Content marketing isn’t a new term. It’s been around for years. But even so, you’d be surprised at how many companies we’ve met and talked to that don’t understand what it takes to examine and choose a quality Content Marketing Agency.

We don’t want you to be one of those companies lost in the dark when it comes to choosing the right agency for your business—and you don’t have to be. We’ve come up with everything you need to know, from specific qualities to look for to the right questions to ask, and organized everything nicely into a blog post series to make the selection process a little easier on you.

A must-have quality on your radar, and the topic of this first post, is Subject Matter Expertise.

First and foremost, a content marketing agency should be able to write for your specific industry. If a certain agency doesn’t know how to navigate through your vertical, then they’re obviously not the right fit for your business.

An agency can’t create quality content with the right verbiage unless they have a thorough understanding of your industry. Besides knowing correct terms to use, they need to understand the challenges your customers face, common questions your customers want answered and your competition. This is why Subject Matter expertise is so critical and the first quality on our list of things to look for. Creating good content that really resonates with a target audience is already a difficult task, but throw in the technical components of your industry and it can be a near impossible task for writers with little to no experience in your industry. Without thorough knowledge of your industry, an agency isn’t going to be able to generate a constant stream of valuable content.

You’re not paying an agency to learn what your business does; that should be done on its own time. And if an agency doesn’t have experienced writers within your respective industry, they might have subject matter experts within your vertical they can outsource to. Some agencies outsource content, and that’s totally fine. Don’t let that worry you if that’s what they plan to do (unless the content comes back horrible then you have a problem). All you need to worry about is that from the get-go, someone knowledgeable with your industry is creating quality content for your brand.

So, how do you gauge a content marketing agency’s subject matter expertise? You ask them questions. The following are good ones to ask:

• Do you have experience working in my industry?
• How do your writers get up to speed on my industry?
• Do you ever have to outsource content for certain industries? If you would with mine, how do you find quality freelance writers?

Besides these questions, also ask an agency if any of their writers are journalists. If they answer yes, you can rest assured that your content is in pretty good hands. Journalists are taught to research, interview, provide the facts and be good storytellers. While an agency’s journalism-trained writers may not know everything about your industry, they’ll know who and what to ask to produce well-written, educational and valuable pieces of content.

Another way to assess a potential agency’s subject matter expertise is following them on social media. LinkedIn and Twitter are two good places to start. Review the content they post and the responses they make to comments on their posts or any online discussions they take part in to determine whether they have knowledge in your industry and to find out if they’re a respected agency.

If the agencies you have in mind will allow it, also ask to speak to some of their clients. Being able to talk to any clients is a great way to accurately find out the agency’s subject matter expertise for those clients’ respective industries. Ask how clients feel overall about the agency’s performance, why they first chose them and how they are or aren’t meeting their expectations. Talking to any client, even if it’s just one, can only help you in making your decision.

As you can see, subject matter expertise is a must-have quality of a good content marketing agency.

Make sure you check back for the next post in our series to find out another quality to look for and questions to ask as you search for the best-fit content marketing agency for your business. If you can’t wait, download our free eBook on Choosing the Right Agency. It even includes a free scorecard and sample questions to ask!

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