Marketing is a fun place to be these days, isn't it? New tools and new technologies and new platforms are giving businesses interesting opportunities to connect with customers in inherently more meaningful ways.

Of course, that's put new pressure on marketers and layered new requirements onto Marketing. Our newly social Web is requiring brands to bulk up their content creation muscles and inject themselves with a kind of social steroid.

It's not enough to simply be creating content—to be publishing blogs and newsletters, and producing webinars and podcasts. Instead, brands have to be consistently creating and sharing really great stuff—not just stuff that's merely good enough.

In content marketing these days, either you rock or you suck. This new era isn't about storytelling; it's about telling a true story well.

Brand Journalism on the Rise

Some companies are looking toward traditional journalism to fill the gaping content maw, hiring those trained in J-school tactics like reporting and storytelling as in-house "brand journalists."

A brand journalist or corporate reporter works inside the company, writing and producing videos, blog posts, photos, webinars, charts, graphs, e-books, podcasts, and other information that delivers value to your marketplace.

Such content creators will convey your company's true story in a compelling way by uncovering the stories about your brand and how your customers are using your products and services; narrating them in a human, accessible way; and sparking conversation about your company, customers, or employees.

In other words, brand journalists bring a reporter's sensibility to your content. They bring an editorial approach to building a brand. Two years ago, Eloqua hired Jesse Noyes from the Boston Business Journal to cover issues related to its business. Others—like Boeing, Home Depot, Radian6, and the Florida Travel and Tourism Board—have hired journalists to either head up or contribute to the content charge. I've detailed in the past why I like this approach.

Marketers newly charged as creators of different kinds of content can learn a lot from the world of journalism. It's not enough for brands to think like a publisher. You also need to act like one. But, lately, I've noticed a lot of companies assuming that we're-all-publishers-now mantra without a clear understanding of the ground rules.

Last week, I noticed that another company had co-opted some content that MarketingProfs had created, scrubbed it free of our branding and other identifiers, and then passed it off as their own. This sort of thing happens all the time on the Web, I know: Bots consistently scrape content and republish it elsewhere with no regard for copyright or ownership.

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10 Ground Rules for Content Marketers

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

image of Ann Handley

Ann Handley is a Wall Street Journal best-selling author who recently published Everybody Writes 2. She speaks worldwide about how businesses can escape marketing mediocrity to ignite tangible results. IBM named her one of the 7 people shaping modern marketing. Ann is the Chief Content Officer of MarketingProfs, a LinkedIn Influencer, a keynote speaker, mom, dog person, and writer.