Content Marketing Interview Questions & Answers

Content  Interview Questions & Answers Marketing

Organizations of all sizes and across a range of industries are busy hiring people to manage their content. After all, the expertise and skills needed to run a successful content marketing strategy differ from those of the average marketer, so it makes sense to bring content specialists into the fold.

But how do you go about finding the right person? What competencies should you look for? And how can you determine if a job applicant fits the bill? Below I outline three critical core competencies for content marketers of all levels, along with 10 interview questions you can ask to determine candidates’ proficiency in each area.

Growth in Content Marketing Jobs

In the past three years there has been an uptick in content marketing related positions available at all levels, from interns to executives. Perusing the available openings on job boards, the most common titles include:

• Content Marketing Specialist
• Content Marketing Manager
• Content Marketing Strategist
• Content Marketing Intern
• Vice President of Content Marketing
• Chief Content Officer (rare)
• Content Marketing Associate

Looking at job trends on Indeed.com reinforces this: the inclusion of “content marketing” in job descriptions has skyrocketed nearly 400% in recent years.

Must Have Content Marketing Competencies

Below are some of the must-have competencies to identify in your next content marketer. These may vary slightly depending upon your organization and what level individual you’re looking to hire.

• Passion and Talent for Content Marketing (and writing). This is number one on my list.  You need to be a great writer and editor, highly creative, able to tell a story, and most importantly—love doing content marketing. Although more detailed questions are provided below, you need to understand if your candidate really loves content marketing, and if they will take the initiative to develop and grow in the role.
• Aligning Content with Market/Customer Needs. Content marketing is the process for developing, executing, and delivering the content and related assets needed to create, nurture and grow a company’s customer base. If you don’t have the capability to understand a market (e.g., be able to listen to customers and influencers, and identify their communicated and latent needs), you simply won’t be able to deliver great, engaging content.
• Understanding What Drives Successful Content. Some of the best writers in the world will never be successful content marketers. A superstar content marketer must understand what drives success in their market and within their organization (e.g., understanding Google search, measuring performance, translating data into insight).
• Maintaining a Consistent Supply of Quality Content. This competency deals a lot more with operations than simply content creation. Producing and delivering great content on time on a regular basis is no easy feat.
• Action-Oriented. Being a content marketer requires working with many people that don’t report to you, and getting them to deliver a product or service that can make or break your own success. This can include content from a product marketer, SEO insight from the digital team, and promotion by the social media team. Your content marketer should have the drive and creativity to do what it takes to get the product (i.e., content) out the door, optimize its promotion, and be prepared to do things differently when required. They need to be able to take a risk when necessary.
• Multi-Tasking. This is the ability to manage many activities and prioritize deliverables in a demanding, fast-paced environment. No doubt there’s some overlap here with being action-oriented, however, the need to be a great project manager cannot be under-estimated—especially for more senior staff.
• Desire and Ability to Work in a [Small/Large] Company. Select which version is best for your organization. There are significant differences between the two environments.
• Understanding and Use of Technology. Take a look at this Content Marketing Tools map and you’ll quickly understand the opportunity and challenge that exists for today’s marketer to tap into the power of new software.

Must Ask Content Marketing Interview Questions

Below are some of the must ask interview questions for any content marketing position, aligned with the competencies described above. Many of the questions are low level and tactical rather than strategic in nature—and more appropriate for a content marketing specialist than a Vice President of Content Marketing.

My philosophy however, is that in order to run a content team and create a content strategy, you need to know how to perform the duties of the team you manage. So I also ask senior level hires these same interview questions. Refer to the Content Marketing Interview Template for a more comprehensive list of interview questions as well as examples of poor, mediocre, and great responses to these interview questions.

Passion and Talent for Content Marketing (and Writing)

What do you enjoy about writing? 

• Why it’s important to ask this: Content marketing is a lot more than writing; however, I consider this talent to be a foundational element of a superstar content marketer. You have to love what you do.
• What to look out for: Look for indicators that they have a passion for writing. Understand what drives their passion, what outlets they’ve used to express this passion, and what personal benefits they get out of creating content.

Describe how you determined the style, tone, and voice for a specific piece of content you recently completed.

• Why it’s important to ask this: Your content marketer will need to express a unique voice and opinion in their work. However, they also need to adapt their own style as a function of your company’s needs, the audience, format of the content, person they’re writing for, and so on.
• What to look out for: Look and ask for specific examples of how they modified their style, as well as asking them to identify why this is important.

Provide a specific example of content you created that entertained and/or educated your readers.

• Why it’s important to ask this: Content marketing is about adding value to your readers, such as providing an infographic that educates about their industry, or creating an entertaining video that helps them with their job or career. Your team needs to create content that provides entertainment such as through story-telling or comedy in order to stand out from the crowd, and to capture and sustain their attention.
• What to look out for: Look for examples of their content that told a story, used humor, and/or educated their audience about something other than a company’s products. Bonus points if the candidate has delivered more unique formats of content, such as infographics, podcasts or interactive content. Ask for examples of where they’ve used visual content, including why they were or weren’t successful.

What content marketing blogs do you read?

• Why it’s important to ask this:
  
•  Is the candidate really interested in content marketing? Do they take personal initiative to educate themselves and grow as a content marketer? Or will they only grow solely through your mentorship on the job?
• What to look out for: See if they mention specific blogs. If they just say, “you know, all of them,” or “the usual ones,” they are likely not reading any.

Describe a situation in which you were given feedback on a content piece.

• Why it’s important to ask this: I certainly want a content marketer to have an opinion about what works and what doesn’t work. However, it’s also important that they can accept critiques about their work and make changes as necessary.
• What to look out for: Understand what type of feedback they received, how it made them feel—and most importantly—what they did with that feedback.

What process do you use when proofreading?

• Why it’s important to ask this: 
  
•  I certainly want a content marketer to have an opinion about what works and what doesn’t work. however, it’s also important that they are able to accept critique about their work and make changes as necessary.
• What to look out for: Attention to to detail and an understanding of proper usage of the english language is key elements of quality content. (Did you catch the three mistakes?) Follow-up questions could include:
  • What are some of your greatest “pet peeves” when editing someone else’s writing?
  • Which style guide(s) do you depend upon? See “Great Responses” in the Content Marketing Interview template.