Flying Solo: The State of One-Person Content Teams Today

Doing more with less seems to be the mantra of all marketers in 2024 — and nobody is feeling the weight of this as much as one-person content teams.

Between crafting impactful strategies, managing a bench of freelancers, and fielding requests from across the organization, one-person content teams are being asked to do the work of many. And this pressure has only been amplified by the layoffs and budget cuts we’re seeing across all industries. 

At Campfire Labs, we wanted to understand how these one-person content teams are navigating this demanding environment. To find answers, we conducted an in-depth survey and a series of interviews with around 40 content marketers who are flying (and winning) solo. This report compiles their best advice, insights, and survival tips.

Who shared insights with us

A few good-to-knows about the demographics of our respondents: 

• 72% of respondents work in B2B, 15% in SaaS, and the remaining 13% in a mix of B2C and B2B2C.
• 59% of respondents work at companies with 1-50 employees, 18% work at companies with 51-100 employees, and 23% work at companies with 101 or more employees.
• 92% of respondents say content lives within the broader marketing organization, while only 2.6% of respondents say content is a stand-alone department.

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What the data says

After analyzing the survey responses and interviews, several clear themes emerged:

1. Cuts are hitting content teams — hard

One of the most eye-opening findings is that 44% of content teams experienced some form of cuts over the last 18 months. Of the teams that experienced cuts, 30% were related to budget, while 14% were related to headcount. This suggests that, for some content marketers, being a team of one may be a recent development due to downsizing.

The budget slashes may explain why 40% of respondents said they currently have zero external support in their day-to-day work — whether that’s in the form of freelancers or agencies. It’s unsurprising, then, that 21% of one-person content teams feel they don’t have the resources to do their jobs properly.

Takeaway: One-person content teams were already being asked to do a lot. Now, thanks to budget cuts, expectations have remained high but resources have been reduced — amplifying the amount of pressure these solo content marketers are under. 

2. Cross-functional is the new norm

Gone are the days when content was treated as a purely marketing function. 76% of our survey respondents said they have to create content for marketing needs and internal content needs — including sales collateral, UX copy for the product team, and community content.

In fact, it’s one of the biggest hurdles facing these content teams of one. 31% of our survey respondents said that managing internal content requests was one of the most prominent challenges of their role, second only to hitting objectives (40%). 

‍Takeaway: If you feel like you’re drowning in requests from HR, product, and sales, know that you’re not alone. What these results tell us is that content marketing is becoming a more cross-functional role across the board.

3. Optimization is a priority

In response to these added stressors, one-person content teams are putting on their experimentation hats to figure out how to lighten the load. Some are turning to technologies, with 83% of respondents saying they’re using AI to support their workflow some or all of the time.

Others are looking to optimize their existing processes, with 64% focusing on improving project management workflows and 55% on process automation.

‍Takeaway: Content teams of one are testing solutions to streamline their day-to-day work. Whether that’s through new technologies or by revamping existing processes, one-person content teams are getting creative to figure out how to do more with less.

4. But it’s not all bad news

While numbers are telling, sometimes you have to read between the lines to get into all angles of the story. Despite the challenges they’re facing, the content marketers we surveyed were also eager to share the opportunities that come with going solo. Here’s what a few of our survey respondents said:

"You learn every aspect of the business, expand your skill set and knowledge, understand how other departments function, and effectively put yourself in a great position to become a content leader.”

“Compared to when I worked in larger companies, we get SO much more done. I don't think I can ever go back to the bullshit of six rounds of feedback from different people. The buck stops with me—while we always get feedback from any key stakeholders, if I say publish, we publish. It's a breath of fresh air for everyone.”‍

‍“Being a one-person content team means digging for stories, and getting to chase those lightning-in-a-bottle moments. We get to understand what moves people, and how to turn ideas into tangible emotive work. It's refreshing to know that even in a digital world full of screens, the ability to create something real is not lost.”

Takeaway: With every challenge, there are also opportunities — and even advantages. We loved hearing about how content teams of one are leaning into the strengths of being on their own.

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How one-person teams can meet these challenges head-on

Now it’s time to get more tactical. We raised a lot of challenges in the last section and wanted to understand how successful one-person teams are addressing them. Here’s what our respondents shared:

1. Systemize how you prioritize tasks

One of the biggest challenges faced by one-person content teams is simply having too much to do. In theory, it’s easy to assume you can prioritize tasks as they come up. But, in practice, when a colleague you like asks for a ‘quick’ favor or an executive approaches you with an ‘urgent’ request, it’s easy to react first and prioritize later (or never). 

That’s why it’s critical to have a system in place that adds rigor to your prioritization process. Here are two approaches we heard that we found especially useful:

• ‍With data. As a content team of one at Unito, Josh Goldberg relies heavily on data to inform what he should be working on. “We have a really sophisticated data analytics setup at Unito,” he says. “Everyone has access to every tool, and this has given me a huge leg up in terms of my prioritization.” For example, Josh explains that he has a dashboard set up to see the search volume around the different types of tool integrations that Unito offers. “If a lot of people are searching for integration X, but that includes a free tool, it might not be worth investing content in. However, if there’s lower search volume for integration Y, but it includes a tool that’s known to be a large revenue earner, I’ll focus on creating content for integration Y.”
• With process. Another approach is to create a structured process. At Oliva, Simon Dumont, along with a product marketer and designer he partners closely with on content projects, takes a page out of the playbook of product teams. “Anyone who needs content from us has to send the request through a Google form — which asks for things like key information and level of urgency — that we have linked up to a Slack Channel. Then, every Monday, we do sprint planning to prioritize what needs to get done that week.” During these weekly meetings, Simon uses a kanban board to prioritize what needs to get done in the upcoming week. What gets prioritized, he explains, depends on a variety of factors — including requested deadlines and the importance of the project to broader company goals. “If the Head of Sales comes to me and says he needs a piece of content to help get a deal over the line, then obviously that’s going to be a high priority.” From there, Simon says he’ll assign an estimate around the level of commitment required for each request — where ‘easy’ = >1 day, ‘medium’ = 1-2 days, and ‘hard’ = 2+ days — to help him better gauge his workload for the week.

2. Get comfortable herding cats

While having too many people requesting content is a problem, having colleagues who aren’t involved enough in content is also a pain point. Many respondents shared frustration around getting their teammates to spend time on content — whether by sharing feedback or contributing their ideas. 

To address this challenge, here’s what our respondents suggested:

• Eliminate points of friction. To increase the chances of people doing something they’re not particularly eager to do, you have to lower the barrier to entry. As one of our survey respondents suggests: “Make it as easy as possible for cross-functional teams to support content (especially for sourcing information on blogs). Set up the brainstorming meetings and make the FigmaJam idea board. You can never have too many ideas, and when a good one gets fleshed out, it's one step closer to getting produced.”
• Be forthright about expectations. Sometimes people across an organization will say ‘yes’ to content-related requests without recognizing the time commitment required for the project. This eventually leads to feet dragging and delays down the road. To prevent this, Daniel Bean, Content Lead at Mixpanel, encourages one-person content teams to be clear about expectations from the start. “Be up front about what's going to be required, and resist the urge to make the ask sound simpler than it actually is just to get them to say ‘yes.’” He says that this may lead to people saying ‘no’ sometimes, but that’s better than the alternative of articles or reports that are delayed by months.
• Market yourself. Often, when people are reluctant to help out with content, it’s because they don’t understand why it’s important. Josh’s suggestion to combat this: “Market yourself internally. When I first started at Unito, there were so many developers and product managers who didn’t know what my job was.” Taking the time to build cross-functional relationships and educate your colleagues about content marketing, he says, can pay huge dividends. “Overcoming that hurdle is so helpful because then, when you ask others for help, they’ll understand why you’re asking.”

3. Automate key processes and tasks

As we saw in the survey results, automation is the key that unlocks time savings for content teams of one. Here are some of the best automation tips we collected from respondents:

• Explore the diverse use cases of AI. At this point, many content marketers are already dabbling in AI, using the technology to create outlines or rough first drafts of blog posts. However, Josh encourages one-person content teams to explore use cases beyond the obvious. “I love using AI in a dozen different ways. One of the things I’ll do is put together demo videos of our product, then use AI to proofread the automated transcriptions because they tend not to work well with SaaS tool names.” He also uses AI to write descriptions for YouTube videos, reformat data sets, or even clarify his own thinking. “I’ll often use AI to sharpen my responses to an internal question or to better understand a technical concept I’m trying to learn.”
• Optimize your freelancer process. If you’re a content team of one that relies on freelancers, there are tons of opportunities for automation. According to Eric Doty, Content Lead at Dock, this onboarding guide he created is one of his biggest time savers. “For every new freelancer I onboard, I copy the template, which gives them a full guide to our content strategy, our product, and gives them a personalized checklist to make sure they know all the steps involved in onboarding as a writer (e.g. how to set themselves up in our invoicing system). That saves me a lot of time from having to go through it with them.”
• Don’t forget about mental automation. Automation doesn’t always have to incorporate fancy tools and technology. There are also minor, but impactful, ways that you can automate your mental processes to free up bandwidth as well. As one respondent suggests: “Process-ize every task and project that you have to do repeatedly — make a checklist that includes every single step so that you don't forget anything.”

4. Lean into your unique advantages

As we said before, content teams have differentiators that can work to their advantage. Here are a few recommendations surfaced by our survey respondents:

• Don’t think about quantity — think about mileage. In other words, get the most out of your can with the least amount of effort possible. This can mean going for the “small” wins or low-hanging fruit. Another favorite tactic of our survey respondents was repurposing. “As a one-person content team, publishing at scale isn’t really an option, so more of your effort should go towards repackaging and redistributing existing ideas rather than spinning up completely new content,” says Nicole Bennett, Content Manager at Vena Solutions. “This could mean creating a really solid benchmark report that you then unpack in a series of blogs. Or repurposing podcast episodes into short videos for social media or an email series.”
• Fail fast. According to Jimmy Daly, co-founder and CEO of Superpath, there are huge advantages to being a lone wolf — the biggest one being agility. “You have the freedom to experiment, publish quickly, or try hacky ideas to distribute content. I think there are plenty of one-person content teams out there outperforming teams of five or more people. While those people sit in meetings, you can write, publish, repeat over and over again.”

Despite challenges, content teams of one can still thrive

Being a content team of one is not for the faint of heart. There’s undoubtedly a lot of pressure on these individuals to produce needle-moving results, without the people resources or — increasingly — the budget to invest. However, after speaking to successful one-person teams, we also believe the job comes with opportunities that — if approached with the right processes, tools, and strategies in place —  allow one-person content teams to have an outsized impact in their roles. 

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