Brand journalism is the practice of using journalistic skills and principles to create content for a company or brand. It involves researching, writing, and editing content that can be distributed across a variety of platforms to boost the company's visibility, create relationships with customers, and establish a thought leadership position within the industry.
But why should companies, big and small, use brand journalism? Beyond the potential for higher search engine rankings and brand visibility, brand journalism helps to build strong relationships with stakeholders through the production of quality content they can trust. It also helps to establish the company as an industry opinion leader and influencer, enhancing their reputation and trustworthiness amongst potential customers and investors.
So what should you consider when creating brand journalism?
Research & Planning
Before you even start to create your brand journalism, it is important to do thorough research into your target audience and choose a particular topic or area to focus on related to your brand. Once you’ve done that, create an editorial calendar with topics and publication dates in order to keep your content on brand, timely, and organized.
Audience Targeting
Before you write the actual content, you should take the time to develop a profile of your target audience. Who do you want to write for? Who are you hoping to reach with your content? Are you trying to attract potential customers, or create meaningful relationships with your existing customers? Taking the time to understand your audience will help you write content that is relevant and interesting to them.
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Storytelling
When it comes to writing content, it is important to ensure that each piece of content you create tells a story. This could be the story of your brand, the story of your product, or the story of how your customers use your product - as long as it has a narrative, and is engaging, it will help to keep readers interested.
Style & Voice
When creating brand journalism, it is important to remember to stay true to your brand’s values and keep the content in line with its tone of voice. Do you want your content to be informative, funny, serious? When you have established the tone of voice you want to use, make sure you stick to it in all your writings.
Measuring Engagement
Once your content has been published, take some time to measure its engagement. Don’t just focus on numbers and figures, but also take stock of the types of comments and reviews you receive, as this will help you to understand how your content resonates with readers and make changes where appropriate.
So, to wrap things up, if you are looking to create a strong brand presence, engaging content and meaningful relationships with stakeholders, then brand journalism is the way to go. All you need is a bit of planning, research, creativity and the knowledge to create content that is relevant to your readers. Stick to these tips and you’ll be well on your way to developing an effective brand journalism strategy.