You’ve seen the stats, you’ve heard the success stories – content marketing is an effective way to grow and market your business. In fact, 82% of consumers feel more positive about a company after reading custom content.
You want consumers to have positive feelings about your brand, and you know it’s time to bring in some help to ramp up your content marketing, but you’re not sure where to start. Hiring a content marketer who thinks like an entrepreneur could be just the answer for you. Why, you ask?
Start-ups are often more successful at content marketing than large companies are. Knowing this, Joe Pulizzi, author of Content Inc., and Clare McDermott, editor of Chief Content Officer magazine, interviewed dozens of entrepreneurs about their content marketing strategies. From this, they discovered two main commonalities – entrepreneurs tend to:
Take a content-first approach to business – They identify a content niche, build a loyal audience around that niche, and then develop products and services to sell.
Use passion and patience (not big budgets) to drive content marketing success
Successful content marketers also share other entrepreneurial qualities, such as drive, goal-oriented behavior, an analytical mindset, curiosity, creativity, agility, leadership, empathy, transparency, and project management skills.
If for no other reason, you should hire content marketers who think like entrepreneurs because they know how to get stuff done, effectively, and with purpose.
If you’re a content marketer, this probably makes total sense. If you’re new to the field, you may wonder why a blogger should have these qualities. You see, content marketing is far more than blogging. At the bare minimum, a successful full-stack content marketer needs to:
Understand the audience and develop personas
Define goals and objectives that align with overall business goals
Develop a strategy to meet these goals
Execute on the strategy
Identify relevant channels to promote the business’ content
Measure the effectiveness of content efforts
Communicate their findings
Iterate, improve, and measure again
Here’s how to tell if a candidate possesses entrepreneurial qualities and knows how to apply them to content marketing.
Ask them to present fresh ideas
When screening candidates, ask them less about what they’ve done in the past, and more about what they will do for you. Ask them what they think about your existing content and strategy and how they’d improve on it. It’s even better if they offer suggestions on their own accord. This shows initiative, expertise, and that they’ve done their research.
A content marketer who thinks like an entrepreneur will approach an interview like it’s an investor pitch – they have a story to tell, growth projections to present, and reports on past experience.
Test if they’re growth-minded
Your ideal candidate treats content like a tool to grow and sustain your business. Candidates who are growth-minded will ask about your existing business, content growth goals, and the tactics you’re using to achieve them. You can ask how they’ve grown audiences and/or communities, or how they’ve converted customers with content in the past.
To be growth-minded also means to think about retention. Content marketers should understand that content exists for multiple reasons. Ask the candidate what role they see content playing for your business, and look for them to identify at least one of these purposes:
Educating on topics relevant to your offering, adding value to drive conversions
Increasing engagement with thought-provoking content
Educating and informing on your offering and company/product updates
Building community by connecting with your audience through personal stories and highlights
Determine if they’re data-driven
By now, you should have discussed numbers enough to know whether a candidate is comfortable with metrics. One of the best ways to determine if candidates have an analytical mindset is to ask what tools they use. If they mention Google Analytics, Mixpanel, Kissmetrics, or HubSpot, it’s likely that they know the importance of measuring the effectiveness of a strategy and have experience in reporting findings.
Get to know their management skills
Just like entrepreneurs, content marketers are always juggling several projects and smaller tasks at once. It could be that they’re launching a content-based academy, but still have to write a blog post and a contributed post, and edit three guest posts. Not to mention, they must publish a newsletter and promote all of these things to the right audience.
Ask the candidates how they stay organized. If they mention processes they’ve established then they’ve likely got a solid grip on what it takes to manage a content marketing strategy. Ask them what tools they use to stay organized. The more focus they put on organization, the more likely they are focused on getting things done and meeting deadlines.
Their management responsibilities don’t stop at tasks and deadlines. Content marketers often are required to manage writers – paid and volunteer – and sometimes social media managers as well. This is where empathy and communication skills come into play.
A good content manager knows how to communicate expectations, guidelines, and processes clearly. They need to ensure work is being delivered to them on time, while keeping their own workload in check. Ask your candidates to give an example of when they had to manage a project end-to-end with a team and to describe the results.
Determine how visionary and creative they are
Throughout the interview, listen for cues that indicate whether your candidates think about the big picture. Have they only mentioned results on a month-to-month basis? Or have they said that content takes time to provide results and explained the role it plays in the bigger picture? Yes, you want someone who’s going to help your company grow today, but you also want someone who’s invested in the long-term success and sustainability of your business.
Today’s digital environment is crazy-crowded with people competing for your audience’s attention. You need a content marketer who is going to think creatively to cut through – someone who’s going to come up with campaign ideas that you never heard and can draw attention. You need someone who has a handle on trends, but always thinks one step further. Ask them what they read, how they keep up with trends, who they follow. This is a good indicator of their industry know-how.
Why you should consider a freelance content marketer
Freelancers are entrepreneurs in many aspects. They may not be growing a start-up, but they are growing and running a business. They’re constantly challenged to make changes and iterate to help clients achieve success in order to attract more business for themselves. They’re competitive, a characteristic that often drives creativity. Freelancers have to think of creative, new ways to attract new clients while keeping their clients happy. They have to produce the best work to support themselves.
Because they work with so many clients, they should already have the content experience you want and the ability to both drive the strategy and execute it. Give it a try. Another benefit of hiring a freelancer is that if it’s not working out, you can end the contract without all the messy paperwork of a full-time employee.
RECOMMENDED FOR YOU: What Skills Are Necessary to Be a Great Content Marketer?
Have you hired a content marketer recently? What entrepreneurial qualities do they demonstrate?
Want to learn more from entrepreneurs who started with a content-first approach? Get a copy of Joe Pulizzi’s new book, Content Inc.
Cover image by Matthew Wiebe via Unsplash
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