How Brand Journalism Is Building Brand Equity in Lukewarm Industries

Do you follow any “unsexy” companies on Instagram? Maybe that time you popped by your local hardware store to have a copy of a key made, you saw a sign advertising the business is on Instagram. You followed them for the heck of it only to find that the content they share awkwardly interrupts your carefully curated feed of inspiring quotes and National Geographic travel photography.

In this world of professionally branded startups, newsworthy unicorns, and hot-to-trot retailers, unsexy industries just don’t have the same kinds of opportunities for audience growth and engagement as their stickier counterparts. However, these areas of business that lack press pizazz do have incredible potential when it comes to creating news-you’ll-use content via brand journalism.

But before taking a look at organizations in less-steamy industries that have been building brand equity with the help of owned media, it’s worth pointing out that brand journalism is a different beast than content marketing (though many argue that they’re one in the same).

Mark Ragan, CEO of Ragan Communications, has been helping brands build their own news publications in-house for years, backing their strategies with the premise:

Why pitch a story to a bogged-down reporter when you can publish a high-quality news article yourself?

He has a point. Ragan explains, “I view (content marketing) as advertising disguised as stories about people using products. Brand Journalism is about covering your niche, whether you’re a hospital covering heroin addiction in your community or a public utility giving advice on how to collect water in a rain barrel — two stories our clients actually published.”

In an article published by Forbes, Lewis Dvorkin, who covers the intersection of digital journalism and social media, says brand journalism is the act of “marketers using the tools of digital publishing and social media to speak directly to consumers,” removing the middlemen of info consumption.

The goals of content marketing and brand journalism vary greatly from one another too:

• Content marketing generates and pushes leads down the funnel.
• Brand journalism builds trust through owned media that often has the potential to be syndicated by news outlets (when done well).

Utility companies such as Denver Water have been able to gain national recognition from the press due to their brand journalism efforts. The Colorado utility company’s communications team published a comical open letter on its owned news site criticizing rapper Jay Z for stating that water is, in fact, free. Within days, the letter was recapped by Time Magazine and Entertainment Weekly online, garnering press mentions in news and lifestyle publications the utility company may have struggled to land without the help of brand publishing.

Omaha Public Power District regularly publishes articles on its barebones-yet-efficient owned media site The Wire, as does Duke Energy via its site, illumination, which“double-downed” on brand journalism and community-focused storytelling after an environmental accident in 2014. Duke Energy’s communications team regularly holds “newsroom meetings” where employees pitch story ideas and reinvent tired topics to continue the organization’s narrative in an “owned” way.

Healthcare has the bug too. Cape Cod Healthcare’s OneCape Health News covers health and wellness topics, from how to protect yourself from tick-borne infections to how to make the decision of whether or not to have breast reconstruction surgery easier for cancer patients. Mayo Clinic’s News Network and Cleveland Clinic are a few more examples of health organizations making strides with the newsroom mentality all the while better-serving patients content that helps to solve their problems.

The Brand Journalism Advantage podcast host Phoebe Chongchua advises, “Learn to be the media and tell your own story in a way that’s interesting and connects you to your core audience. Share helpful, balanced stories. Every company can be a media company.”

Instead of relying on traditional media to find interest in and distribute your news, take the reigns, as Chongchua and Ragan suggest, and publish what you believe matters most to your customers yourself. There will always be a place for media relations and nailing placements in the big-name publications our CEOs so covet through public relations and communications efforts. Just keep in mind that there’s more than one pathway to press…

This post was originally published on LinkedIn. Tweet to @LVstruck