Content marketing job interview questions

The rise of content marketing and the need to find qualified staff poses a dilemma. How do you hire someone when the role/sector is still relatively new?

So it was interesting to see this post on what you might be asked in an interview for a job in content marketing and how you should respond. To our mind, journalists are most suited to content marketing, but do these questions point to other requirements?

What is content marketing?

It is unlikely you’d get asked for an explanation of banking or retail. There are many answers, but only one that’s right. After all, many marketers can’t even decide whether the practice is any different from inbound advertising.

In our view – at its simplest – content marketing is about companies producing editorial-quality content on their own platforms: email, the web, financial reports etc.

Why is content marketing so cool?

Would an interviewer really ask this? Content marketing is neither cool nor hot, but a way to communicate the brand message in an engaging way.

What elements of content marketing are important?

Well at least this is a proper question. The answer, obviously, is quality first and foremost, followed by targeting and distribution. If content doesn’t rank on those three points it will struggle to be heard above the noise.

What makes for a good piece of content?

This is partly covered by the answer above. It should also be of editorial quality. Our point is that if you’re attempting to produce content for a bank, then it needs to be good enough to get into the Financial Times. If not, you’ve failed.

Overall it is interesting that there is nothing about idea generation. That, alongside the ability to produce large amounts of editorial, is cited among the key challenges for content marketers.

Content marketing job interview questions is part of Content24, the blog for London content marketing agency FirstWord.