Brand Journalist Team Being Built In Melbourne & Sydney.
When Pilote Media opens its Australian office later this year, there will be a content production team eager to help companies in Melbourne and Sydney make the most of brand journalism strategies.
Brand journalism is a growing trend amongst companies who are using professionally produced content to help them with their marketing communications, search engine optimisation and content hungry social media.
The Pilote brand journalism team will include business authors, journalists, bloggers, film makers and photographers, all of whom have been trained to tell stories and find interesting and relevant subjects – even in areas that might at first glance seem mundane.
David Fuller, CEO of Pilote Media also runs a blog for decision makers in the sport of sailing. He says that marketing and PR professionals need to think like journalists when creating content or risk alienating prospects and customers. He commented:
Cutting corners when creating content is a false economy. If badly written or badly produced content ends up on the web with your brand on it, then it can seriously damage your reputation and brand equity. This is especially evident in social media, where interns and junior staff are given huge responsibility for speaking publicly on behalf of a company.
There are many reasons why having a journalistic approach can be beneficial.
Journalists are trained to tell a story. Marketing people who work day in and day out with the same products and services can be desensitised to good stories that people might be interested in. Brand journalists can see interesting and engaging content in places that internal marketing people might take for granted.
A journalistic approach also forces people who create content to think about the audience. This is something that marketing people – especially in start-up businesses often don’t do well. David Fuller, who has consulted to many digital entrepreneurs and start-up companies says:
The answer to the question “who is your audience?” is very rarely – “everyone”. This is the same for produce development as it is for creating marketing communications. Your prospects and your customers need different information. Your shareholders or investors are looking for different information to bloggers or other parts of the media.
Your “audience” might not even be a person. In the case of SEO, you want to create great content for readers, but you also need to keep in mind your keywords. People with journalistic training or a journalistic approach can balance these audience requirements when creating copy, which is why we have focussed on that kind of background when putting together our team.
Other advantages to using a brand journalist to create content include: the ability to translate industry jargon into language that is understood by a wider audience, a tendency not to exagerate or use hyperbole, and they can seem more credible as a source.
The Pilote Media brand journalist team will be announced later in the year.