NextJSjointviews, Author at NextJSjointviews

How Unlimited Web Hosting Works Wonders on SEO [Infographic]

Posted on July 17, 2017 by NextJSjointviews

Often stories have come out in the past regarding the pain staking ordeal people have gone through with their web hosting services. However, things have changed now. Since technology is progressing exponentially web hosting services are also in the same path. They have now become reliable, efficient as well as cost-effective.

It is indeed true that not all unlimited web hosting companies are reliable. But the key is to choose the right one.

This infographic representation will give you can idea about how an unlimited web hosting will work on SEO of your website.

Behold!! Facebook Messenger Ads are coming

Posted on July 12, 2017 by NextJSjointviews

Facebook with its 2 Billion connection is undoubtedly the undisputed king of social media. Like any other social media website, Facebook’s main income is their Ad revenue. To yield maximum revenue they have successfully managed to plant advertisements in their news feed without causing any annoyance to their users.

Latest news is that Facebook has started placing advertisements on the home screen of Messenger app, creating mixed emotions among the public.

However, those who feel that the advertisement is being crammed up in between their messages can hide it by clicking the right bottom end of the Ad.

When asked about this, Facebook Messenger product head Stan Chudnovsky’s words as per media reports were like this,

“Advertising is not necessarily everything, but it’s definitely how we’re going to be making money right now. “

Talking about mixed reactions, some online portals were seen furious about the whole change. They are saying that Facebook and Google already channel 70% of the ad revenue from all over the world to their pocket. And this new implementation is nothing less than greed.

Rumor has it that Facebook expects a revenue decrease from news feed Ads and this insight is the driving force behind this new implementation.

To cover up the future loss and as an extra income, Facebook is expecting their Messenger Ads will earn them a jaw-dropping $US11 Billion by 2020. (According to Barclays Capital)

Facebook Messenger ad is not something which they have implemented in haste. They have already tested it in Thailand and Australia for 6 months and has the backing of promising results.

Instagram photo-sharing app owned by Facebook was the first one to try this method. They introduced advertisements slow and steady instead of implementing it once and for all.

Regarding the types of Ads, Facebook is planning to place two kinds of Ads in their messenger. Numero uno will be their normal advertisement similar to that of Facebook’s news feed Ad. After a while, they are planning to introduce chat bots as an effective interactive advertisement medium.

Advertisers can use these Ads in two ways: They can drive traffic to their website as well as they can answer queries of their customer via chat bots which might lead to a purchase.

How does Social Media Support Content Marketing?

Posted on July 10, 2017 by NextJSjointviews

Content is at the centre of all digital marketing efforts. But how do you ensure that your content reaches your readers once it is ready ?
There are many channels to make sure your content is read by the right audience. Email, SEO, Social media, PR, Paid advertisements and videos are some of them.

Social media is one of the most important platforms to promote your content. According to CMI 93% of B2B marketers list social media as one of the top five content marketing tactics.
Here is the breakdown of social media platforms used by marketers.

Source CMI

Content marketing and social media go hand in hand. Good content has no value without being promoted on social media. And social media marketing will fail without good content strategy.

Social media should always be a part of the overall content marketing strategy. It is important to ask following questions before developing content:

Who are we writing content for? Who is our audience
What social media do they use?
How much time do they spend on each platform?
What are the most popular formats for each platform?

Social media is a way to reach your target audience. It is the vehicle which is fueled by good content. This is how social media can support your content marketing:

1. Reach out to the world

Great content is no good if it does not reach people. Social media is one platform where you can promote your content to reach maximum number of users.

Social media has more than 2 billion users currently. Facebook users alone generate around 3.2 billion likes and comments everyday! It is undoubtedly the best platform to reach to large audiences and engage with them. Sharing your content on social media will help you to get more traffic and higher conversions for your website.

2. Let users do the marketing

The beauty of social media is that the users themselves will market content for you. Content that is relevant and timely will be shared multiple times by users. A positive word about your brand on Facebook is seen by other members and builds trust in your brand.

You can also encourage influencers to share your media. Influencers are users with large following and good engagement on social media platforms.

Influencer marketing is one of the top content marketing strategies for 2017 and has been successfully used by big companies like Adidas as well as small start ups.

3. Get Real -time feedback

Social media is also a good way to listen to your audience. Many companies use Facebook platform for customer support, feedback and online community of customers.

It opens up two way communication between your business and its users. You can use this platform to generate new content ideas that your readers want.

You can also create polls in Facebook to know what your readers want to read about.This will keep your content relevant and responsive.

4. Build a loyal community

Social media also allows you to build a loyal online community that is invested in your business. These community members identify with your brand and share a common purpose with your business (which is why they follow you).

You can build a sense of community amongst these users with the right kind of engagement. These are your loyal base of customers who will spread your message in the digital world.

5. Drive traffic

Facebook shares, re-tweets and instagram impressions can get you huge traffic. Social media drives more than 35% of traffic and is the top driver of website referral traffic.

Your shares and posts act as baits to lead to your website and leadpages. Make sure that your blogs and content are socially sharable. You can follow following best practices to maximize the use of social media to drive traffic and conversions.

How to make Social Media work for you

Follow the best practices below to make sure that your social media presence supports your content marketing strategy. Once you get this right a lot of your content marketing and content delivery will be done by your loyal followers automatically.

Choose the right platform

As mentioned above you must ask yourselves what is the purpose of your content and who are you writing for. Once this is clear you must choose which platforms you must be present on. A B2B business must have a presence on LinkedIn and Slideshare while Vine may not be so important.

There is no hard and fast rule however. Figure out your brand personality and your buyer’s behaviors. Different platforms can also be used to portray different sides of your brand personality.

4-1-1 Strategy

This is a strategy recommended by Andrew Davis, author of Brandscaping. It recommends that out of every 6 pieces of content shared,

-4 should be popular or interesting content by other influencers

-1 piece should be your own and educational

-1 piece should be sales-related

Again, this is not a hard and fast rule and should be tweaked according to your industry. However, the important point here is to share a lot of good content by other influences. This keeps you social and also gets influencers to notice and remember you.

Visual Content

Keep your content visual to get maximum shares on social media. According to Kissmetrics photos get 53% more likes and 84% more click-throughs on links than text-based posts.

Use infographics, videos and compelling pictures to get to your point quickly. Nobody likes to click on lengthy text on social media. Optimize your photos so that they do now appear cropped or odd on social media.

Add social media sharing buttons

Use social media sharing buttons on your blogs and sites. You can also insert tweet text in your blog. Use plug-ins to add these to your site. Ease of sharing will make a big difference to your share number as 51% of users access web on their phones.

Current topics

Use tools like Google Trends and Buzzsumo to find out topics of conversation on social media. Keep your topics relevant and fresh.

You can use industry events, sports tournaments or political elections to spike interests in your posts. Keep your posts focused rather than generalized for most part.

Listen to your audience

Keep a close eye on your social media accounts. Closely monitor the likes, comments and feedback. What are the posts that are doing well?

Which platform drives maximum engagements and why? Learn from your experience and continuously improve your content marketing strategy accordingly.

Social media is where you promote your content. It is an important part of a content marketing process and cannot be separated from it. In fact, introducing your content before your target audience would be difficult without depending social media platforms.

9 Digital Marketing Certifications You Can Get in 2017 [Infographic]

Posted on July 6, 2017 by NextJSjointviews

Digital Marketing has evolved into a powerful marketing technique of this new age. The most impressive part about digital marketing is that it does not require much of an investment and the results are amazing. After realizing this immense potential, companies nowadays are hiring more and more experts.

If you are a person who is so much interested in digital marketing the first thing you should do is to get certified by Google, Bing or HubSpot. Most companies prefer digital marketing professionals with certifications as an additional qualification. There are plenty of free certification courses that are now available on the web.

This infographic lists out popular digital marketing certifications that you can acquire in 2017. Let’s see which are they,

A Guide to Hire SEO Specialists

Posted on July 3, 2017 by NextJSjointviews

If you have a business online you probably have SEO as a priority in your digital marketing plan. SEO helps drive organic traffic to your website from search engines by ranking higher on them.

This guide is for you if you are planning to hire an SEO specialist or just want to check whether your current specialist is right fit for you.

We will divide this blog into two parts. In first part we will discuss four steps to hire an SEO specialist and in the second part we will tell you the skills and qualifications you should look for in an SEO specialist.

I. 4 STEPS TO HIRE AN SEO SPECIALIST

1. Know what you want

Following are some questions you must ask yourself before setting out to look for SEO. The whole process will be much easier once you know your goals:

What do you want from your SEO efforts?
What is the business goal? Is it more sales conversions or just brand awareness?
What are your current digital marketing efforts?

Simply ranking higher on Google is not a good SEO goal to have. Ask yourself how ranking higher will lead to more conversions for you.

2. Have an Open Interview

Have an open conversation with your shortlisted candidates. You can find candidates through LinkedIn, hiring consultants or references from business partners/ employees.

Have a two way conversation with the candidate and encourage them to ask you questions. A good SEO candidate should be judged by the questions he or she asks. SEO must fit in with your overall business goals. A skilled SEO must be interested in below information about your business:

What is the purpose of your business and how do you make money?
How much traffic and conversions do you currently get through search engines
Where do you get your maximum sales from currently
Who are your competitors in digital space and what do they do better than you

A specialist who is not interested in understanding your business is likely to deliver poorly.

3. Check Past work and References

Look at the portfolio of the specialist. Has he done work with any company in your industry? Has he worked with a company of similar size and philosophy? Ask for hard numbers to show that the SEO efforts paid off in higher conversions, rankings or traffic.

Also ask for references and make the effort of calling or mailing them to get feedback. You don’t want to risk hiring an SEO specialist who is a terrible fit in your team.

4. Ask for an SEO Audit

Ask the shortlisted candidates to submit a technical and search audit. This will give you an idea of their expertise and scope of work. This audit report may be paid or free. In any case it is a good investment to test the water before hiring the SEO specialist. The report should consist of:

Issues with your site
A Plan to fix the issues

Estimated results and time and money required to achieve them.

II. WHAT TO LOOK FOR

Following are the things that you should look for in an SEO specialist:

Educational Background – There is no strict criteria regarding this. A good SEO can be from any background. However, candidates from STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) tend to have an extra edge as they are good with numbers and data.
Personal Traits – A good SEO must be a learner. The rules of the game are changing continuously and someone who is not comfortable unlearning and learning repeatedly will not do well in this field. Besides this he/she must also be a good team player. SEOs are required to work with the web developer, content strategist, marketing, PR and many other departments. Someone who is not a good team player is just not right for this role.

Knowledge of Digital Marketing – As mentioned above SEOs cannot work independent of content, marketing, paid advertising and inbound marketing. SEO is just one part of the digital marketing puzzle. Your SEO specialist must have a clear picture of the overall digital marketing strategy of your company. For this reason you must test whether he has a basic knowledge of content marketing, inbound online sales, marketing and PR. They need not be a master of all these subjects but must know how everything works together.
Specialization – There are different specializations even within SEO. There are various parts to SEO such as onsite SEO, offsite SEO, technical SEO, Local SEO, etc. Try to find what your business needs. For example:

1. If you have a physical brick and mortar shop then you might want someone who is good at local SEO.

2. If you want to build authority in the digital space you might want someone good at off-page SEO or building links

3. If majority of your business comes from mobile and you want to optimize for mobile audience hire a technical SEO.

Knowledge of SEO Tools – SEO specialist must be an expert in Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Google Keyword Planner and Google Pagespeed tools. These tools give analytics on traffic, keywords targeting, page speed and a lot more information needed to optimize your site. A good SEO must be able to draw insights from this data and develop an actionable plan. Some of the other important tools that SEOs use to do competition analysis, find search terms and analyze traffic metrics are Moz, Ahrefs, Buzzsumo, SEMRush.

Red Flags

Lastly, there are also some practices and false claims you are better off avoiding. Be cautious of anyone who:

Promises you a top rank for a keyword within a month – Google ranking criteria are outside the control of a SEO specialist and no one can promise that you will rank number one on a page. SEO requires a patient approach and continuous monitoring and it may take three months to a year to improve your ranking.
Indulges in Black Hat practices – Black hat SEO practices are unethical practices to rank higher in search engines and are penalized by search engines. These include strategies such as buying links, spamming to get traffic and content automation. Stay away from any practices that do not obey search engine guidelines as this may lead to negative ranking for your site or removing your site all together from search engines.
Is not transparent – Your site is your reputation online. By giving backend access to your site you are entrusting the SEO specialist with your biggest online asset. Make sure the trust is two-way. Your SEO should care about your business and must share all the data and results from time to time. He or she should help your digital marketing team to understand SEO to make sure everyone works towards the goal of optimizing site.

How User Reviews Influence Your Digital Marketing Success

Posted on June 30, 2017 by NextJSjointviews

Is your business rated by users on Facebook, Google or App stores? Do you know how these ratings impact your conversions? Read on to understand the role of user review in digital marketing and some guidelines to handle regular as well as negative online reviews.

One of the key differences between traditional marketing and digital marketing is the two way communication between users and marketers. Online platforms like Facebook, Yelp, Justdial and other review sites have given consumers a seat on the marketing table. Consumers are continuously shaping how you are perceived online by

choosing what to read and watch,
interacting with brands publicly, and
providing reviews to the world.

Negative user reviews have the power to take you down despite brilliant digital marketing efforts.

According to 2016 survey by Vendasta, online reviews impact 88% of purchase decisions. 92% of consumers now read online reviews vs. 88% in 2014 and star rating is the number one factor used by consumers to judge a business.

User review is just the online version of the good old ‘word of mouth’ channel of marketing. For past few years social factor is a major influence in buyer’s decision. Following are the ways in which user reviews influence your digital marketing:

1. Form a brand personality

Your online presence gives your brand a personality. Information like how active you are on social media platforms and your responsiveness form an instant image in the reader’s mind.

But these are not the only information shaping your image. Visitors give more importance to other user reviews on your product and service. 73% of consumers form an opinion by reading up to six reviews.

2. Impact your Sales and Conversions

88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. User reviews have a direct and strong impact on online sales. Think about the last time you brought a product online. Did you look for the star rating or scroll down to see product reviews?

According to a survey 94% consumers would use a business with a four star rating whereas only 14% would consider a business with a one or two star rating.

3. Better Ranking

Yes, review ratings can help you rank higher in search engines. Google rates local business on prominence which is indicated by user reviews and ratings. More reviews can give you better visibility not only in Google but on other social media platforms as well.

4. Generate Ideas for Digital Marketing

User reviews are ears of a marketer in this digital world. You can find out what your customers like, why they buy from you and why they don’t. Good marketing is all about listening and those who listen well to the user reviews can adapt their digital marketing strategy effectively.

User reviews can give you

Ideas for content marketing
New market opportunities
Valuable feedback on your product
References to new customer/markets

How to Support Digital Marketing with great User Reviews

Presence of user reviews on your site can increase your conversions by 4.6% according to Reevo. Here is what you can do to make sure user reviews are supporting your digital marketing efforts:

Ask your customers to review you online. You can send them mails or notifications to do so. Higher number of reviews improve visitor conversion rate. Make the process of reviewing your business easy and quick.
Make sure you have recent reviews. 44% of survey participants said reviews must be less than a month old to be relevant.
Be responsive and reply to maximum comments in a relevant manner.

How to Handle Negative User Reviews

There may be instances of negative ratings and user reviews. If you are a large company some negative reviews are inevitable. Following are the best practices to follow while resolving them:

Never delete the review – Ignoring the review is the worst response. You can reply with an apology and a solution where possible. In fact, negative reviews are not necessarily a bad. 68% of consumers trust reviews more when they see both positive and negative ratings. Users suspect fake and censored reviews if there are no bad reviews at all.
Try your best to resolve – Take feedback positively and resolve the issue at the earliest. This is an opportunity to fix your product and service before it costs you money in recall or damages. According to a study for every customer that complains there are 26 unhappy customers who remain silent (Lee resource). Be glad someone spoke up and resolve the issue. Also, if a business resolves its issue quickly and efficiently, 95% of unhappy customers return back to your business.
Don’t get defensive – Never get defensive or attack the customer with logical arguments. Lay down the reason/ facts and apologies to close the issue. A full blown fight can quickly become viral on social media. This will harm your reputation even if you are right on your part.

Reviews are going to be a major part of digital marketing strategy in coming years. User reviews help build trust with your business and directly affect your conversions.

10 Reasons Why Businesses Need Social Media Optimization

Posted on June 27, 2017 by NextJSjointviews

Social media optimization (SMO) can be called as a viral publicity created through social media outlets and communities. The main intention of an SMO is to generate and increase the awareness of any product, brand or event.

Social media optimization is wider today. It includes using RSS feeds, social news and bookmarking sites, as well as social media sites, and video and blogging sites. You may wonder why businesses need the support of social media marketing for their growth. Well, here’s why:

Increase brand image and recognition through social media optimization. When people connect the brand with their life, it eventually promotes the brand image and its recognition among the crowd instantly.

Social media optimization can create brand awareness within a short period. Unlike other marketing strategies it is done by connecting the brand with each customer directly. Also, search engine optimization helps to build a brand equity by creating a high value for the brand in the customer’s perception.

Gives you a genuine and sometimes worthy suggestions for your business, which promotes the growth of the brand and company. It even helps the management to take a smarter business decision with real-time information.

Social media increase the customer retention and sales through regular interactions and timely customer services. Customer retention is a big challenge faced by every industry today and so, SMO makes it simple, for you and your business.

SMO helps to develop a relationship of trust among the buyers. The intention to buy a product mainly depends on trust and its usefulness, and so, SMO is largely involved in this process.

SMO creates targeting and retargeting of your brand among the buyers. It means that SMO gives you the extra wings to target the crowd which you are intended to and even can relink with those customers by installing a social app in your company pages.

SMO enables you to generate more attention and publicity towards the events that the business sponsors, which in turn can increase the credibility and image of the brand.

It even reaches to the customers whom you weren’t so aware of or you couldn’t point out through the regular means of advertisement or marketing.

SMO acts as a vehicle to increase traffic to your website. It helps to increase the number of people visiting your website, extend their duration of stay in it and even encourage them to visit frequently.

Ultimately, the social media also focuses to create a humanisation of brand through regular interaction with the person rather than a robot or any other machine. So, you can make informed decisions with your historical data that you receive through your humanised approach towards your customer.

According to recent studies, about 90% of marketers believe that social media generates enormous exposure for their company and brand. Social networks have now become an inevitable part of every business marketing strategy and the benefits of using social media are really great. If there is anyone who is not implementing this cost-effective resource is clearly missing out on a remarkable marketing opportunity for their business.

If you haven’t still tasted the fruit of social media optimisation, it is a good time to create an appropriate profile for your company by filling all the essential data and get set to gain the followers. A great marketing strategy will lead to an excellent social media optimisation for your brand. Every product or brand that is presented in the Internet is viewed 30% based on its title, 30% based on its presentation and the rest of the 40% is for the quality of content.

10 Advantages of Hiring an Online Marketing Agency in Trivandrum

Posted on June 20, 2017 by NextJSjointviews

SMBs and medium- sized businesses now keep a separate budget for their online marketing efforts. But when looking for online marketing agencies, most businesses focus their search in Bangalore or other metropolitan cities.

India as an IT country is so much more than the metro cities. Trivandrum, for example has the largest IT Park in Asia in terms of built-up area.

So, let’s look at the major advantages of hiring an online marketing agency in Trivandrum:

1. Fast-growing IT Sector

Trivandrum has a fast growing IT Infrastructure that expands far beyond the walls of Technopark. Major IT Companies in the country has identified huge value in shifting to the city.

In the process, it has become a popular choice for the best talent in the country. This bides well for getting highly talented digital marketing resources from around the country as well.

There are many start-ups and It professionals from the city who has made their mark in the international IT scene.

2. Low Cost of Living

This is a huge factor that has attracted companies from around the globe. Lower cost of living means less expense on resources. It reflects on the final product as well, enabling brands to provide more affordable services to digital marketing clients.

3. Literacy Rate

Kerala was the first state in India to achieve 100% literacy. Trivandrum being the capital of Kerala has a well-educated population that is Internet-savvy.

Most people in the city know how to write decent English even though people who speak well are lesser in number. This is ideal for a major online marketing requirement – original, quality content.

4. Knowledge-hungry Population

The people of this city are truly knowledge-hungry. There are a huge number of print publications and News channels that run successfully in the city due to this characteristic of the people.

To be a quality digital marketing or an SEO/SEM professional, curiosity and a hunger for knowledge are basic traits to have. The next generation kids of the city are hooked to the Internet just like kids from any metropolitan city.

5. Communication

Digital marketing is all about proper communication, to the client and to the audience. What better place than a 100% literate state to have great, clear communication. A huge percent of the population is exposed to foreigners as the state is also a popular tourist destination.

6. Well-connected

Despite being near the southern tip of India, Trivandrum is connected extremely well via roadways, airways, railways and even waterways.

If a digital marketing client wants to make visits onsite, it’s very easy to do so. At the Jointviews Trivandrum office, we often have frequent visitors from different parts of the world.

7. Creatively Inclined

Creativity is a key trait for any quality digital/content marketers. They frequently face challenges and have to find creative solutions on the fly.

An online marketing agency in Trivandrum will have majority resources sourced locally. If you look at Trivandrum, the city has been a cultural hub throughout the centuries.

The natives are very creative. It is partially due to the calm and serene atmosphere provided by the city. Online marketing is a high stress work segment, and the peaceful city offers plenty of opportunities for the professionals to unwind. This allows online marketers to produce creative work.

8. Social

On any given day, apart from the rare occasion of hartal, you can see the streets are abuzz with life during the evenings. All types of people communicate with each other every day. Trivandrum has a very social population.

This also means that online marketers in the city socialize with people from the same industry quite often, either directly or through social media. Hence they are able to share a lot of ideas and maintain very high standards.

9. Internet Savvy

Kerala is a consumer state, and the people are always looking out for a bargain buy, especially online. Almost everyone in the city has an internet connected smartphone.

This helps and pushes those working in the digital domain to stay on top of the latest news and developments. Staying updated with the latest is a great asset to have in all online marketers as there are numerous changes happening every day.

10. Increasing Number of Online Marketing Agencies

Slowly but steadily, the city is embracing Online Marketing. This has given rise to a higher number of agencies, and there is stiff competition between them to outdo each other.

The customer is the beneficiary in such a scenario, as they reap the rewards of having a highly competitive workforce.

With so many benefits to offer, Trivandrum is a great choice to hire an online marketing company. You get your job done in the best way at affordable rates as agencies here have a strong pool of resources to bank upon.

How to Deal with Ranking Fluctuations in Google [Infographic]

Posted on June 16, 2017 by NextJSjointviews

Nowadays website owners are in frenzy regarding the ranking fluctuation that has happened in Google search results. People are extensively talking about it on the internet. One day a website will be on the first page of Google search list and on the other day it will be on the fourth page.

Ranking fluctuations have always been common in Google search results due to the various algorithms they try frequently. However, something this strange and irregular is a first. This frequent fluctuations can be frustrating for those who are working hard to do better in Google rankings.

Here is an infographic that gives an exact idea about whats going on and how to deal with it.

A Guide to Hire the Best Content Strategist for Your Company

Posted on June 14, 2017 by NextJSjointviews

Content Marketing is a rapidly growing field and, content strategist, a fast filling vacancy in many organizations in 2017. According to a survey by recruiting firm The Creative Group, Content Marketing is the top area where companies plan to add staff in 2017. You might have heard of the role of Content Strategist, of late. Maybe you have even decided to hire one. Before sharing the guide on how to hire one let us first look at what exactly is the job of a content strategist.

Who is a content strategist?

Content Strategist is involved in all stages of content marketing life-cycle. This includes market research, content planning, content creation, content distribution and monitoring. It is relatively a new job title and hence, is still evolving. However, a content strategist is definitely someone who

-has the bird’s eye view of the content required to meet your company’s specific goals

– can chalk out a plan to reach your business targets through compelling content

Here is a Guide to hire a Content Strategist.

Define the Job clearly in your organization

The first step is to define the position clearly in your organization. The role does not have a fixed scope and you need to know what you expect the content strategist to deliver. Do you currently have a content developer, a digital marketer and content designer? If yes, how will the roles evolve, change or overlap.

Skills to Look for

As must be clear from the description of content strategist above, he/she needs to have a wide range of writing and marketing skills with plenty of creativity and vision. Following are qualities/skills that a content strategist must have:

Storytelling
Creativity and vision
Project Management Skills
Knowledge of digital marketing
Content writing and development, copywriting
SEO skills
User Experience and Design knowledge

That’s a lot to ask for, right? Remember that a content strategist doesn’t have to be an expert in all of the above. What is more important is his/her ability to analyze data, gain insights and weave all the components of content marketing into an actionable plan. He/she must have excellent creativity, storytelling and project management skills and communication. However, a basic level knowledge of other domains will also do.

It must be clear by now that content strategist is someone who has a varied experience under his or her belt.

Previous records & References

It is advisable to go through the candidate’s previous work. You can ask for samples or check the work they have done before online. The best past about content marketing is that all their previous work will be online and you can even check the success of it (check for number of followers, likes, traffic to page etc.)

What to ask

Interviewing the candidate should make it clear whether they have the required skills. Discuss goals and challenges that your company is facing and ask them for possible solutions. This should give you a fair idea whether they can solve the challenges and take you closer to your goals or not.

Where can I find the Perfect Content Strategist

We get it. The perfect content strategist might be hard to find. Not only does he/she need to have all the above mentioned skill and experience but may also need to have your industry knowledge. Consider looking at following places:

Within your Organization: Yes. Your content strategist might be already working with you as a content writer/ digital marketer. Look for project management skills and analytical abilities in your current employees. It is better to spend on training current employee who is a good fit rather than hiring someone completely new.

Recruitment channels: Again look for required skill sets in various recruitment channels like recruiting firms or online recruiting platforms. Do not be stuck with the job title of content strategist as it is a relatively new term. Your next content strategist might be working under the job title of content manager in some other company.

Hire a Digital Marketing Agency: This is an effective way to have a digital presence. Digital Marketing agencies provide content marketing services while cutting out your investment in hiring, training and maintaining a team. They already have expert content strategist who have experience in handling hundreds of projects. Many companies are going with this option of outsourcing content strategy work to the digital marketing experts.