By Katrina Olson
In the last few years, the line between media and marketing (journalism and advertising) have continued to blur, giving rise to the concept of brand journalism.
What is brand journalism?
It’s what happens when former journalists go to work for brands, writing content and telling stories that subtly promote the brand by driving readership and increasing engagement. It’s telling stories that connect with your customers. It’s giving your customers credible, honest and reliable information that educates, entertains or informs, or somehow helps them in their daily work or life.
Brand journalism is when corporations or organizations generate “journalistic” content, often creating in-house newsrooms. Some companies use brand journalism to generate leads or promote products and services, while others consider it a service to their reader, hoping to develop brand awareness and loyalty. And the content is not necessarily self-promotional.
Some call it corporate journalism, corporate media, or content marketing. But no matter what you all it, brand journalism is a new marketing best practice. The challenge is developing fresh, engaging content that customers will want to read. Following are some tips to get you started:
- Set a calendar to relieve potential stress; but be flexible to allow yourself to take advantage of opportunities.
- Attend webinars to learn and to get ideas.
- Ask vendors, suppliers, distributors, customers, salespeople, counter people what bothers or intrigues them.
- Survey the news, blogs, white papers, trade magazines to find out what people are talking about.
- Go on LinkedIn groups, Quora, twitter, pubs, alerts to find hot topics.
- Engage in social media — find out what questions people want answered.
Generating story ideas isn’t difficult, you just have to ask or search for them.
Have you started practicing brand journalism? Why not? If you think you don’t have the time, you probably already have an aspiring brand journalist somewhere in your organization who is itching to tell your brand story. Or, you can hire a writer or content developer to write it for you (hint, hint).
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Olson is a veteran marketing and public relations consultant and practitioner, freelance writer, former college professor, principal of Katrina Olson Strategic Communications (KatrinaOlson.com), and a regular contributor to TED Magazine’s print and online editions. Katrina has worked in marketing for the retail, service, publishing, healthcare, financial services, automotive and electrical distribution industries in addition to running her own marketing communication agency and consultancy for more than 20 years. She has 39 local, regional and national awards for her work. Katrina can be reached at Katrina@katrinaolson.com.