It was fine. Each knows where their particular strengths lie.

One reason – not the only one – is that the first company is an agile start-up, the second a large multinational.

Newsjacking is about jumping on something that has just happened or is even still taking shape and crafting content that dovetails with that topic. (It can be long-form content too, I get that, but rarely is.) I don’t believe it is about trying to exploit bad news or exploiting hashtags with vaguely related posts. Both of those tactics are likely to lead to problems rather than the type of engagement you are after.

Meanwhile long-form is increasingly recognised as valuable on the web. Reader apps and extensions that allow offline consumption help. But for many of us, however we find and consume it, there is always a need to dig deep and that can be satisfied by white papers, ebooks, features, guides and more.

They are just two approaches that work depending on what an organisation is trying to do with content.

But what if a big multinational wants to do newsjacking? It won’t work if it takes them longer than hours or, at most, a day to sign something off.

Newsdesks in the media don’t have the kind of sign-offs that exist in marketing. There are – necessarily – checks and balances. But they’re nothing compared to the lengthy rounds of sign-offs that happen in most companies.

Some brands are getting around this by embracing a newsroom mentality and even a newsroom set-up, replete with corporate journalists. They get lots of attention. But they are the exception.

So for any type of content in your marketing mix, always ask this question: Will our sign-off processes allow this to be successful?

This is the latest in a series of posts about the practicalities of brand journalism.

*photo credit: striatic via photopin cc

-

Follow us on Twitter – @ColContent

Need a corporate blog but don’t have the time or editorial expertise? Try Speech-to-blog, a new corporate blogging service from Collective Content.

Like this type of thing? So sign up to the Collective Content newsletter for a regular digest of posts like this.

The brand journalists among you (with emphasis on the journalist) might consider that a redundant question. You interview someone – in person, over the phone or on camera – and then use some of what they tell you. Or choose not to.

But this piece by Contently (Should Brands Require Sources to Sign Releases for Content Marketing?) asks the question: What would happen if a source later turns around and says they never gave permission to be quoted? What if, for example, they say they didn’t know they might be seen to be endorsing a brand?

Put release forms in front of every subject? Sounds like a pain. They might decline to take part. They might, less obviously, adjust what they would say. Those are just some of the arguments.

But in an age where litigation can spring from the most unlikely places and is often not even about having a real case to bring, should we as a growing industry sit up and take notice?

Recently Paul Keers from White Light Media blogged for the CMA about how the UK’s Department for Culture, Media & Sport was defining what counts as a publication that warrants regulation. Brand publications look like they’re not going to be covered.

You’d think that’d be a good thing. But, as he says, how different are Olive and Waitrose Kitchen?

This is also about the professionalisation of the content marketing industry. If one day some brand publications really are to win Pulitzers then they will have to approach subject matter the same way as the finest media titles or TV shows.

And those guys don’t get release forms for their best journalistic work.

This is the first in a series about the practicalities of brand journalism.

* photo credit: cali.org via photopin cc

-

Follow us on Twitter – @ColContent

Need a corporate blog but don’t have the time or editorial expertise? Try Speech-to-blog, a new corporate blogging service from Collective Content.

Like this type of thing? So sign up to the Collective Content newsletter for a regular digest of posts like this.

One area where brand content sometimes lacks the kind of processes the media has had for decades is quality control. That means multiple sets of eyes checking facts, style, grammar/spelling and the kind of typos and bodges that can happen to anyone.

But time and time again we should be reminded of a shift in power. A headline the other day on the BBC’s news pages ran: ‘How credible is Celtic’s title win?’ The question was being asked because Celtic, a big Scottish football team, have for the first time in a very long time been competing for the top spot in their league without going up against their arch-rivals, Rangers. (It’s a long story.)

But ‘credible’? It was credible. It definitely happened. No disputing that.

Wouldn’t ‘creditable’ have worked better in that case?

It happens all the time and in that case some of you might think we are nitpicking. Or plain wrong. We call out the BBC because its standards are usually high.

What does that mean for brands who are now all but full-on publishers?

One reason standards have declined in some quarters is because editorial departments in the media have been cut and cut. That often means less editing, sub-editing and production work.

For many brands those experts make great hires. They will bring something to the table that most companies don’t have – they’ll have an eye for what works for an audience (your customers) as well as work fast and efficiently in teams, to deadlines.

Most organisations aren’t as lacking in this area as some claim. For years they have known how to create high-quality marketing materials, with skills in design and copywriting of the highest order.

But bringing a media mindset is different. It’s mainly around speed of work and being audience-centric.

This isn’t just about large companies setting up full-on newsrooms. Every organisation using content these days – and most of you are  – should professionalise its processes and see that focus on quality as an investment.

*photo credit: Sidereal via photopin cc
-

Follow us on Twitter – @ColContent

Like this type of thing? So sign up to the Collective Content newsletter for a regular digest of posts like this.

Perhaps that’s because we don’t expect the areas where content is growing most strongly – in content marketing, driven by brands – to be associated with breaking news. Or maybe it is simply not to be trusted, because it comes from companies rather than the Fourth Estate.

In an advisory at the end of last month from Google’s Richard Gingras the thinking was clear – site owners should separate traditional news from “affiliate, promotional, advertorial or marketing materials”.

What’s news?

He noted that “credibility and trust are longstanding journalistic values”.

We get what he means. It is particularly relevant for major media sites such as Forbes, Business Insider and the Huffington Post. They are pursuing native advertising, a type of content marketing, meaning the use of the main content river to place pieces penned by paying clients who are trying an alternative to ad units and – just as importantly – where those ad units would traditionally be placed.

But what about the near-cliché that one day a Pulitzer will go to a brand journalist? That’s what former FT writer Tom Foremski said a few months back (“I think corporate media could win a Pulitzer prize if done right. And I believe it will happen – I’d like to help make that happen.”) Is it inconceivable that a major brand publication couldn’t be the best, even if just for a given article or period?

And we could keep on asking the questions…

- Even though investment in content marketing is on a tear, will it stall if something as powerful as Google hamstrings its effectiveness?

- Is it for Google – or users – to judge whether content is valuable or not? (Those more in the business of social media, with all due respect to Google+, would give a different answer.)

- Are traditional church-and-state media companies even bias-free at all? After all, the vast majority aren’t ad-free bodies. The likes of the BBC, NPR, Which? or Consumer Reports are the exceptions, not the rule.

We live in an era when one third of the 100 most-read UK magazines are from brands. What if they weren’t available on supermarket shelves and checkouts?

We’ve asked lots of questions here and provided few answers. The one thing we’ll say is that regardless of whether including brand content is right or wrong, it might become hard for Google to keep out.

The alternative doesn’t bear thinking about for the biggest brands and media owners.

*photo credit: renaissancechambara via photopin cc

-

Follow us on Twitter – @ColContent

Need a corporate blog but don’t have the time or editorial expertise? Try Speech-to-blog, a new corporate blogging service from Collective Content.

Like this type of thing? So sign up to the Collective Content newsletter for a regular digest of posts like this.

Collective Content (UK), since we set up almost 18 months ago (does that now make us ancient in content marketing terms?), has always been about content strategy. But which strategy?

We know how to work with what you already have, decide on those you should target with content and when, whether mostly to create, curate or ‘other’, and work out what meaningful results will be to you.

But how do you truly tell? We partner with several companies with strong quantitative research capabilities. In fact some of our best content creation is off the back of such research. But from today, we have our own qualitative market research arm.

Headed by experienced market researcher Becky Thompson, Collective Content Market Research will specialise in focus groups, depth interviews and related techniques.

Becky has worked with many big names in technology, telecoms, utilities and government, both B2B and consumer-oriented. This is our chance to find out what your type of customer really wants from you:

-          How they like to engage

-          What kind of content works for them  – or doesn’t

-          What they think of your existing content and marketing

Quant research is important – it gives you data to act upon. Our qual research will give you the words and reasoning to back up your decisions.

Whether to drive your business directly or to drive your content strategy – which ultimately is all about doing business better – contact us to see how we can help you.

Funnily enough, you’ll be hearing more about market research from us from now on.

-

Follow us on Twitter – @ColContent

Need a corporate blog but don’t have the time or editorial expertise? Try Speech-to-blog, a new corporate blogging service from Collective Content.

But this chart tends to get used by us again and again. We don’t care that it is a variation on many a marketing slide or that it promotes Eloqua/Oracle – credit where credit is due.

What’s most important about this chart is that it clearly shows the role of different types of content through the stages of Awareness, Consideration and Close.

That helps us with clients because we can clearly say where can and – just as importantly – can’t help them. (Don’t tell me you’ve never had a client who thought you can do everything.)

We rarely help with viral videos (at the top left) for when people are ‘bored at work’, to use the chart’s language, though we could.

And we definitely don’t help with pricing guides (bottom right). Any brand is best-placed to do that themselves.

But for many of the areas inbetween, it’s worth sounding us out.

-

Follow us on Twitter – @ColContent

Like this type of thing? So sign up to the Collective Content newsletter for a regular digest of posts like this.

Content marketing in general and perhaps particularly native advertising, a sub-set of content marketing that is being used increasingly by traditional online publishers as well as Facebook and Twitter, is getting some stick for supposedly trying to trick or hoodwink audiences.

That’s the criticism levelled by some. (Get ready for the native ads backlash.) Sternberg’s piece does a good job of showing that rarely does a piece of content not carry clear labelling so that any reader or viewer knows its (still) unconventional source. Hell, the Atlantic has even gone all OTT by posting a document showing its advertising guidelines (PDF).

But that’s not the issue.

In our experience audiences are getting used to finding content everywhere – we think the day social networks meant our friends and contacts became effective content creators and distributors changed that equation – and they are increasingly only concerned with whether it is good enough.

Whether it lives in a main news and features column/river or off in an old MPU display unit to one side isn’t a big deal. And by the way, we will see increasingly good content, rather than copy, inside ad units.

No, what readers get upset about is when their quality and subject-matter expectations aren’t fulfilled. That happens all too regularly with some ‘sponsored content’.

The funny thing is that it is more likely to happen when a publisher doesn’t collaborate enough with a brand. That kind of uber church and state philosophy actually makes things worse. The guys at Buzzfeed know a thing or two, it turns out, as one of their teams works with clients such as GE, Microsoft and Virgin Mobile.

But also remember a publication’s own editorial team can be found wanting in terms of quality and not delivering on subject matter expectations.

What’s it going to take to change attitudes – sponsored content that outshines a publication’s own editorial?

*photo credit: origamidon via photopin cc

-

Follow us on Twitter – @ColContent

Like this type of thing? So sign up to the Collective Content newsletter for a regular digest of posts like this.

Need a corporate blog but don’t have the time or editorial expertise? Try Speech-to-blog, a new corporate blogging service from Collective Content.

Collective Content often complains that no one calls out all those bad examples of content marketing. We say this as a content marketing agency because bad work doesn’t help anyone and a culture of mutual backslapping isn’t as constructive as it feels.

It’s not that there haven’t been critics of content marketing in the last year or two – and before that, if we realise it’s existed for a century under different names.

But last week saw several strong pieces, not just saying there are bad apples but that the whole category is contaminated.

First we came across Native Advertising Is Bad News by Mediassociates’ Ben Kunz (@benkunz) writing in Digiday.

Check out the post. Among Kunz’s assertions are that native ads are a “more insidious encroachment into consumer media content than any prior form of advertising”. He’s particularly concerned that publishers and the agencies and brands they work with are trying to hoodwink consumers of the content.

We have always said brand content should be labelled as such, unless it’s bleeding obvious.

Though we’re not sure Kunz has a point when he adds: “Even when the source is disclosed, the attempt of the content to look native confuses readers.”

Really? Increasingly we’ve found audiences value good content, whoever produces it. They’re more confused that anybody would put out poor content.

But do read the rest of what Kunz says. His warnings for publishers – some of whom are big adopters of native ads but still produce strong journalism, in fact one helps fund the other – are chilling.

Also powerful from last week was Robert X Cringely’s (@cringely) Here lies Web journalism, dead at the hand of the almighty advertiser in InfoWorld.

Some of his arguments are similar to Kunz’s. They’re about “online ads masquerading as editorial” and his accounts of free contributions to major sites – some ghost-written by agencies, some from bloggers – actually being funded by undisclosed advertisers are worrying. “Sites with some remaining shred of ethics usually remove them,” he notes.

Both commentators bring up the botched episode with a Church of Scientology piece over at the Atlantic – a publication that is often a shining light of ‘how it should be done’, which is perhaps one reason why everyone reaches for that example. They also speak strongly about integrity and separation of church and state.

The implication is that with native advertising and content marketing more generally you can’t have those things.

Those who stand up to such criticism usually take several lines.

For brands that spend their marketing monies it isn’t such a big issue. Media is nowadays only one of several ways for them to get across their message. The billions that a P&G spends annually on marketing eclipses the revenue at some of the largest media companies. This is sacrilege where I come from but the marketing world is bigger than media.

Next, publishers will generally seek to do native advertising well. They haven’t, by and large, rushed in. (We see this first hand.) They talk about creating processes, separation from their traditional teams of journalists, clear labelling and so on.

And there’s another angle. Some will answer simply “What’s the alternative?”

For one thing, media models have been dying for a decade or more. This isn’t only about the advent of digital publishing – the classic exchanging analogue pounds for digital pennies. Even those digital pennies have become harder to come by.

The last few years have seen CPMs, the rates media owners get for ads, decrease for a number of reasons. Trends such as mobile ads and sophisticated ad tech usually accelerate this. (And is it even in the booming ad tech industry’s interest to see an alternative to display ads start to gain traction?)

And secondly, how effective is online display advertising? Engagement (usually roughly measured by the CTR or click-through rate) is commonly around 0.20% or worse. Imagine you spoke to a group of 10,000 people and only 20 people spoke back.

By doing things exactly the way they’ve been done for many years there is an elite in publishing that will still do well. And there are plenty of media chop shops that the world wouldn’t miss. But inbetween the 1 per cent and the truly awful are hundreds of major, quality brands whose journalism can’t currently pay its own pay.

Publishers need to be embracing native ads and content marketing more generally. If they don’t, their advertisers will only do it elsewhere, through social media or their owned media.

*photo credit: the half-blood prince via photopin cc

-

Follow us on Twitter – @ColContent

Like this type of thing? So sign up to the Collective Content newsletter for a regular digest of posts like this.

Why? In short, they’re messy.

They’re great for certain novelists and poets – oh the poetry! – and students of English literature will have encountered millions of them.

But in business writing, reportage and marketing they can confuse.

They confuse even if used as high school teachers instructed you, for example between two related sentences that can stand on their own as sentences or could otherwise be joined by words such as ‘and’, ‘but’ and ‘yet’.

But in that case, we simply believe in using two separate sentences.

Many non-pros use them liberally (the Mark Twain affliction) or in place of the simple colon. Both these things make us feel a little queasy.

And as for the list exception? Stylistically, online there are quite a few ways to avoid them still. See how it works when you instruct Word or a similar word processor to put in bullet points?

But in a long list, follow this format:

There are few reasons to employ the semi-colon but Collective Content recommends:

-          when separating one long sentence from another in a list format, which can be in a single paragraph or when labelled 1, 2, 3 or a, b, c or such like;

-          when citing computer code verbatim; and

-          when being Samuel Clemens (aka Mr Twain), who remains wonderful in many ways to this day.

Note the word ‘and’ right before the final point. Semi-colons allow that and that’s a good thing, we often think. Also note that this structure should work when you are not able to make use of bullet points – the single, albeit very long, sentence option.

And colons? We love colons. For introducing quotations online and in reportage we consider them sharper than a comma.

For introducing lists – yes, that too.

Instead of a hyphen or the word ‘namely’? Sometimes and usually, we answer.

But that’s for another post in our grammar series.

Further reading

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/semicolon

http://www.informatics.sussex.ac.uk/department/docs/punctuation/node17.html

http://www.economist.com/style-guide/semi-colons

http://www.videojug.com/film/how-to-use-colons-and-semi-colons

* photo credit: ilovememphis via photopin cc

-

Follow us on Twitter – @ColContent

Like this type of thing? So sign up to the Collective Content newsletter for a regular digest of posts like this.

Need to know about events? Buy the e-book, Everything In Moderation: How to chair, moderate and otherwise lead events, by Collective Content (UK) founder Tony Hallett, at Amazon.co.uk.

But this look into the past is vital. Why? Because before companies start to create and curate they should know what they already have.

And most don’t.

It isn’t usually that companies don’t value their past content efforts. Or that they don’t recognise other ‘assets’ as content, in the right context. Or that they don’t know where to look. Though all those can be problems.

It is mainly about the size and complexity of the challenge.

Collective Content has worked on qualitative content audits encompassing several hundred items. That means reading/hearing/viewing those items and recording what they contain. There is no shortcut and it isn’t easy.

So what happens when a content archive spans several hundred items? Thousands? Hundreds of thousands, even?

Those scenarios are increasingly common.

Some companies review meta data only, such as headlines and tags. But that means missing things.

One solution is the random sample. Got 200,000 pieces? Pick every thousandth piece and audit 200 items. But that entails all the pitfalls sampling brings – not just missing things, even whole categories of content, but skewed results.

No, increasingly those involved in content strategy must rely on technology. While there is no silver bullet right now, everything from high-end data offerings (eg Autonomy) to used-every-day Google features to Amazon’s Search Inside the Book tell us this is possible.

Much like good strategists, we must start by considering what already exists.

Collective Content (UK) will  be bringing you more about content audits this year.

*photo credit: Robert S. Donovan via photopin cc

-

Follow us on Twitter – @ColContent

Need a corporate blog but don’t have the time or editorial expertise? Try Speech-to-blog, a new corporate blogging service from Collective Content.

Like this type of thing? So sign up to the Collective Content newsletter for a regular digest of posts like this.