Brand journalism for enterprises

Brand journalism is increasingly becoming a way for companies to engage with prospects, leads, customers, partners and the public. Many enterprises are making the leap from being advertising centric to being content centric in their approach to marketing. Story-telling can help make brands resonate with customers. Stories make brands come to life.

There are numerous examples of brands adopting brand journalism into their marcomm strategy. Prominent examples of brand journalism include projects like American Express’s Open Forum and HSBC’s Business Without Borders. Brand journalism for enterprises helps build additional levels of engagement with a brand that can nurture and build trust.

Enterprises can establish a "creative newsroom" to build content and be more like a media company. The PR agency Edelman established a concept of the  "creative newsroom" to unite copywriters, community managers, analysts, marketers, journalists and other creative people. The creative newsroom creates real-time content that is relevant to an enterprise's audience.

The creative newsroom makes use of multichannel communities, online PR, real-time marketing, social media and (most of all) story-telling.

Examples of brand journalism for enterprises

•  Consider interviewing employees to dig deep into the use-cases of a solution or product. What is it like "on the ground" with clients. Provide your brand stories with texture and depth.
• Expert interviews can build thought-leadership and trust for an enterprise. Who are your experts? Look to sales people, engineers, implementors, designers, etc for video or text interviews that can be woven into a larger narrative.
• New approaches to product development within the company can tell a rich story and help deepen relationships with customers. This story can be insightful for leads, partners or customers who may value the behind-the-scenes vision.
• Things that inspire team members (an inspiration board, team diary, etc)
• Conference coverage
• Industry trends that a brand can quickly respond to. A brand will need to develop an agility in their marketing process to capitalize successfully on news events and emerging trends.  It could be really worth being ahead of the curve.

Brand journalism in practice

1. Identify a trend or event worth covering
2. Develop a content concept
3. Move concept through approval process
4. Publish
5. Amplify using social media, blog, website news feeds, paid promotions and email
6. Measure results and engagement
7. Optimize the content piece to maximize future exposure
8. Consider building upon first concept with follow-up piece (link the two)