Aligning Content with Market and Customer Needs

Aligning Content with Market and Customer Needs

How do you decide which content topics to focus on and what format that content should take?

• Why it’s important to ask this: What drives a person to invest their time and effort into creating content? Is it anecdotal insight such as a hallway conversation with a sales person—which may be a good place to begin investigating an idea, but not the final driver for its execution? Or is creation more data-driven, such as through Google Analytics or insight from a content marketing platform?
• What to look out for: Be wary if your candidate indicates their past content development was primarily driven by what their boss told them to write about; or they have no understanding of what goes into content strategy. A follow-up question could be: “Describe your company’s content strategy, including key steps in its development.”

It’s your first day on the job. Walk me through the steps you’d take to develop a content strategy for our organization.

This is more of a case study type of question, better suited for senior hires. Check out the following eBook as a resource to best understand responses for this question: How to Create a Content Strategy: The Content Marketing Pyramid.

Understanding What Drives Successful Content

What makes content “successful”?

• Why it’s important to ask this: In order to create great content, you have to know how to discern which content is doing well in the first place.
• What to look out for: There are many answers to this question, so this helps tease out what type of content marketer the candidate is. Here are some possible answers:
  • “Traffic”
  • “Repeat visitors”
  • “Retweets and likes”
  • “Search engine ranking”
  • “Comments”
  • “Leads and sales”
  • “It depends”

The more they name off and can sensibly explain the importance of, the better.

Walk me through how you create a blog post.

• Why it’s important to ask this: This is a good question to tease out which parts of the content lifecycle the candidate is familiar with. Do they only have experience with copywriting, or can they come up with blog ideas themselves? Do they stop at writing the blog post, or do they keep promotion on social media in mind as well?
• What to look out for: You should look for a response that captures the whole process from start to finish, from ideation to production to distribution to analytics. A great answer will include specific tools and details. Here’s an example of great and mediocre responses.

How do to decide what to content create?

• Mediocre Responses:
  • My manager tells me what I should write about and gives me an outline.
  • I look at what’s trending and pick an interesting topic.
• Great Responses:
  • I keep a backlog of keywords that people are searching for in Google related to my target topic, and create posts based on the backlog.
  • I set up Google News alerts and a feed reader to look at which topics are trending in the news that relate to my topic area. I come up with spins on those topics to newsjack those stories.
  • I regularly ask the sales team what questions their prospects are asking, and use the responses as fodder for my next post.

What steps do you take when you actually create your content?

• Mediocre Responses:
  • I write my blog post in Word and then post it when it’s ready.
• Great Responses:
  • I write my blog post in Word, add hyperlinks to at least three other pieces of content on our site that we’ve published, and add at least one hyperlink to a third party resource.
  • I ensure there’s an associated featured image for the post by going to a stock image site.
  • I always make sure there’s a clear call to action at the end of each post.
  • For quality control, I make sure at least one other person has proofread it before publishing.
  • I optimize the title for a target keyword by looking at what terms people are searching for in Google.

After you have published your content, how do you promote it?

• Mediocre Responses:
  • I publish my content on WordPress, and then tweet it out as well.
• Great Responses:
  • I publish the post on our blog using WordPress.
  • I then schedule a minimum of four tweets at different times of the day in HootSuite.
  • I email coworkers to retweet and share my post as well.
  • I ask the demand generation team to include it in the next email newsletter to our database.

How do you know if your content has performed well or not?

• Mediocre Response:
  • Usually I just know if it’s done well or not.
• Great Response:
  • I look at Google Analytics after a few days to see how many page views it has received.
  • I search on Google for the target keyword I was optimizing for to see if it ranked in the first page.
  • I look at the Twitter counter on the post to see how many tweets cite this post.

How does Google rank content?

• Why it’s important to ask this: I am always surprised by how few marketers at any level understand how Google really ranks content. Though you’re not interviewing for an SEO position, content marketing is intrinsically tied to search engine optimization; everyone should know the basics when creating content.
• What to look for: You don’t need a candidate to know the PageRank formula, but rather the basic premise behind Google’s ranking algorithm, along with other auxiliary factors that help with SEO. For example, many naive marketers think Google ranks content largely on meta tags and keyword stuffing. In reality, Google primarily ranks content on inbound links, and the authority of the sites doing the linking. It’s a bonus if a candidate can mention other contributing factors such as the text of the hyperlink, the title tag, keywords in the URL, and others.

What are some good ways to get other people to link to your content?

• Why it’s important to ask this: The candidate may understand Google ranks content based on inbound links, but they also need to know how to accumulate inbound links.
• What to look for: A good content marketer knows how to get links by producing great link worthy content, and promoting it in a clever manner. Here are some good responses to the questions:
  • I interview influencers, not only because they have good things to say, but because they promote the resulting content to a large audience as well—and some of those people will end up linking back to my interview.
  • I include content others can reuse. For example, I may create a quick infographic that other bloggers may want to curate or include in their own posts, with a link back to mine.
  • I write long form content so I have the most comprehensive and authoritative post on a particular subject, which tempts others to link to me as the reference source.

Take Home Assignment: Produce an original writing sample

• Why it’s important to ask this: Many candidates may come in with writing samples from the past, but they may not accurately reflect the candidate’s capabilities. For example, the sample may have been proofed by a manager. Furthermore, it doesn’t accurately assess whether the candidate can create content that relates to your specific industry and topics.
• What to look for: I typically ask candidates to download one of our eBooks and summarize them in a 400 word blog post to bring to the second round interview. Things I look for from the resulting sample are:
  • Grammar, spelling, and attention to detail. Did they care enough about the job to proofread the post?
  • Title of the post. Did they come up with a creative title for the post? Is it SEO optimized? Or did they just copy the title of the eBook?
  • Call to Action. Did they include a call to action to the full eBook at the end of the post?
  • Paragraphs and structure. Is the post quickly skimmable? Or is it a wall of words?

Similar to interviews for other positions where candidates are asked riddles, the candidate may not use these skills every day on the job, but all of the above interview questions help tease out if they are cut out to be a well rounded content marketer.

The Interview: Where to Go From Here

Even if they make it through all the above interview questions with flying colors, it does not necessarily mean they’re a fit. It’s important to screen for cultural fit, and to make sure they have a good work ethic.

If they are a strong candidate on these fronts, as a hiring manager it’s your turn to answer some of the candidate’s interview questions: Why should they work at your company? How is your vision for content marketing any different to any other marketing department out there?

Employers: What do You Think?

Since being a professional “content marketer” is a relatively new role, we would love to hear which interview questions you have found to be effective. Please let us know in the comments below.