How do you combine creativity and business strategy for brand journalism?
- Understand your objectives
- Create a strong brand position through customer engagement
- Be Knowledgeable and practice public relations
- Attend seminars and create a distinct style
To have a degree in journalism and work as a journalist means that you are constantly moving with attempts to capture the dynamic progress of your surroundings. But when it comes to brand journalism, your goal isn’t just to record experiences, but as well as to promote products and sales. In the Philippines, Six Sigma Training aims for operational excellence and is an example of a certification that brand journalists can take in order to ensure that they produce exceptional work as opposed to bland informative narratives.
In the world of brand journalism, there may be a bit of a mix up on how creativity and strategy can work hand in hand. So with that being said, here are tips on how to bridge the gap between creative content and effective marketing strategies.
Understand Your Objectives
Marketing and journalism are two different fields. But it’s not that rare for either one to play a role in the business of the other. Brand journalists aim to do just that. First and foremost, marketers have to understand the fundamental mechanisms of how journalism works and vice versa. Journalism isn’t all about technical writing, and conversely, marketing isn’t all about complex business terms. Both marketers and journalists excel in rich narration and offer an abundance of ideas.
To bridge the gap, you have to understand what qualities you should possess when entering brand journalism. From a business standpoint, your goal is always to share products with the public and make sure they are available for their consumers. Therefore, your write-ups should constantly have the presence of sales as their backbone. Your written work must always be clear and accurate so that it attracts potential clients and customers.
Create a Strong Brand Position Through Customer Engagement
As a brand journalist, your task is not to write a long piece of work which lists the benefits of products, nor is it to create content which only revolves around marketing sales. brand journalism is about tapping into the customer’s passion—their wants and needs which gives them all the more reason to purchase the product or service you wrote about. Here, you write what makes a product worth buying based on the experiences of previous buyers.
Learn to engage with customers. Journalists get their creativity not by sitting in one place and relying on their textbook research, but through seeking out interviews and outside sentiments. Remember, brand journalism focuses on the customer experience. And what better way to know if a product is well-received than through customer encounters?
Focus on creating a strong brand position. When it comes to writing for marketing purposes, you have to keep in mind that other than using smooth and understandable words, you carry the company’s name with your output. This means that, other than enjoying the anecdotes which you put in your write-ups, consumers also want to see the reason why they should connect with your company. It’s about exercising your creativity, but at the same time keeping a close eye on the language, thoughts, heart, and soul of your targeted demographic.
Be knowledgeable and Practice Public Relations
This goes for all journalists. You always have to make sure that you understand the subject at hand. And even though you’re not always focusing your writing on describing a particular product per se, you still have to do your research on what the company stands for and what has kept it afloat and thriving. You can’t just rely purely on consumer feedback.
In terms of public relations, what marketers and journalists have in common is the ability to be an effective communicator and the power to establish connections with their customers. With the combined skills of creative persuasion and adequate knowledge of marketing strategies, brand journalists create a powerful force which draws consumers in.
Attend Seminars and Create a Distinct Style
In the Philippines, Six Sigma Training is an effective program that can develop both journalistic and marketing skills. This type of training hones the potential of each individual to become more productive towards their career path and ensures that there are little to no mistakes when it comes to propagating accuracy and utmost efficiency with work tasks.
Part of a journalist’s techniques is to learn to utilize different writing styles for different situations. In the case of brand journalism, you should be able to adopt a style which helps in establishing a company’s name. It is your writing which will create an impact on an audience for identifying what makes a brand unique.
Key Takeaway
Bridging the gap between marketing and journalism may look like an easy feat, but you have to consider that you are going to engage in learning two different skills—one for creative writing and the other for effective business strategizing. If both aspects are performed well, it does not only forge an understanding between journalism and marketing but may also create an unstoppable force in the world of commerce.