Heard the phrase, “Great content seals the deal”? Content marketing is the heart of most successful digital marketing campaigns which has become a necessity for any modern brand. Behind every great brand is a wealth of valuable and relevant content that connects with the company’s audience.
One of the greatest benefits that shows the importance of content marketing is reputation building. It’s vital that businesses work to build trust with their leads and customers which can help your business establish a positive brand reputation.
Furthermore, content marketing helps influence conversions. Great content improves conversions as it allows you to connect with and educate your leads and customers. Not only are you working to build trust and relationships, but you are also encouraging conversions by giving consumers the information they need to make an educated purchasing decision.
With content marketing you are able to achieve several advantages, but your content marketing specialist has to possess the skills to become a successful content marketer.
Here are five hats your content marketing specialist needs to wear:
1. CONTENT AUTHORITY
A good content marketer creates content that is relevant and interesting to both the company’s audience and the business. This requires having a strong understanding of the company’s audiences, knowing the latest trends within the industry and the business, and a good grasp of a variety of content formats. The ability to maximise the reach and potential of each content asset to its fullest – whether via multiple channels or repurposing into different formats – is also the mark of a good content marketer.
Get your candidates to develop content on a niche topic relevant to your industry. On top of testing their language ability, this will reveal whether they are able to research effectively and put information together in a clear, logical flow. You can also ask candidates to develop accompanying assets, such as eDMs and social media posts to see how flexible they are with different forms of content.
2.DIGITAL GURU
A good content marketer should be able to tailor each asset to the channel of distribution. A significant amount of content today is going to be published digitally – which is why it is important for a content marketer to be familiar with eDMs, websites and the common social media channels.
Managing content across businesses multiple digital platforms requires deep understanding on these channels including understanding how and when audiences use these channels. To understand if your candidates know how to utilise these channels well, give them a specific marketing objective and ask them for recommendations on what sort of content to put out.
3.BUSINESS DRIVER
A content marketer also needs to be a partner to the business and all marketing efforts should be aligned to business objectives. Finding a content specialist with strong business partnership skills can be challenging and experienced candidates can be costly, so employers should look for candidates who have high potential. Ask candidates what they think an in-house content specialist’s role should be. Their answers will often reveal if they see themselves as a partner to the business.
4.WHIZ STRATEGIST AND PLANNER
To ensure all your content assets collectively work together to drive business objectives, there need to be an underlying strategy. A good content marketer will look at the business objectives for the year, plan accordingly ahead of time and take steps to ensure that things go according to plan.
Ask your candidates how they used their time during the test. This information is very useful. Good planners will be able to tell how they made effective use of their time to tackle the tasks within the test.
5.ANALYTICS ENTHUSIAST
In the data-driven world of today, good content marketers understand that leveraging data analytics can help make content more effective. From using tools such as Google trends and Adwords, to conducting A/B testing and more, a good content marketer doesn’t just decide what’s effective based on his or her intuition, but on statistics and metrics.
However, employers should not place too much focus on analytics as a required skill set. Many content marketers today are still only starting to pick up this niche skill set. Look for candidates who are eager to learn how to use analytics to improve their craft and provide training to support their learning.
HIGH POTENTIAL IS KEY
While these are the hats a content marketer needs to wear, it is extremely challenging to find skilled talent who can don all five hats with style and efficacy. Hiring managers need to keep in mind that the best content marketers constantly seek learning opportunities, and the best way to provide these is to give them a role that they can grow into.
