Not taking advantage of the experience and knowledge of executives in your content marketing program means negating one of your company’s greatest assets.
Executives have deep experience within their industry and within their specific company. Therefore, involving executives in your content marketing program is extremely beneficial. Before you incorporate your executives, however, be sure to do the necessary prep work and follow the recommendations outlined below.
Why should executives participate in a content marketing program?
From an executive perspective, participating in the company’s content marketing program brings both professional and business benefits.
Essentially, executives can share their experience, insight and knowledge about the industry and the company with both prospects and customers. Becoming a thought leader within the industry is highly valuable for an executive’s career. The increased positive visibility helps improve executive morale and gives them another opportunity to showcase their expertise and experience.
Make no mistake, there are numerous benefits for the company as well. Having multiple visible thought leaders on the team shows that your company employs the very best in the industry. It also shows that your company has deep experience and knowledge, which translate into the products and services you sell.
What preparation is needed for the company executive interview?
The best way to incorporate executives in your content marketing program is to interview them. You can use the content as raw material to power blog posts, case studies, eGuides and more.
Before implementing an executive interview, however, executives need to be prepared. Here are a couple of recommendations:
- Create a list of the questions that you want to ask the executive. Send them to the exec ahead of time so they have an opportunity to review. Also, by delivering information in advance, the executive can provide input on how you should craft the content to offer maximum value.
- Make sure that you clearly define the date and time of the interview. Also, ensure that you do not have a meeting scheduled before or slightly after the meeting. (Interviews sometimes run longer than their allocated time slots.) Additionally, having some time before the meeting gives the executive an opportunity to clear their head.
Once you complete the interview and prepare the content, have the executive do a final review and approval of the content. This is imperative to ensuring that the executive’s brand is not tarnished in the process by an inadvertent mistake within the actual interview content.
Furthermore, the executive has a more comprehensive knowledge of the company’s overall goals and values, which also must translate in good light within all content pieces. Basically, executives can ensure the content is on-brand both for themselves and for the company.
What is the optimal frequency for interviewing company executives?
The optimal frequency depends on the executive’s expertise level as well as the functional area associated with that individual.
For example, for the CEO, interviews may vary. They can be as frequent as a couple of times per week to only once per quarter, or even once every six months. There is no optimal frequency.
Essentially, it will depend on your industry, on the executive’s involvement in customer/prospect-facing activities, and the amount of insight and leadership they can provide.
You may be in an industry where things don’t change rapidly, and having frequent interviews may not make sense. However, if you’re in such an industry and your CEO is the founder, they may have more to say. They could talk about the product, the company, the industries and trends associated with it. This level of expertise and depth justifies more frequent interviews.
Ultimately, you’ll have to work out what frequency is best for you, your executive and your content plans.
In summary
Having executives participate in content creation adds further legitimacy to the program. Additionally, it raises the visibility within the company and shows that executives want to help solve customers’ concerns.
This gives confidence to existing customers that they made the right choice and helps prospects make more informed decisions about the company and purchasing from them.
Need help?
Involving executives in your content marketing program can help you avoid some costly mistakes. If you have a content marketing program or are planning one, download our ebook 100 Mistakes Businesses Make When Starting, Optimizing and Scaling Content Marketing Programs.
This ebook will walk you through the mistakes of hundreds of other companies and the challenges they faced in implementing their content marketing programs. To learn more about how Tempesta Media can help you streamline your content creation process and deliver quality content at scale, contact us today.
