People nowadays tend to avoid typical advertisements. We feel like someone is trying to palm us off with something wherever we go, and we treat content by huge corporations with suspicion. Polish people are one of the most suspicious and wary, as one more time we have been first among the nations using adblockers (according to the latest research by Cloud Technologies nearly every second ad in Poland – exactly 42% – is being blocked by Internet users).

At the same time, we need to emphasize that recipients want to receive useful and reliable information. When there’s a lot of trash news coming in, we want reliable information even more, and we appreciate it. This provides an opportunity for companies to reach their audience – both customers and employees – but only if they can understand their needs and adjust the content. If it meets the criteria, they will get interest, and the users will want to share it.

This is confirmed by this year’s study carried out among Poles by the On Board Think Kong Group, which states that every third employee (33% of the respondents) would post content about the company they work at on their profile on Facebook or LinkedIn if it was interesting.

So there’s no point praising the CEO in the company media or using it as a trash bag for everybody to write about everything. But it’s definitely worth devoting your time to think about the needs of a potential recipient in the context of what you want to tell them, and employing a professional to write or film a good story.

COMPANIES need content which is:

• matching (responding to the needs of a given audience)
• quality (reliability, research)
• individual (telling their own story)
• engaging (causing certain behaviors)

 

A journalist will provide your content with new, better quality

A journalist understands perfectly the essence of the written word, knows what questions the article should answer and what needs it should meet. Professional writers will focus primarily on the reader, and then on the brand, so they are able to find interesting topics and to spot which news is especially interesting for the reader. Sometimes a company might feel that nothing spectacular has happened in a given month and that there’s nothing worth writing about, but after brainstorming with a writer who has been cooperating with the company and knows it inside out, there appear new threads, which are attractive enough to tell about. It is very important that journalists will not focus on showing off their knowledge, but on making the story understandable and persuasive. Before they get down to writing, they will spend time researching, knowing the brand to better understand its interests. All the information gathered is detailed, allowing to create useful and reliable content, which is the most effective way to win recipients’ trust.

JOURNALIST – advantages:

• focus on readers first, then the brand
• good skills (flow, being aware of various writing forms, ability to pick most interesting pieces of information)
• accuracy, building trust and reach
• weaving the best story

 

So, instead of looking at your company editorial board as part of marketing, it’s worth looking at it as a newsroom. Even though some of us may associate this term with chaos and time pressure, it’s more about changing the angle – it can be a manufactory of high-quality content made by professionals. It’s worth finding the strength and courage to make a revolution, as it can give you a much more effective solution strengthening the image of your brand.