Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Have you been thinking about turning your organization's communications into your version of a metropolitan newspaper newsroom? Here are some examples you should look at.

At a time when good-paying freelance assignments are harder to come by, many journalists are heeding the call of native advertising, where the pay is decent and the work is steady. But there’s a cost. Many worry about the impact on their credibility as a journalist. Some are even finding they aren’t so welcome back in newsrooms once they work for the business side.

In the latest in Digiday’s “Confessions” series, we talked to a veteran freelance writer who has written for top women’s magazines and other national publications about the dark side of native. In this case, the journalist was working for a publisher’s content studio, which assigned stories a given client wanted written....

Brands must learn to master the art of short-form storytelling.  Technology today enables it; and consumer attention spans or lack thereof, demand it. Whether if be a 15 second video, a photo or 140 characters, there is no doubt that brands must learn how to tell their story quickly and efficiently, and for good reason.

There is a content and media surplus; and there is an attention deficit in the minds of consumers. These two factors alone make it extremely difficult trying to reach consumers.

But with all they hype about short-form storytelling, too many brands often forget about the longer brand narrative and they are making a big mistake by doing so. Even with the rise in social media usage, consumers are still using Google; and they are still using it a lot. It’s the home page for millions of people globally and the gateway into learning and discovering new things....

I think advertisers are smart to want to have their ad copy look, read, and sound more like journalism. It’s a form of flattery for what we do, and although trust has waned in our profession recently—the public sees that our journalism is not as good as it used to be–it means that at least that the Mad Men of Madison Avenue think we’re more trustworthy than they are.

There’s an informative website, brandjournalists.com, that explains what these new kinds of ad producers do and why. It’s instructive.At base what they say they are doing is story telling. And, as they say, a good story is the essence of human communication. We journalists know that, or at least we should. If you can tell a good story about a company or organization, that’s likely to sell more product than the best old-hat sales pitch, the brand journalists reason.

They’re right. I agree with the ad folks that most companies have a good story to tell. I used to cover business and I never found a business I couldn’t find something interesting and newsworthy to write about.But let me show you how journalism is different than “brand journalism” or other kinds of sponsored content. This story you might even know....

...The company is finding that the most popular content for tablets depends on the title. Golf Digest sees great success with video. Generally speaking, long-form editorial content like actual stories, video and slideshows do well across the board because the tablet is a lean-back device, where consumers aren’t looking for short snippets of content like they are on a mobile phone, for example.

“If you look at the time of day with highest tablet usage it’s usually during prime time or on the weekends,” Reynolds said. “That’s why we are developing tablet-specific content to fit that different mindset. We’re not worried about tablet usage cannibalizing Web usage because Web, tablet and mobile, are all part of a complementary ecosystem.”

Reynold’s said that the biggest opportunity for Conde Nast in the tablet space is the amount of data is has on subscribers. It gives the publisher a look at the preferences that people have for content and advertising on specific devices and Conde Nast can optimize based on that.

“Storytelling.” It’s the flavor of the day, whether you’re talking about content marketing, visual communications or public relations, and for good reason. Stories are how humans communicate – with each other individually, across populations and over centuries.

In fact, many organizations are pretty good at identifying and defining their key story lines. The key to success in brand storytelling is in the next step – the strategic deployment of the story. Telling the brand story effectively requires a plan.

And to be clear, we’re not talking about hanging a touchy-feely post up on the blog and then calling it a day.  No.  Brand storytelling, in this context, means developing a sustained plan to create and execute a strategic approach to telling the brand story, in a way that supports company’s objectives.  Personally, I don’t give a hoot about impressions.  Let’s gun for something a bit more meaningful....

Today's fragmented media landscape and information-loaded digital world offer brands new opportunities to communicate directly with their audiences—building visibility, affinity and even search traction along the way.

However, success in the uppermost reaches of the funnel requires organizations to put the corporate agenda in the back seat, adopting instead a more journalistic approach to crafting and publishing their stories.

Enter brand journalism.

Not to be confused with content marketing, brand journalism is an upper-funnel tactic that delivers more than mere brand awareness. Telling the brand's stories in a compelling, audience-focused way can create affinity, earn media coverage, build brand credibility and (when coupled with search and social strategies) deliver long-lasting online visibility.

For as long as there’s been media, there has been a revolving door between newspapers, magazines and PR firms,” said Evan Hansen, senior editor at Medium. “As far as that goes, nothing is new.”

Hansen should know. He recently walked through that door himself, departing as Wired.com’s editor in chief to put down stakes in the land of content. While the path he took has been traveled by journalists before him, it’s undeniable that something has changed. Brands are luring away big names in journalism — Newsweek’s Dan Lyons and Melissa Lafsky Wall, PandoDaily’s Hamish McKenzie, Wired’s Michael Copeland, USA Today’s Michelle Kessler  – and these writers aren’t churning out press releases; they’re still telling stories....

In preparation for one of CMI’s upcoming reports, I’ve had the pleasure of meeting with a number of companies that are in what’s being called the “native advertising” space. Through this experience, I’ve come to the conclusion that, while the technique can potentially create significant value, native advertising is actually neither “native” nor “advertising.” It is simply one aspect of the larger discipline we know of as branded content marketing.

Native by any other name

According to Wikipedia (which I chose not because of, you know, Wikipedia, but because it seemed to be the only place offering one up), native advertising is defined as:

“…a method in which the advertiser attempts to gain attention by providing valuable content in the context of the user’s experience. Native ad formats match both the form and the function of the user experience in which it is placed.”

In short, native advertising takes content and places it in the context of a publisher’s site. So, whether you think of it as an advertorial, a paid guest post, a sponsored tweet, or just a really extensive ad, it’s basically paying for your engaging branded content to have a prominent and contextual place on somebody else’s platform.