Posted on

How to Be Your Own News Source

(This post previously appeared in the Bennis PR blog.)

Let’s face it, not every business has a compelling story to tell.

When markets started turning south in 2008, the president of our firm called a meeting and asked us to brainstorm ways that we could generate income outside of our typical revenue stream.  Social media was just coming into popularity, so I suggested that we monetize our intelligence. As the market was falling and things began to move ever slower, I proposed that we share our intelligence with clients and prospects to establish ourselves as industry leaders during the downtime, so that when the recession passed, we would be top of mind when our clients and prospects needed our services.

But with no “news” or stories to share, how can companies become their own news outlet? The answer is easy: content marketing. Simply put, content marketing puts you in front of your current and potential clients.

Whether you offer a product or service, or are a B2B or B2C organization, your knowledge is your product. According to Tyler Bouldin, Senior Web Strategy Manager at WebpageFX, the benefits of sharing your knowledge are many:

  • It establishes you and/or your company as a subject matter expert.
  • It establishes you and/or your company as an industry leader.
  • It engages readers and gains followers.
  • It improves retention.
  • It can turn leads into prospects.
  • It fills potential gaps in the sales process.

But before you put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard to create your content, Bouldin notes that it’s important to identify who you want to reach. Is it existing clients? New prospects? Others? After you identify your audience, describe who they are by creating a persona. Are members of your audience men, women or both? How old are they? Where are they located? What is their education and income level? What are the pain points that you can address or resolve for them?

The last point is critical, as it is the foundation of your content. But let’s take a step back for a moment. Yes, content marketing is intended to ultimately bring in sales. But the purpose of your developing the content is to inform your audience and share valuable information. By educating your readers, you become a trusted source of information. Content marketing is not a one-way pushy sales pitch.

So what should you what should you write about? According to Bouldin, that question can be answered with another question: What do you know about that will interest your readers? Back to square one, right? Wrong. Consider what changes are taking place in your industry and how it impacts your audience–and most of all–how you can help. What do you do or offer that no one else does or that differentiates you from others? What are your clients’ most frequently asked questions?

After you’ve identified your topics, create a plan for sharing your content. Creating a content calendar is a helpful way to visualize what content is posted where, and to schedule topics accordingly around other related topics or events. Having a plan also offers a checklist of sorts to ensure that the work gets done.

So you’ve identified your audience and topics, written your content and created a plan to share it. Now get out there and promote it! Bouldin notes that if your company or organization doesn’t already have a blog, create one. This is an ideal venue for your content.

Be sure to share and promote your blog on social media. It’s important to keep your audience in mind when considering media platforms. You likely won’t attract many 55+ business professionals on Facebook, so make sure your message is appropriate for the platform and its audience.

You can also create an e-newsletter to get your content directly to your audience. Online tools such as MailChimp or Constant Contact are popular platforms that can help you track engagement so that you can see who is opening your newsletter and when, and allow you to adjust send times and content as appropriate. For extra mileage, share your expertise with industry trade publications and blogs.

If incoming calls and foot traffic don’t show the success of your content marketing efforts, get out your measuring tools. Google analytics can give a good overview of your content’s performance and allow you to drill down into pages, users, engagement and bounce rates.

Just like any other marketing tactic, content marketing is not a once-and-done deal. After creating and sharing your content, measure your message’s effectiveness and start again. Keeping your message in front of your audience will keep you and your organization ahead of your competition and establish you as a valued news source for your readers.

Want to learn more? Contact me:

Posted on

The Importance of Communication: Understanding Why?

In the various professional positions I’ve held throughout my career, I’ve often been asked to write or publish information about something that management feels should be promoted or published “because it’s good PR.” I’m always happy to share good news that brings value to readers, but to do so, I need more than, “Here’s the information. Promote it.”

One recent example was recognition our firm received from a statewide organization for being an organization that fosters its professionals for three predefined reasons. Having not heard about the accolade or its purpose, I questioned the requestor how we were notified about the award, who and or how we were nominated, what the judging criteria were and who our competition was for the recognition, if any. These, I felt, were valid questions any reader would be interested to learn about how and why we deserved the accolade received.

As a writing and communications professional, if I am going to write or post a potentially newsworthy item, I’d like to be sure that the content IS newsworthy. Any communications, marketing communications, public relations, writer, editor or other related professional knows and will tell you that issuing non-news in today’s content-driven world is not only a waste of time, but also a good way to turn readers off from your posted content.

Having sat on both sides of the writing and promotion fence, I recognize the need to build and raise awareness for a business or organization. But the ratio of value-based content to self-promotional content should be 90 percent to 10 percent, not the other way around.

That said, I always look at a news piece or other bit of potentially interesting information with one question: Why? Why should anyone who reads this care? What value or information does it give them? What value or benefit does it bring to us? Understanding and responding to these questions is key to getting your content read. If you don’t bring value to your readers, you’re going to lose them.

Think about your favorite blog or news site. Why do you read it? What if your favorite site started posting nothing but content completely irrelevant to your interests? You’d stop visiting the site, wouldn’t you? For those of you who still read print newspapers, what if your paper stopped carrying news articles and simply printed advertisements? The revenue might be good for the publisher, but you wouldn’t get any value from the content (unless you’re a spend-aholic, which is a topic for another time).

In the case of the recognition our firm received, I never received answers to my questions and it turns out the information was not newsworthy. A colleague received a link to the “award” and all they had to do was fill out an application. It was open to anyone and there were no rigorous criteria to meet, making this recognition nothing more than paper-pushing praise.

I posted the content to our website and social media not because it’s newsworthy, interesting or of value. But merely because not doing so would be negatively received. Can you guess why?