Building a Brand Newsroom: How the Rules of Content Marketing are Changing for Technology Companies

Last week at InfluenceHR, our own Steve Smith presented on a topic he’s very passionate about: “Building a Brand Newsroom: How the Rules of Content Marketing are Changing for Technology Companies.” Steve believes that technology companies have been leaders in content marketing right for years, but that there is still a lot of room to grow and get better.

Steve had three main objectives in his presentation — to help marketers understand the following:

1. The place of brand in B2B marketing
2. How brand and demand are joined at the hip
3. How to focus your time, effort and budget to create content that builds brand and generates demand

So what is brand journalism? David Meerman Scott defines brand journalism as the following:

“Brand journalism is when any organization creates valuable information and shares it with the world. Brand journalism is not a product pitch. It is not an advertorial. It is not an egotistical spewing of gobbledygook-laden corporate drivel. Instead, brand journalism is the creation of Web content — videos, blog posts, photos, charts, graphs, essays, e-books, white papers — that deliver value to your marketplace and serve to position your organization as one worthy of doing business with.”

You’ll learn a lot going through the presentation, but in the meantime, here are Steve’s nine essentials for brand journalism:

1. You must know your differentiation. Find buyers who align with your values.
2. You must know your audience. Empathy is the goal.
3. You must think like an evangelist. You’ve got to believe in something passionately and tell everybody.
4. You need one champion who gets it. You can’t outsource it.
5. You must commit to producing great, high-quality content.
6. You must commit to consistency. That’s code for editorial calendar.
7. You must be agile. You must not be a slave to your editorial calendar.
8. You must commit to context. Deliver the right message to the right person at the right time.
9. You must commit to real, measurable revenue and quality goals, not false ones.

Check out the presentation below to learn more about the importance of brand and to get the full scoop on Steve’s presentation.

 

You can also check it out on SlideShare. Follow Steve on Twitter if you want to connect and talk about brand journalism or content marketing.

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