with any promises. Furthermore, asking other managers won’t result in a simple answer either.

When it comes to performance reviews, you need to consider the consequences of choosing one method over the other. They should be tested within one’s specific work environment, as they can enhance just as many things as they can undermine.

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