Right now a conversation is happening. While your website is communicating a message to your customer in one space another discussion is happening elsewhere.
This conversation is continuous, twenty-four hours a day. And it is not just a verbal discourse. It is a multimedia debate happening across continents, with opinions about your company voiced through videos, through viral media and in live forums.
These linked multifaceted dialogues present an opportunity for your brand to talk about itself to consumers, in their world.
Joining the Conversation
Always-on media presents the opportunity and certainly the reality, according to a report by research company Forrester, that ‘We are all publishers now.’ To stay ahead of the game your company must be part of that conversation.
At Amaze we are seeing a more measured approach to reliance on social media. People look to your brand and to the press as their primary source of information. They want to know your latest news, your services and your ethics as an organisation. Your voice matters and consumers want to hear what you have to say.
Bringing in professional journalists to create multimedia news content may seem like an alien notion. But by working with your PR department, journalists can bridge the gap between the corporate world and the consumers’ world. This presents an unparalleled way to conversing with your customers.
Through Corporate Journalism we can make people aware of our thoughts and our thinking. We are also recognising that consumers are not only interested in the brand and the product you are providing but also your role in the world.
Telling our Story
Content must be new and of interest to its audience whilst also moving the brand story forward. It must reach across forums, linking twitter to blogs, to your website, to other places online and offline where there is information relevant to the perception of your company.
This fresh method of communication sees a partnership between the art of PR and the skills of the journalist. Both include storytelling and see a two-way dialogue with an audience. Recognising the relationship between each discipline gives us the platform for this new technique.
A Journalist can become part of the conversation that your customer is having. They can tell stories, impart information and can see the dissemination of media across the different digital and traditional platforms.
If, as the Forrester report concluded ‘The objective is to produce marketing content as desired as the product itself’ then to move forward in the world of disseminated media people are needed who understand social networking and who can tell our story through multimedia content.
Humanising Not Hiding
With Corporate Journalism not only can we create trust in our company and in turn our product, but we can also humanise the corporation. And by humanising ourselves we are solidifying our presence in a fragmented media solar system where the brand lives everywhere
Exposure can be frightening, after all the corporate remit has not traditionally included the role of publisher. But now that the brand is an always-on entity there is nowhere to hide, the only way forward is to engage in the conversation.
Article appeared in Mad.co.uk, by Natalie Gross, Managing Partner at Amaze