Content marketing can help boost your company’s awareness both in the press and in social media channels. Great content marketing starts with great content. What better source for stories and ideas than your online newsroom?
1) Market and distribute your own news. Why are you still using the newswires to distribute your news? Would you believe that in 2008 the SEC announced that it is perfectly acceptable in fulfilling Fair Disclosure obligations to publish your news on your own website? This saves time and most importantly money. Companies such as Coca-Cola, Netflix, Marathon Oil, Expedia, Facebook and Google have all dropped their dependence on the newswires and started publishing their news to their own news website. Goldman Sachs has begun using Twitter to release earnings and no longer uses the newswires. By marketing and distributing your own news, you not only build credibility in your industry, but can also save significant money.
2) Build direct relationships with your potential customers using your own social distribution. Social media has been integrated into the news industry for many years now. Companies big and small have spent the past five years building up their social networks to the point where they can now instantly drive traffic to their news content. Lenovo has 5,540,792 likes on FB, 585K Twitter followers with 24.1 K tweets, 255,324 followers on LinkedIn, and 337K followers on Instagram. They have created a huge distribution network that can rival the reach they’d get with a traditional newswire. Plus, their followers are people who are already captive and interested in their company and their products. All content can then be distributed to this invested audience giving them the ability to share and like. Their customers and potential customers feel like a part of the process and will help spread the word of new products, news, and stories. This applies to more than just news, content such as videos, pictures, blog posts, and mentions in the news can all be direct distributed.
3) Use your newsroom and experts in your organization to create thought leadership pieces. Just a glance at the Prudential newsroom shows why they are the leader in this category. Not only do they have research and featured articles on topics such as “Retirement”, “Group Benefits”, “Institutional Investments”, “Annuities, Life Insurance, and Mutual Funds”, but they also have a search option called “research explorer” which allows for potential customers, current customers and journalists alike to research topics they are interested in by date of publish.
4) Leverage existing multimedia videos and photos to help make your news stories more attractive. So many companies issue plain text press releases while at the same time maintaining large video and photo galleries either internally or on sites such as YouTube or Flickr. Why not embed those multimedia assets in the press release, so that people can quickly get all the information in one spot, saving journalists time, but also making it easier for news consumers to quickly share your content? Traditionally, including video in a press release over the newswire was prohibitively expensive, but by using your own newsroom website you are able to embed video, downloadable photos, and other creative content. By centralizing all of your multimedia assets in one place – your online newsroom – you not only help yourself stay organized, but also make it easier for potential customers, journalists and bloggers to find your news.
5) Increase your search engine visibility by creating more relevant content that people like and share. Content is key! Carle Foundation is a best in class example of an organization utilizing this concept. They have “trending topic” pieces based on issues that are currently hot such as the Zika Virus. They have several pieces based on their employees and articles on staying healthy. All of this content can be emailed, shared, pinned, or re-tweeted directly from their newsroom. They are using current trends and their own employees to create fresh and valuable content. This type of approach goes far beyond the traditional press release. This is news content that is relevant and timely making it much more valuable and search engine friendly. Consider trends and issues happening within your industry and try to position your news content to offer a unique angle or provide some more detailed information. By monitoring trends impacting your company, you can leverage your content, research, and perhaps even provide pertinent photos or videos to help complete the story online. Eventually, your brand becomes one that people can rely on to provide such information.
Your online newsroom can be many things: a centralized communications hub, an archive of all press releases, press kits and multimedia. Plus, it can also be a powerful tool for you to promote your news using content marketing. By getting your story, your message into the daily mix of breaking news, you are positioning your brand to become much more visible, creating awareness in social media channels and in the general news consuming public.