A blog about marketing, life and service around us! Brand journalism and management journalism What to do when I close this tab.
LET'S BE CLEAR Everyone is already tired of this classic SMM: quotes, interesting facts, boobs and cats. This standard set with minimal features is offered by all agencies on the market, and it doesn’t work.
Brand journalism - creating media in your own channels instead of paid ones, so that the client:
- thought about the benefits you bring;
- studied you in more detail;
- tried your product/service;
- became your regular customer;
- then a fan;
- and recommended you to friends.
Corporate journalism is a content marketing tool, the main difference of which is that the principles, forms of presentation and genres of journalism are used.
Talk about something that is important to many people
Don't limit yourself to the narrow topic in which your business exists. Journalism is about mass information. One of the most successful content projects in Russia, Tinkoff Magazine, writes not about itself or banks, but about “money management.” Thus, the magazine attracted readers who are not clients of Tinkoff Bank. According to SimilarWeb, almost 800 thousand people visited the site over the past month, a third of them got there directly. One of the most popular posts:
Another example is the blogs of the Mosigra company, which deals with board games. On blogs on Habré and Giktimes, guys publish success stories of franchisees, give advice, and sometimes admit mistakes. Or they entertain by accompanying the texts with links to their products. Example material:
Use or imitate genres of journalism
Create analytical and journalistic materials - the audience will be grateful if you explain and connect events with each other, break down the complex into simple ones.
Example - page of the Kubanzheldormash plant in Facebook. The Kuban engineering enterprise was so successful in SMM that it received good coverage in the media. Now 54 thousand subscribers follow the so-called “essays” about the life of the plant. The author writes sincerely and clearly (punctuation preserved):
“People often ask what you produce. Here, as usual, people think, if you don’t produce an iPhone or an ATM, why the hell are you needed at all? As in the joke: “It’s strange, Turgenev wrote Mumu, but the monument was written by Chekhov.”
We all travel on the railway, and the steel line under enormous loads has the property of “diverging, converging, wobbling, diving, breaking, floating, crawling, collapsing” and so on, in general, the railway track must be maintained, both routine repairs and capital. There are huge, powerful and productive self-propelled machines, and there are traveling tools or so-called small mechanization. This is what we not only produce, but are in no way inferior to our direct competitors in Germany and France. And if 10 years ago there was 10 km between us, today there is at most 1 kilometer. And taking into account the fact that we will soon introduce new thermal sections, a new non-ferrous casting section, new machines for gear processing, we will be equal here too. Well, then... and then we will overtake them so that they can see our naked ass.
Be helpful
Your clients are surrounded by information 24/7 and have long been lost in it. Help your audience - explain in your fingers how the new law has affected their lives; how to switch a website to https; how to spot cyber scammers. DIY (do it yourself) brands have excelled in the area of life hacks and instructions. "220 volt", for example, does not write posts about plywood and rubber bands. Instead, the company is making a video on how to make a toy “revolver” from these materials. So, the store sells more than just a product - the guys sell hobbies. 430 thousand people follow the “220 Volt Workshop” on VKontakte.
Projects Tasty And Nifty from Buzzfeed is an example of how to adjust the presentation form to consumer habits: people scroll feeds from mobile phones, watch videos without sound, and are not ready to focus on one material for a long time. “Snack” content is best consumed - short forms, accessible presentation, minimum user effort.
React to events
A prompt response to events distinguishes corporate journalism from the usual work according to a content plan. View news agency feeds, subscribe to messages from sections that are important to you, and use the agenda for your own purposes. How Burger King does this in SMM:
Burger King “on the advice” of Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and renamed “Americano” to “Russiano”.
Don't overdo it with sensitive topics. Or budget for fines.
The image of the minor Diana Shurygina in the publication of Burger King on VKontakte.
Strive for objectivity
Unlike advertising or PR materials, brand journalism is not aimed at direct return on investment (sales here and now); its goal is to build trust between the company and the client. Therefore, try to avoid evaluative language, use numbers or quotes instead. If you are talking about a controversial issue, maintain a balance of opinions: give pros and cons.
For example, Intel iQ magazine publishes real journalistic longreads with polar opinions and accurate data. The topic is people and technology in a variety of fields: from theater to healthcare. The magazine's audience is geeks and professionals, so the authors present content simply and expertly. Each material (usually at the end) indicates which Intel boards are used in the technology in question. The product mention looks like a reference, not a direct CTA (call that action).
What should I do when I close this tab?
- Find out what your marketing is failing at
- Study the audience and understand what content they are missing
- Set goals and develop a strategy within the company / hire an agency
- Find freelance journalists, hire an editor
- Analyze the results and strive to reach the level of Rupert Murdoch
The blog uses a frame from the film “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”, dir. Terry Gilley am
Zarema Sultanbekova, copywriter at Ulya
Brand Journalism is a phenomenon in which, at first glance, there is nothing new. Media that belong to a company in Russia appear under the term “corporate media”, and in Western practice - owned media. The only difference is that owned media can include not only newspapers and magazines of the company, but also a YouTube channel, a blog and social networks of the company, a podcast, a thematic website-special project - in a word, everything that can distribute the content of the company and about the company. Corporate media here, of course, are slightly limited by the laws of the genre. So how does all this fit in with the newfangled brand journalism trend? Let's figure it out.
Brand journalism is an attempt to “reconcile” journalism, PR and content marketing. In form, this is journalistic material: interviews, reports, columns, educational articles. In terms of content, brand journalism is content marketing, because... attracts attention to the company with content dedicated to the industry created on its resource. And the tasks of brand journalism are solved in the field of PR: creating and maintaining a managed image, creating values among a certain target audience, loyalty, creating a community.
Why do brands need all this? Content marketing seems to have already answered this question: to maintain expert status and create mental and emotional connections with the client. But brand journalism goes a little further in this sense: it creates content not so much about a company, but for a person.
In the United States, there are four main models of brand journalism. Let's try to look at them using real examples.
1. BRAND AWARENESS
If you are a fairly large company with a well-known name, then this model is most suitable for you. In media created using this model, the main content revolves around the company. You talk about your inner kitchen, new products, original ways to use them and stuff like that. In this model, you are not trying to sell anything with your content - this task has already been solved for you.
General Electric has created the GE Reports resource (https://www.gereports.com), which talks about its innovations and the people working in the company. The man running the whole thing is former Forbes reporter Thomas Kellner. The resource's materials are often republished by popular blogs and traditional media, so this approach allows GE to increase awareness of its brand.
2. INDUSTRY NEWS
This model differs from the previous one in that you write not so much about your brand, but about the industry as a whole. In highly specialized businesses, as a rule, there are not enough industry media - the market is too narrow and small for the appearance of traditional media - a magazine or online resource. But companies that are often considered among the pioneers of the market often shoulder the burden of finding market information.
In 2010, Intel launched the Intel Free Press resource, where it talks not only about itself, but also about technology in general.
“We write not only for the brand, but also for other journalists who are looking for new topics to publish. If our story inspires a journalist at a traditional publication, that's the best outcome for us,” says Bill Calder, editor of the Intel Free Press.
Russian distributors of wines and other alcoholic beverages, Simple, followed the same path, creating Simple Wine News (https://www.simplewinenews.ru) - almost the only media outlet in the country about the production, tasting and sale of wines. Simple Wine News was first published in December 2005, and since then it has gained domestic and foreign experts a strong reputation as the leading wine and gastronomic publication in Russia. Remarkably, Simple is very much a B2B business, although it is often (and wrongly) assumed that creating corporate media for clients is the preserve of mass-market companies.
3. CREATE & SPONSOR
In brand journalism, you don’t have to write only about your company. And even about the industry. You can make your own website an aggregator of the best materials from different resources for a specific audience and sometimes spoil readers with unique materials. That's what Adobe did.
Having become famous as the developer of Photoshop and InDesign programs, Adobe one day decided to develop special program for marketers – Adobe Marketing Cloud (AMC). Of course, no one was expecting them in the marketing data analytics market. Therefore, Adobe actively began pumping up its authority among marketers by creating a bunch of educational content and creating a CMO resource (https://www.cmo.com), which collects information from various resources (more than 150 sources, including Wired, Mashable and Advertising Age). To differentiate itself from other marketing resources, Adobe decided to collect only the most important information about trends, focusing not so much on ordinary marketers, but on heads of marketing departments.
4.LEAD GENERATION
The simplest and most mastered method in Russia is the creation of lead-generating content. Most often, these are blogs on company websites. Analytical service HubSpot followed this path, which created a whole network of thematic blogs about marketing, sales, agency business, web design and much more.
Brand journalism is an important trend in modern PR. Of course, publishing remains impossible for many companies due to its high cost. However, the fourth model can be easily mastered even by a full-time marketer who can write well and is interested in innovations in his industry. Although the results will take a while, they will bring satisfied potential clients. Therefore, the choice, as always, is yours!
In Journal of Food Science, "Replication Improves Sorting-Task Results Analyzed by DISTATIS in a Consumer Study of American Bourbon and Rye Whiskeys."
The only difference between rye whiskey and bourbon is the raw material for the malt - it must contain more than 50 percent rye or corn, respectively. Drexel University in Philadelphia and their colleagues asked 21 volunteers to sniff 10 unlabeled whiskeys:
- five rye And five bourbons(Tasting by smell follows the Whiskey Grading Guide).
After this, the scientists carried out a statistical analysis of the results using the MDS (multidimensional scale) and DISTATIS (multiple distance matrix analysis) methods. It turned out that the composition of the raw materials did not matter when grouping whiskey, despite the importance attached to it by connoisseurs.
The most important factors in sorting were:
- alcohol content,
- holding period,
- manufacturing company.
“This is the first published evidence that malt composition does not determine the sensory characteristics of American whiskey: rye and bourbon, although classified as different types of drinks by the standard, are indistinguishable to consumers.”, the researchers write. They also emphasized that in repeated analyzes of taste preferences, the DISTATIS method showed significantly greater stability of results compared to MDS and is therefore preferred for this type of research.
P.S. I would like to understand how they managed to confuse bourbon and rye whiskey? How? Now you need to conduct your experiment.
I don’t pretend to be objective, just thinking out loud about the trends that I notice around me.
- Rate of change. I read here the other day in an interview (with Professor Rada Granovskaya) that the rate of change over the past 100 years has increased 50 times. I don’t know how all this was measured, just so you understand the order of numbers.
- It would seem that, progress should free up large resources of time. But in my opinion, most people are experiencing a catastrophic lack of time. Even when there is no need to rush anywhere, we are still in a hurry - it’s a habit. We don’t read manuals (and in general we don’t read much unless it’s social networks), and we watch YouTube on fast forward. I also have a friend who even listens to songs like this. I'm lying, of course. Or not? Most likely there is, but I just don’t know yet :)
- The principle of information perception is gradually changing. I don’t know what methods modern science uses to measure the rate of change, but I do know that the perception of information is becoming less and less consistent. You don't have to go far. I personally observe how the principle of reading articles on our blog texterra.ru is changing (this is a professional narrow-themed resource, who doesn’t know, with an audience of approximately half a million readers per month). People are reading less and less consistently - word by word, sentence by sentence. The standard “Internet reader” scans the article with his eyes, trying to isolate the main points. If the article is small - roughly, one and a half monitor screens - simply scanning it at a glance is enough. That is, the user assimilates the entire meaning through such scanning. I can’t say that such users are the majority, but I can definitely say that the share of such users is growing.
- Anxiety. Stress is another companion of modern man. People are afraid of change, afraid of what awaits them. We worry because anxiety is one of the most effective tools for controlling reality that evolution has given us. The speed of change does not guarantee a stable future for anyone. And stress forces you to adapt to these changes. Imagine that you are driving down the road and your gas pedal is stuck. The speed increased sharply. You can tell yourself - well, whatever happens, it can’t be avoided - and let go of the steering wheel. On the one hand, such a driver can be understood. But on the other hand: no matter how the speed increases, the chances of survival increase exponentially if you still try to control the crazed jalopy. My opinion is that it is better to stress and move forward than to not stress and then drop out of the game, smeared against reality.
- Unexpectedly, I came to the conclusion that deep expertise in relation to work only gets in the way. Very often, deep expertise goes hand in hand with slow reactions. This is understandable: the expert does not begin action until he receives all the introductory information. And for the employer, the speed of switching on is much more important. When there are a large number of unknowns at work, the ability to act “roughly,” “to move in a direction,” becomes important. But by movement I do not mean thought, but action. And here perfectionism begins to interfere. Because a perfectionist needs all the necessary background information, time to prepare and plan. By the time he receives the necessary information and plans all his actions, these actions will no longer be relevant. Fast employees are more valuable than ever.
- Previously, they say Only Caesar could do this, now everyone has become Caesar. Most people around me have become multitaskers. While we have lunch, we check our email. While we are traveling in transport, we check instant messengers and work chats. (Hell, I have to admit that I do this sometimes while driving.) When I'm fishing, I write down my ideas. While running I talk on the phone. And I'm far from the only one.
- Work becomes one of the most important priorities in most individuals of the genus Homo sapiens. And look how the ideal of work is played out in the public consciousness: a man sits on the seashore and works under palm trees. Why isn't he resting? Why does he need to work under the scorching sun? It's just inconvenient. People used to boast about how little they worked a day, but now they started boasting about how many hours a day they spend at work. And now they want to work even on vacation (and I myself am not without sin).
- Remote work. Freelancing has ceased to cause bewilderment among relatives and friends. In many cases, going free to earn bread gives an additional boost to a person’s career.
- Wealth is flowing into the hands (or rather pockets) of fewer and fewer people. This means that our children are highly likely to earn less than us. In societies of “developed capitalism” they say this has already happened.
- There is more choice. Previously, bread was black and white. Now there are dozens of varieties. Hundreds of phone models. The number of options overwhelms the psyche. The same thing happens when searching for information. You look for information, you get a huge selection, then you have to make a decision about what you really need. The very act of choice requires a resource.
- If you have children or (especially) grandchildren, then you cannot help but notice that they are growing up in a completely different world. As a child, I watched filmstrips that were projected onto a whitewashed wall. When I was 16, I dreamed of owning a mechanical typewriter. My children have been using tablets since they were 4-5 years old, and watching video blogs since they were 6. They don't need TV at all.
- Wherein Most children are always busy with something. They have a section, then music, then dancing, then painting. And this is how many people live. They try to give their children more than they had themselves. Apparently this is some kind of instinct. It is highly likely that it will be more difficult for our children than for us.
- The traditional family with dad, mom and children is gradually disappearing. Single-parent families, families where parents do not register their marriage - all this has not raised any questions for anyone for a long time. The divorce rate in Russia in the 21st century has reached its maximum. The stigma associated with divorce has largely disappeared and marriage as an institution has been weakened. The number of children born out of wedlock has increased significantly. Nobody cares anymore.
- The higher the divorce rate, the higher the percentage of working women. A woman housewife (who is not temporarily on maternity leave, namely for ideological reasons) causes bewilderment.
- People are becoming more divided. Now it’s commonplace that neighbors on the landing don’t know each other and don’t greet each other when they meet. Adults are becoming less and less likely to form interest groups. In many ways, this is a consequence of the increased workload of people at work.
- The only thing that is still capable of uniting people into groups is a healthy lifestyle. Yoga, running, skiing and all that stuff. Playing sports has become truly fashionable. And this is very good. Recently, another massive trend is PP (proper nutrition). There are a lot of different opinions around PN, and everyone believes that their diet is the most correct. But I sense that there are still large layers of shared insanity, untouched by anyone.
- People have become more mobile. This is largely due to economic instability and divorce. Moving to another city (usually a regional center, St. Petersburg and Moscow) or even another country no longer surprises anyone. Rather, it’s the other way around (“And when were you?”).
- National borders of states mean much less than they used to. Previously, we were frightened by globalization. But many people have felt the consequences of globalization firsthand and found it very convenient. A McDonald's sign in a foreign country promises the expected result, which means it reduces anxiety.
- The sharing economy has changed entire markets beyond recognition in a matter of months. And this is just the beginning.
- Social media. I'm sure this is the next big thing. Yes Yes Yes. Real social media, their significance in our lives - all this is just beginning. We see only a rudimentary picture.
Somehow I scored 20 points with ease. And he didn’t even say a word about machine learning, big data and blockchain. What trends do you see?
ZY Selfie stick. I just can't solve this dilemma. Is using a selfie stick still embarrassing or not?
Global motivational sectarianism has really taken over the world. It is the fruit of the fruit of the currently dominant demand for positive thinking - a flat manifestation of one-dimensional project consciousness, the main motto of which is: “You can do it!” Both in the case of Vujicic and in the case of high-tech sectarians Jobs and Musk, the thesis “You can do it!” essentially means: you can earn like me. The image of a financial breakthrough as the main condition for human fulfillment is the most vile example of treatment of human nature. Philosophy professor Konstantin Andreevich Sergeev excellently examined this using the example of American design thinking:
“An idea for an American is not an idea in the Platonic sense, and not an idea of something for which one can live or even give one’s life; an idea for him, first of all, is an idea of how to make money.”
Hundreds of thousands of business preachers, good pastors of capitalism, various sectarians, motivational ideologists are not looking for a person in his highest, they are not calling for the realization of the best in you, they are simply stupidly suggesting one thing - HOW TO CASH IN THE SPIRIT.
The sale of the human in man is the main sign and corruption of our era. This is the main sign of the capitalist world order, and, of course, our prison. Not many will be able to break out of captivity. There is a chance in youth, but later there is almost no chance.
But a postmodern person should not be upset; the wise elders on Wall Street wrote the Bible to the world in two words. Read. Pray: "You can do it!"
