The internet has radically changed the state of journalism, but content marketing is a relatively new field that can still benefit a lot from the practices of traditional reporters. In the interest of improving the field of content marketing overall, here are nine lessons from traditional journalism that every content marketer should know to better engage and build trust with readers.
1. Create multi-purpose headlines
A 2013 contrastive study from Sage Media shows that most newspaper editors prefer headlines that serve two purposes – capturing attention and conveying information. Many content marketers, on the other hand, create headlines for SEO purposes rather than to engage with their readers, ultimately failing to inspire people to read the articles.
This isn’t to say that you should ignore the importance of including keywords in your content titles, as they remain strong SEO signals. However, if your headlines read awkwardly – as if you’ve struggled to work in clunky keyword mentions – you’ll want to rework them to appeal to both readers and search-engine spiders.
Consider the following article headlines clearly scripted for SEO purposes in 2008 as shared on an archived version of a Suite 101 page:
Second and Third Grade Math Fractions Lesson
Goals for Teacher Improvement
Negligence And Canadian Tort Law
Though those articles performed well seven years ago, they would do a poor job of engaging with today’s reader. When the keywords from the 2008 headlines are entered into Google now, the following headlines appear:
Introduction to Fractions Lesson Plan, Worksheet Activity, Teaching Elementary Math
5 Goals Teachers Should Shoot For This School Year
Torts – Best Sources in Canadian Law by Topic
Clearly, these headlines weren’t as heavily optimized for SEO, but they still rank well and more importantly, they’re far more engaging and informative for potential readers.
2. Avoid using click-bait headlines
A few months ago, Facebook conducted a survey that showed 80% of readers wanted headlines to communicate the purpose of the article, inspiring the social media site to create a policy against click-bait headlines.
Traditional journalists always have understood that while headlines need to be interesting enough to lure readers, they also need to genuinely communicate the content’s message to earn the reader’s trust.
In fact, in some ways, content marketers must put even more of a premium on headline construction than print journalists. The sales of print publications depend largely on above-the-fold, front-page headlines – either the issue is intriguing enough to make the sale and generate revenue for the publisher or it’s not.
For content marketers, headlines represent only the first step in the sales process. If a headline reads too “spammy,” the reader won’t likely engage further with the brand, significantly diminishing the ability of the marketer to close the sale.
Use this understanding to create digital headlines that both capture readers’ attention and inform them on the content’s subject. It’s a difficult balance, but one that can be achieved with practice. Let’s take a look at one of the examples to see this process in action:
Example: “Goals for Teacher Improvement” is a headline that doesn’t really tell readers what to expect from the content. How many goals will be covered? What’s the time frame for achievement? Why is it important for readers to take a look at the article anyway?
Now look at the improved version: “5 Goals Teachers Should Shoot for This Year.” This headline does a much better job of managing the readers’ expectation of the content. It:
Conveys that five specific goals will be laid out, making the scope of the article much less nebulous and giving readers a better idea of what to expect.
Uses “this year” to indicate that the content is timely and can be implemented in a way that will lead to immediately attainable improvements.
Creates a sense of urgency, giving readers a reason to click right away in order to avoid falling behind other teachers.
3. Know your audience
Understanding your readers is the key to creating content that will resonate with them, a reality that conventional journalists have understood for decades. In his book, The Marketplace of Attention: How Audiences Take Shape in a Digital Age, James G. Webster writes: “Very few readers get the total package anymore. And so even on an editorial level, our understanding of audiences, and what motivates them to give us their time and attention, has never been more important.”
This concept is even more important for content marketers who typically target a more niche audience than those targeted by conventional media publications. Take, for example, Cosmopolitan magazine, which targets a broad audience of self-identified trendy women in any geographic location, or The Wall Street Journal, which tailors its content to business readers in a huge variety of industries.
Now, compare those media outlets with a Los Angeles law firm that focuses on intellectual property. Because the firm’s target audience has much more specific needs, it is vital that this type of business – and any other content marketer targeting a niche following – learns as much as possible about its potential readers.
Traditional publications routinely test their headlines and content to see what connects with readers. The digital nature of content marketers’ work provides them with a much greater number of tools and techniques that can be used for this content-testing purpose:
Use your comment sections to pose questions to readers to understand their positions and interests. Respond to all comments left and ask follow-up questions that further enhance your knowledge.
Make good use of tools such as Google Analytics, Alexa, Compete.com, and the analytics tools provided by social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter to learn more about the demographics of your audience.
Analyze previous content to see what worked — such as which blog posts received the most social shares — to determine what content formats readers find most appealing and which subjects resonate best.
Understanding your readers takes work, but it’s worth the extra effort to deliver more engaging content.
4. Verify authenticity of every claim
Journalists have long known that readers aren’t forgiving of reporters who don’t check their facts, and content marketers should strive for similar due diligence. If you aren’t 100% confident that the information you gather is accurate, dig deeper to develop a more thorough understanding. There are a number of different ways you can do this:
Review source material independently. If you see a statistic quoted or a study referenced, don’t just take it at face value. Instead, find the original report and confirm that the citations or conclusions are accurate.
Contact sources directly. It’s common for content marketers to reprint source quotes found on other websites, but a reprint doesn’t fly in the world of traditional journalism. Instead, reach out to the quoted experts (or other professionals with expertise on the subject) and gather your own, unique quoted content.
Hire fact checkers. If you’re pressed for time, it may make more sense to pay someone to verify the sources. A good fact checker should be familiar with your subject material and can be hired on a freelance basis.
As a content marketer, you should consider doing firsthand research on the topics about which you write. For example, if you’re creating content about a software program that a client just launched, ask if you can try using it yourself to get the full experience of the product. You also may find it helpful to interview software users to gather their firsthand accounts about what the product can and can’t do.
5. Balance current news with evergreen content
Traditional journalists make it a point to create timeless content that can be used when another article is shelved at the last minute or an unexpected boost in page count creates additional space. Your editorial calendar should function the same way. Covering current events in your industry is certainly important, but you’ll want to balance this with evergreen content to meet your audience’s needs.
Finding this balance can be tricky, but the following guidelines can help:
Brainstorm and produce evergreen content ideas for at least three months at a time. One of the easiest ways to do this is to think about the questions your customers ask most frequently. Building content pieces around the answers to these questions results in materials that can be deployed successfully at any point.
Use your analytics to determine the appropriate publishing ratio. Different audiences will respond differently to editorial calendars that feature more news than evergreen content and vice versa. The only way to know what will work best for your audience is to test publishing ratios and measure the data generated by your experiments.
Conduct regular editorial meetings to determine how and when front-page topics should change. Take a lesson from traditional newspaper staffs and bring every member of your content team together periodically to assess how well published topics are performing and when changes should be made.
Of course, you always need to be flexible when it comes to publishing newsworthy content. If a major news story breaks out in your industry, it may be important to run with it – even if you’ve already met the number of news-related blog posts your weekly publishing ratio dictates.
6. Minimize distractions
A recent study from the University of Houston found that readers are about 26% more likely to remember stories they read in the newspaper as compared to those they read on the internet. Assistant Professor Arthur D. Santana, the study’s lead author, cited a number of possible reasons, but the efforts traditional journalists undertake to minimize distractions seem to be the most plausible explanation. Newspaper formats allow traditional journalists to minimize distractions because they can present only one or two pages at a time. Content marketers, on the other hand, must contend with multiple points of entry in a single view – banner ads, related post links, calls to action, etc., that all prompt viewers to leave the page they’re reading.
While it’s true that content marketers need to include calls to action to meet conversion goals and links to external sources to support their points, you also must be careful about introducing unnecessary distractions that could steal readers’ attention such as:
Web sign-up forms
Numerous flashy banner advertisements
Email subscription boxes
Multiple images
Unnecessary links to internal or external content pieces
Certainly, all of these potential distractions have their place on websites, but marketers should evaluate how much each one is worth when compared to the potential sacrifice of some readers.
7. Practice brutal honesty
As a content marketer, your voice may be biased toward promoting a given product or service, but you can still take a lesson from traditional journalists’ need to be brutally honest.
Reporters take great efforts to disclose possible biases influencing their work to provide an honest depiction of the article’s context and facts. Doing so helps them to earn readers’ trust – something that content marketers should make a priority as well. Here are some ways to build trust:
Describe the nature of your relationship with third-party reporting or external contributors, noting if any financial arrangement exists.
Clarify the context on which you recommend external articles, products, or resources. Are you a satisfied user yourself? Are you being compensated in some way? Are you merely repeating a recommendation you’ve heard from others?
While it may feel strange to offer these types of disclosures to your readers, doing so can lead to increased brand trust and the perception of your brand as an ethical authority.
8. Look for the bigger picture
Historically, the most effective journalists write stories that play into larger trends. Following trade media to gauge the direction of your industry will give you the insight to see the big picture.
As you might expect, you’ll have an easier time building a loyal reader base if you demonstrate such a thorough understanding of your industry that you’re able to offer solutions to your audience’s toughest issues and provide reasonable speculation about the future.
One way to do this would be to recap all the new stories published over the past year that pertain to a relevant topic in your industry by highlighting the commonalities among them. You also could write about a recent event in the context of previous events. Consider the following examples (one hypothetical and one real):
Suppose your industry is affected by the recent economic stimulus policy in Europe. Rather than simply recap the event, discuss the outcomes of similar practices in the United States or Iceland to help readers understand what to expect.
When Google penalized two content-publishing platforms last year, Search Engine Watch’s Jennifer Slegg wrote about how the penalties reflected Google’s clear commitment to penalizing spam content marketing strategies and issued recommendations that all publishers should follow.
Keep in mind that, while readers may find particular stories interesting, they’re generally more interested in learning about the broader implications of the articles they consume.
9. Create fresh material
Some journalists often use recent stories as a source for their own content. Old-school journalists have always strived to stand out by conducting their own analyses and interviewing experts, instead of using other articles as sources. Content creators would be wise to take this lesson to heart in order to maintain the interest of their readers and stand out from industry copycats.
Now, I want to hear from you. How do you think traditional journalism contributes to the process of content creation? Or does it represent a dated approach to sharing news? Sound off in the comments.
Want more instruction on how to manage today’s biggest content marketing challenges? Sign up for the Content Marketing Institute Online Training and Certification program. Access over 35 courses, taught by experts from Google, Mashable, SAP, and more.
Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute
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