Content Marketing Internships - Everything You Need to Know

What is content marketing?

Content marketing is a marketing discipline that focuses on developing content to attract, close, and delight customers using inbound marketing principles and search engine optimization (SEO).

Content marketing is one the core disciplines within the digital marketing mix which also includes paid marketing and social media marketing.

What is a content marketing internship?

A content marketing internship is a marketing internship that helps college students or recent graduates learn how to use content marketing strategies and develop content marketing collateral to help businesses increase their organic website visitors, convert website visitors into leads, and provide value to existing customers.

A content marketing internship is a structured internship program that covers key content marketing skills including inbound marketing methodology, keyword research, competitor research, content audits, content gap analysis, content planning, content writing, content operations, content optimization, semantic SEO, and on-page SEO.

What can content marketing interns expect during their internship?

Content marketing interns can expect a guided, hands-on experience that covers the full spectrum of inbound marketing responsibilities from how search engines index and rank website content to learning how to manage a scalable content marketing strategy across a multi-disciplinary team of writers, designers, developers, and marketers.

Content marketing interns should expect to gain experience analyzing website content using enterprise content marketing tools including Ahrefs, SurferSEO, Google Search Console, and meeting with team members across departments to learn how content marketing works with team members across the company.

What are the learning objectives of a content marketing internship?

The learning objectives of a content marketing internship include:

• Understanding how inbound marketing works

• Understanding how search engines index, rate, and rank content

• Researching content topic ideas and creating topical content maps

• Learning how to design content strategies that establish brands as an authority

• Writing, editing, and optimizing content to increase search rankings

• Understanding and following semantic SEO best practices

• Creating content outlines for downloadable content marketing assets

• Using content marketing tools like Ahrefs, SurferSEO, and Airtable

• Publishing content marketing assets in a Content Management Systems (CMS)

These are just some of the learning objectives a content marketing intern can expect to learn throughout the course of a content marketing internship for the summer.

How are content marketing internships structured?

Content marketing internships are typically structured with weekly learning activities (e.g. training videos, certifications, original research articles, etc.), hands-on projects to apply content marketing best practices, working on projects with cross-functional marketing teams, and receiving 1:1 mentorship from content marketing managers.

10-Week Content Marketing Internship Topics

Here is a hypothetical breakdown of the content marketing internship topics an intern at Webstacks' can expect to cover during a 10-week marketing internship:

1. Intros and Company Onboarding

2. Inbound Marketing Fundamentals

3. Semantic SEO Fundamentals

4. Keyword and Competitor Research

5. Content Planning and Topical Authority Mapping

6. Content Writing and SEO Writing

7. Content Optimization and On-page SEO

8. Advanced Semantic SEO

9. Content Operations and Content Modeling

10. Content Marketing Application Optimization

Depending on the content marketing intern's technical capabilities, a technical topic such as advanced Semantic SEO could be switched out for another important content marketing skillset such as linkbuilding, copywriting, or earned media (PR).

Why is a content marketing internship important for marketing careers?

A content marketing internship is important for aspiring marketers because traditional University marketing and communication degrees only scratch the surface of content marketing during undergraduate programs.

Successful content marketers should learn advanced topics that aren't covered in undergraduate marketing programs like Semantic SEO, E-A-T, and content operations.

Content marketing internships are also important for marketing careers because it gives interns experience learning about and marketing specific industries such as Web3, blockchain, SaaS, AI, and FinTech.

Content marketing interns also get exposure to test, experiment, and learn how to use the industry's latest content marketing tools for real clients.

With educated consumers turning to search engines to find new products and service providers, content marketing is an in-demand marketing role, and is one of the least understood marketing skills from a search engine optimization perspective.

How can college students and recent graduates use a content marketing internship in their marketing career?

Content marketing interns who graduate from a 10-week internship program can leverage their internship experience to land a full-time marketing job including:

• Working at the company who provided your content marketing internship

• Working at a full-service marketing agency

• Working as an in-house content marketer

Content marketing interns can also use their content marketing experience to transition their career into a related marketing field such as SEO, PPC, copywriting, or PR.

What college majors are best suited for a content marketing internship?

The best college majors for content marketing internships are:

• Marketing

• Communications

• Journalism

• English

• Business

• Management

• Psychology

• Philosophy

• Pre-law

• Computer science

• Information science

• Information systems

College majors that emphasis research, writing, strategic thinking, and consumer psychology make good candidates because content marketing internships require the ability to write, edit, and optimize articles based on research and data analysis.

Philosophy and pre-law majors make good candidates for content marketing internships because they are strong researchers, logical thinkers, and persuasive communicators.

Computer science and information science majors have a strong working knowledge of how websites, servers, and the search engines work which is a good primer for the SEO-focused content marketing responsibilities of a summer intern.

What college majors are less suited for a content marketing internship?

College students majoring in the following disciplines are less suited for a content marketing internship:

• Health care professions

• Non-computer engineering majors (e.g. electrical engineering, civil engineering, etc.)

• Specialized business majors (e.g. finance, accounting, supply chain, etc.)

• Natural sciences (e.g. biology, chemistry, physics, etc.)

While your major does not dictate whether or not you will get accepted to a content marketing internship program, the learning curve for understanding inbound marketing, the buyer's journey, and how search engines rank content may be more difficult for candidates with majors in these backgrounds to understand.

Depending on the types of clients your prospective content marketing internship provider serves, your background in healthcare, life sciences, and engineering disciplines could position you as a stronger candidate because of your domain expertise.

Is a content marketing internship right for me?

A content marketing internship might be right for you if you have an interest in:

• Writing

• Editing

• Research

• Critical analysis

• Communications

• Linguistics

• Learning design

• Instructional design

• Problem solving

• Psychology

• Education

• Relationship marketing

• A/B testing and experimentation

• Data analysis

• Machine learning

• Working in collaborative team environments

If you are an avid reader, writer, and researcher, a content marketing internship can help you learn how to design content strategies and optimize content to drive more unique visitors to a website, establishing brands as topical authorities, and improve E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) scores.

Is a content marketing internship right for a more technical person?

Prospective interns with a strong technical background in computer science, web development, and information systems are good candidates for a content marketing internship because the internship can be tailored to technical content marketing goals.

However, an SEO internship with a focus on content marketing could be a better fit for interns that are more interested in understanding:

• How search engines work and understand content

• How AI tools like GPT-3 work

• How to build Python scripts to automate content marketing

• How to use machine learning to scale content marketing topic generation

If you fall somewhere in between content marketing and a more technical SEO role, a content marketing internship can help you identify the area most aligned with your skills.

What are the qualifications for a content marketing internship?

To qualify for a content marketing internship, intern candidates should have a preliminary understanding of digital marketing and the role of content marketing in the digital marketing mix; candidates should be strong writers, researchers, and communicators; and interns should be passionate and unafraid to learn about new marketing technology.

Where should my content marketing internship be located?

It's best to look for content marketing internships in your state because you are more likely to get hired since that’s where the company does business.

Otherwise, the company you're applying to would need a business license to operate in that state, or they would need to hire you as an independent contractor.

How to Prepare for a Content Marketing internship

Before starting a content marketing internship, it is best to prepare by learning as much as you can about the company you’ll be working for, their customers, and the content marketing and SEO tools they use to manage their content operations.

Some of the most popular content marketing tools include:

• HubSpot - Blogging and Inbound Marketing

• Contentful - Headless CMS (Content Management System)

• Ahrefs - Keyword Research

• SurferSEO - NLP and AI Assisted Writing

• Grammarly - Grammar and Proofreading

• Airtable - Content Operations

• Google Docs - Cloud-based document creation

• Slack - Internal team communications platform

• Asana - Team project management tool

• KeywordInsights - Keyword clustering tool

• Figma - Content mapping and planning tool

• Notion - SOP and internal document management tool

Understanding your company, customers, and tools is important because there are different applications for content marketing such as B2B content marketing, B2C content marketing, eCommerce content marketing, and SaaS content marketing that have different strategies, tools, and processes to achieve results.

Content Marketing Influencers to Research Before your Internship

Once you understand the SEO niches that your company is focused on, find SEO thought leaders in those niches and familiarize yourself with their perspectives and research. Here are a few SEO publications, SEO influencers to help you get started:

• Brian Dean - Content Marketing and SEO Expert

• Koray Tugberk - Semantic SEO

• Nick Jordan - Content Operations

• Steve Toth - Content Marketing

• Kevin Indig - Director of Search, Spotify

• Tim Soulo - CMO, Ahrefs

• Rand Fishkin - CEO, Sparktoro

• Marie Haynes - E-A-T Expert

• Neil Patel - Serial Marketing Entrepreneur

• HubSpot - Inbound Marketing Training and Tools

Content Marketing Internship Interview Question Examples

If you’re interviewing for a content marketing internship, be prepared to answer interview questions that cover the following topics:

• In your own words, describe how content marketing works?

• Why are you interested in completing a content marketing internship?

• What are your professional marketing career goals?

• How does being a content marketing intern align with your career goals?

• What interests you about inbound marketing?

• Why do you want to conduct a content marketing internship at Webstacks?

• What is your experience writing blogs, research papers, and advertising copy?

• What is your research and writing process like?

• What content marketing and writing tools do you use to create great content?

• What is your experience and level of understanding about SEO?

• What is your experience like working for a cross-functional and remote teams?

• How to do deal with writer's block?

How to Find Content Marketing Internships

The best ways to find content marketing internships is to visit the career pages of content marketing agencies, full-service marketing agencies, agencies that offer SEO services, and popular job listing websites like Indeed, Monster, and LinkedIn job boards.

Another way to find content marketing internships is using advanced search engine operators in Google such as intitle:, using quotation marks to find exact matches, or boolean operators like “OR,” and to find pages that mention content marketing.

Apply to a Content Marketing Internship

If a content marketing internship sounds like an exciting opportunity that aligns with your marketing goals, and you think Webstacks is a good fit, apply to Webstacks’ 10-week content marketing internship program this summer by visiting the Webstacks job board.

You can find more information about the opportunity on our Greenhouse Careers board or the jobs section on Webstacks' company LinkedIn profile.

What are the benefits of a content marketing internship at Webstacks?

Content marketing interns will benefit from:

• Paid, hands-on experience in the office (San Diego), fully remote, or hybrid

• Working with some of the world's fastest-growing SaaS, FinTech, and Web3 startups

• 1-on-1 coaching from Webstacks marketing and SEO experts

• Cross-functional learning opportunities

• Direct experience working in a fast-paced and fun agency environment

For more information about working at Webstacks, read interviews from Webstacks employees across SEO and marketing teams:

• Brady Werkheiser, Sr. SEO Analyst

• Natalie Eisen, SEO Analyst L1

• Carly Johnson, Marketing Technologist