Why a journalist should run your brand

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Marketers and journalists will fundamentally disagree on the best way to create content. Marketers and PR professionals are hard-wired to put the product/company first. Journalists put the consumer first. For this reason alone - but several more - journalists should be in the box seat when it comes to running a newsroom - be it for the media or a brand.

Informing vs promoting: It is naturally tempting to spruik the awesomeness of the company and its products or services. However, this process can lead to losing sight of the customer's needs. Journalists have it drilled into them that their audience/readership is the end goal, so they create balanced content accordingly. Why does this make such a difference?

People fundamentally don't care about the myriad brands competing for their eyeballs and dollars, but they do care about making informed choices. Not all content needs to be about the company and its products/services. It is important to have content that aligns with the brand's values. But what consumer wants to see is article after video after article about the same thing, with a different flavour.

If brands are brave enough to allow their content to provide balance, giving consumers the whole picture, they will gain consumer trust.

Speed: Any journalist worth his or her salt will treat deadlines as their deity. While marketers take the long view with their campaigns, journalists are used to knocking out high quality stories within minutes, hours, or days. This trait is absolutely vital for the real-time marketing required of a brand newsroom.

Efficiency: Any journalist (or more specifically, the editor or chief of staff) is trained to quickly filter content for any red flags like defamatory language or other legal issues, as well as edit for tone, style, and length. The trend to have several layers of approval destroys the momentum of a fast-breaking story. This applies to not just social media content, but blog posts, newsletter or website content, and video/audio. Brands would be smart to appoint a trained editor/senior journalist with sub-editing experience and media law knowledge as the head of their newsroom.

Experience: Any journalist knows that a variety of sources inform and add depth to a story. There is a trend for agency social media specialists (particularly, those under 30s) to trawl social media to the exclusion of TV, radio, and newspapers and magazines (print and digital). Journalists know that many of their best colleagues still work in traditional media and listen to what they have to say. This, in turn, can lead to news relevant to a brand newsroom.

The author is Shane J Cummings, editor-in-chief at APN Educational Media. Re-printed with permission. Link: https://www.linkedin.com /pulse/ article/20140914082618-218492316-why-a-journalist-should-run-your-brand-newsroom?trk=prof-post