Brand journalism: building online reputations

We, as communicators, brands and organisations, are in a constant battle for the attention of the customer and consumer – and that makes maintaining our good reputations harder than ever. The public, including your target audience, are being served a constant stream of information and news – we’re all drowning in information!

In the last 60 seconds alone, almost half a million tweets have been sent and 500 hours of video uploaded to YouTube.

Not only are people being bombarded with information, but – as Edelman’s annual trust barometer tells us – much of this is not believed by customers.

How can you establish yourself and your brand in this market and really stand out?

Many brands are choosing to reinforce their reputation using targeted content – to build their audience and have a dialogue with their customer, whether B2B or B2C.

This form of storytelling is brand journalism.

How to create a brand journalism strategy to protect your online reputation:

1. Clearly define your audience and their needs.

Make sure that you’re clear about who your audience is – it might be a wide or narrow target audience, demographic based – find out what their needs and concerns are. What’s keeping people awake at night, and how can you have relevance to their concerns?

2. Deliver targeted and valuable insight

Once you’ve established what consumers concerns are, you need to offer some sort of solution. Show them some of your expertise, explain why your approach is different, present them with options.

3. Be interesting; tap into the zeitgeist

It’s not enough just to provide solutions though, you also need to make your content interesting. Your content needs to tackle a new angle, or be engaging in some way. This is where the ‘journalism’ part comes into brand journalism. Seek out the stories that make your brand unique.

4. Humanise your storytelling

Bring stories back to the people that they impact – for instance, the architect or factory worker – or find topics that resonate with them. Brand journalism is not about promoting your new widget or service. Make it as relevant as possible for the person reading it.

5. Catch the attention, be visual

Once you’ve crafted your story, it needs to stand out in these viagra for sale online multiple social channels. There’s no point writing something if it doesn’t get read. Make sure your channels are visually rich and appealing by using images, videos, GIFs or memes. Will your social copy arrest the scroll?

6. Constantly review your output

Once you’ve built your audience you need to keep engaging with them to maintain your position, relationship and reputation. Respond not just to those who are engaging with you, but respond to statistics – what’s working and what isn’t? Wherever you post, be clear on your objectives. Agree KPIs that will reflect exactly what you want from your campaigns or your content.

7. Amplify and reuse content across platforms

Create it once, use it many times. Reworking and repurposing content across multiple platforms can give your messages extra mileage without costing you a lot in time or money. Consider the best use of your budget when amplifying your content – because with paid content taking precedence over organic, there are very good reasons why you should pay for social media advertising.

8. Be agile & responsive

Don’t ‘set and forget’ with a campaign or comms approach. Good brand journalism involves consistently reviewing and assessing what’s working. Use this information to enhance your approach.

9. Create evangelists for your brand

There are multiple ways of achieving this without spending money. Ask for quotes for journalistic pieces published across multiple platforms, re-publish specialist author content, or approach thinkers directly to have a dialogue with you.

10. Finally, drive sales with insight

Brand journalism isn’t just about building your profile and reputation. It can deliver clear KPIs and a return on investment above and beyond reputational value.

Like this post? Read ‘Protect your online reputation with rock solid content’ 

To find out more about how we can help you create a brand journalism strategy that enhances your online reputation, get in touch.  

Email: office@formativecontent.com or call our team on 01494 672 122

Gay Flashman is founder and CEO of Formative Content, creating corporate digital content to build reputation, brand and community.

Formative Content is a UK based digital communications agency producing high quality content, live event coverage and strategic communications support for clients around the world.