One of my favorite content marketing pieces that I advise my service-based business clients to create (or create for them) is the “how to hire” article. No matter what industry you are in, there are things that you know potential clients should ask when interviewing service providers, but may not know to. These questions and the answers can help a lead see you as the right choice faster and spare them from hiring the wrong company. The How-To Hire Article multitasks in three main ways.

Visibility. The title of a “how to hire” article usually has your profession name in it and sometimes your geographic location, helping to pull in searches. Title examples:

  • How to Hire The Right CPA
  • Hiring an Austin CPA for Your Business
  • Questions to Ask Before Hiring a Stylist
  • Ask These Three Questions Before Hiring a Wardrobe Stylist
  • What to Ask Before Hiring An Atlanta Web Marketing Company

Little easy titles, simple post to write, big online marketing asset. These questions kick off your article and when used in in the meta title and the url and the body of the text, the content might be picked up by a potential client searching for your services too. We call this “pull marketing” since the content pulls a prospective client in versus having to “push” ads to help generate visibility.

This content marketing piece can also be something you post to social media from time. We are big on reposting great content! Recycling is great for the planet and it’s awesome for your content marketing too!

Credibility. A client of ours has been creating content for a third-party industry publication that is very well known in his niche. He emailed us saying he had a huge potential client lead and that client was interviewing other people before they made a decision, a smart thing for a consumer to do. When he sent the after-meeting follow email, he included a line in the follow up email along the lines of:

As you interview other ________s, my recent article on titled How To Hire A __________ will serve as a great reference. It includes what to look for, questions to ask and more.

Any service professional can be an expert…you become the authority a client wants to hire by owning your awesomeness…owning your awesome is accelerated when you author content. In the word authority is the word author!

When my team and I are supporting Web Marketing Therapy and Wild Web Women clients, our work includes online PR, pitching our clients to journalists who are looking for expert advice to fill an article they are working on. My clients who do active content marketing make the cut 90% more than a non-content creating client does. Why? Simple. We can either pitch the writer referencing content that is already on the website (how’s that for multitasking marketing?) or if the client gives expert advice, we can turn that advice into content (yay, way to repurpose effort) and lastly, we can say ________ writes extensively on the topic of ______ as you can see on her website and blog (include link) which shows the client can talk the talk, but also walks the walk.

Sellability. When you actually SHOW what you KNOW it can help reinforce someone’s decision to hire you. Anyone can say they are the best choice, but when you actually document what you know, it reinforces this knowledge to the potential customer and to yourself.  

I coined the term MarkEDing® with my clients to help convey an ethical, effective and an easier approach to marketing. In a short 7 minute talk, I explained the concept of MarkEDing, how it works in today’s influence economy and how it can give everyone regardless of income, size or experience the power to have a place in business. (It’s worth a watch, fun and funny but will make a mark on your marketing brain!)

The wonderful, wild web world has taken the elitism out of marketing and allows service and product providers to market in a way that could never have been done before. MarkEDing is not about touting your products and services, it is about educating your current and prospective customer.

Take the time to write that “How to Hire” article. It will be a therapeutic exercise to reinforce your distinction, selling power, knowledge and will multitask for your marketing for years and years!

The fabulous thing about content marketing online is that the effort builds and compounds over time…a good investment for your visibility, credibility and sellability!

Virtual marketing hugs!