Fractional Content Strategist
You’ve got one person running the whole content operation, and no room left to think.
Hire when the work is full-time and never ends. Contract when it has an end. Go fractional when it’s senior and ongoing but not full-time. We’ll tell you if you should just hire.
Tell us what the work is. You get a senior strategist a few days a month, owning the decisions instead of adding to the pile, and if the job is genuinely full-time, we’ll tell you to hire.
Or text 562-726-2287. No job description required, no four-month wait for a hire.
Days
To start, not months
Senior
The person doing the actual work
Ends clean
When the work’s done, by design
Hire FTE
Do nothing
Fractional
The short answer
Hire when it never ends, contract when it has an end, and go fractional when it's senior and ongoing but not full-time. It comes down to whether the work is continuous or concentrated.
Hire when there's enough strategy work to fill a role every week, indefinitely, and the value is knowing your business deeply over years. Contract a project when the work has an end, like an audit, a migration, or a restructure. Go fractional when you need seniority rather than hours, or when you need someone now and a hire is four months away.
Going fractional is also how you find out what the role should be before you write the job description. The comparison people get wrong is a fractional rate against a salary, so weigh it against the salary plus benefits, recruiting, and the ramp-up quarter. And if the work is genuinely full-time and stable, hire. We'll say so.
Sound familiar
You've got one person doing the work of a whole content team.
One person owns content, editing, brand, digital, events, and sales support, all at the same time.
You're so deep in shipping the work that there's never time to step back and set the strategy.
The whole plan lives in one person's head, so the week they're on PTO, everything stalls.
You need senior strategic thinking, but not a full-time role's worth, and the salary is hard to justify.
You need someone now, and a full-time hire is four months away.
You're weighing a fractional rate against a salary, and the salary looks cheaper until you add benefits, recruiting, and the ramp-up quarter.
None of this means you're doing it wrong. It means you've got senior-level decisions and no senior person with the time to make them. Here's the version where that thinking shows up a few days a month.
The version where this works
You bring in senior thinking a few days a month, from someone already good at this, and it owns the decisions instead of adding to the pile.
Not a coach who leaves you a reading list, and not a full-time hire you're stuck with through a slow year. A senior person does the actual strategy work: what gets published and what doesn't, the content model, the standards, the review process. The thinking stops living in one head and gets written down, so it keeps running when someone's on PTO. And when the work is finally clear enough to hire for, you'll know exactly what the role is.
How this compares
How a fractional strategist compares to a hire and an agency.
Three ways to get the work done, and the honest read on when each one is right. The fractional column is the one we run, and it isn't right for everyone.
| A full-time hire | An agency | Fractional | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Time to start | Usually months | Weeks | Days |
| What you get | One person, all in | A team, and often a junior after the pitch | The senior person, doing the work |
| Cost shape | Salary, benefits, recruiting, ramp | Retainer, usually with a minimum | Scoped to the work |
| Knows your business | Deeply, over time | Rarely | Well enough, and faster than an agency |
| Ends cleanly | No | Contractually | Yes, by design |
| Right when | The work is full-time and stable | You need capacity across many disciplines | The work is senior, real, and not full-time |
The actual work
What a fractional strategist actually does.
- Decides what gets published, and what doesn't. That's most of the job. Better choices about what's worth the output, not just more output.
- Owns the structure. The content model, the taxonomy, the shape the site's in.
- Sets the standards and the review process. So quality doesn't depend on who happened to write the page.
- Works with your writers, not instead of them. You keep your team. They get direction.
- Reports to you in decisions, not activity. What we chose and why, not a log of hours spent.
Honest fit
What a fractional engagement isn't.
Not a writer
If what you need is words on a schedule, that's a different hire, and a cheaper one. A strategist decides what's worth writing, rather than producing the words.
Not a block of hours
Buying a strategist by the hour gets you someone who attends meetings. The work is scoped by outcome, not by a fixed number of hours a month.
Not permanent
Six to twelve months is typical. A good outcome often ends with you hiring someone, because the role is finally clear and the standards exist for them to inherit.
What it costs
What a fractional engagement costs.
Ongoing strategy runs $5,000 to $15,000 a month.
It depends on scope, and on how much of the operation you want owned rather than advised on. Project engagements start at $10,000. Full detail is on the pricing page.
Related
If it's a different problem.
Content strategy
The whole picture. A fractional engagement is one way to run it.
Content audit
Usually the first thing a fractional engagement does.
Information architecture
If the problem is structure, not ownership.
About Matt Hall
With fractional work, you're hiring a specific person.
Questions we get
What people usually ask.
Hire when there's enough strategy work to fill a role every week, indefinitely. Contract a project when the work has an end, like an audit, a migration, or a restructure. Go fractional when the work is real and ongoing but not full-time, or when you need seniority now and a hire is months away.
Only if you compare the rate to a salary. Compare it to the salary plus benefits, recruiting, the ramp-up quarter, and the risk of carrying that cost through a slow year. If the work is genuinely full-time and stable, hiring is cheaper, and we'll tell you so.
Six to twelve months is typical. It isn't permanent by design. A good outcome often ends with you hiring someone full-time, because the role is finally clear and the standards exist for them to inherit.
No. A strategist decides what's worth publishing and sets the standards for it. If what you need is words on a schedule, that's a separate hire, and a cheaper one. We can help you brief writers, but the strategist isn't one.
Ongoing strategy runs $5,000 to $15,000 a month, depending on scope and how much you want owned rather than advised on. Project engagements start at $10,000. Full detail is on the pricing page.
Close
You'll know whether to hire, contract, or go fractional.
Tell us what the work is. If it's genuinely full-time and stable, we'll tell you to hire.
Senior thinking a few days a month, and an honest answer if you're better off hiring.