By now most marketing professionals are familiar with the term “Brand Journalism”. If you’re not – then you should be. Brand journalism is how a company will become an authority on a topic in the future. It is when a company invests in content and becomes a regular provider of news. What it’s not is a series of press releases and product launches. It is a serious, long-term commitment to share information, to join a discussion and to add value through content.
But what makes brand journalism worth the investment? Done well and done consistently, brand journalism will:
- Generate goodwill, trust and positive brand value as customers come to you are your platforms again and again for information and insight
- Educate and build brand awareness by taking a lead role in your sector and establishing your company as a thought leader.
- When shared and optimized it will build a community for your brand and a community that will become your advocates and your company’s champions.
Tom Foremski, a former Financial Times journalist now reporting on Silicon Valley, has dubbed EC=MC: Every Company is a Media Company. He describes it as an imperative for all brands to publish across as many different channels as possible in order to be visible. “If you aren’t seen amidst all the media noise, you don’t exist.”
To be a success and to become established as credible, brand journalism must stand up to the finest values of journalism. It simply has to be:
- Based on facts
- Fast and topical
- New content should be generated often and consistently
- It must give value to the reader
- There must be transparency about the origins of the content
To find out more about brand journalism read LEWIS PR's free white paper: ‘The New Rules of Content – The Role of Brand Journalism in PR’.
The writer is Scott Pettet, Vice President APAC, LEWIS PR .
LEWIS PR is the silver sponsor of PR Asia 2014.
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