Behind Each Marketing Content Piece Lies at Least 1 of 5 Key Interview Questions

“Interviews are a vital aspect of nonfiction writing,” Don Vaughn explains in Writer’s Digest. He’s discovered five questions that “help add detail, color, and heft to our work”. At Say It For You, we’ve learned, these same questions inspire content marketing, as business and practice owners “introduce” themselves to their potential buyers.

1. What was your inspiration?
Almost always, there’s an important incident or insight that give birth to the birth of an enterprise. The insight can come from a negative experience or a positive one, and sharing that with readers serves to humanize and personalize the post, adding power to the value proposition.

2. Why is this important?
Someone who has accomplished something remarkable inherently understands why that accomplishment is important, Vaughn reasons, but readers may not.. Often blog visitors don’t know how to “digest” the claims you’ve “served up”.  They simply don’t have any basis for comparison, not being as expert as you are in your field. Spend time providing that “context” that clarifies why what you’ve done – and what you’re doing – is important.

3. What were the greatest challenges you faced, and how did you overcome them?
“Asking sources how they dealt with overwhelming challenges in pursuit of success can often form the heart of an article,” Vaughn teaches. Passion and personality give blog posts a big advantage as compared to brochures, ads, or even the website, and owners’ recalling the obstacles they’d needed to overcome lends power to the marketing narrative.

4. What do you get personally from your work?
Using first person (the pronouns “I” and “we”) allows the marketing content to come across as intimate, unique, and conversational. And while no one likes people who speak of nothing but theselves, It’s important to show the person behind the posts, revealing the personality of the business owner or practitioner standing ready to serve the customers.

5. Who else would you suggest I talk to?
Quoting others to support your points and show you’re in touch with trends in your field is a good idea. Aggregating different sources of information on a topic is a way to add value to content readers.

Behind every content marketing piece is at least one of those five key interview questions!