Just as not all content marketers are storytellers, not all content tells a story. Oh, and most journalists know how to meet deadlines, which makes them fast, reliable and dependable, all of which are valuable qualities for a content producer. However, once you can identify these five elements, you can take them far beyond the confines of a brief, impersonal news report and begin to craft a compelling narrative with a beginning, middle and end – in other words, a story. Journalists usually focus on these five elements so that they can distill a potentially complex topic into a digestible news story that can be crammed into the precious column inches of a newspaper. Now, you could be forgiven for thinking that most news reports don’t read like stories – and you’d be right. Journalists are taught to identify the “Five Ws” of information gathering, which form the basis of any news story: Compared to traditional reporting, many content marketing positions pay more, come with better benefits, and offer more job security, making them highly desirable to journalists who have become jaded by the rigors of the newsroom or the pressures of freelancing.Īnother benefit of hiring journalists to fill content roles is their training. This has resulted in thousands of journalists seeking editorial roles outside of typical newspapers – including the marketing field. If you’re expanding your content team or thinking of creating one, there are several reasons that a journalist could be a good fit.įor starters, the slow, agonizing death of the traditional newspaper industry has forced newsrooms across the country to radically downsize their teams. The Benefits of Hiring Journalists for Content Roles Well-known brands such as Coca-Cola and Microsoft caught on early that, no matter how skilled a writer may be, without at least some journalistic skills, their work will lack the qualities necessary to be considered a story. Hire a journalist and your content can have snappy headlines like this.Īlongside “storytelling,” the terms “brand journalism” and “embedded journalism” have become painfully trendy in marketing circles. Interestingly, while many content marketing managers are actively seeking individuals with professional storytelling experience, far fewer are trying to hire actual journalists to fill these roles. True “stories” tend to be longer than the typical blog post, but they are most definitely not one and the same. You could write a 10,000 word blog post about paid search, but without a distinct beginning, middle and end, compelling characters and an overarching theme, it will just be a long blog post – NOT a story. Many content marketers confuse long-form content with storytelling, but a story is not defined by its word count. In fact, many content marketers are ideally suited to learning the art of storytelling and how it applies to their job, but far fewer have experience of actually crafting engaging stories, especially in a business storytelling environment.ĭespite this, “storytelling” has become one of the most insufferable content marketing buzzwords during the past couple of years, and it shows no sign of losing its luster any time soon. This is not to say that to learn would be beyond them. You can’t see it from this angle, but there’s a huge WordStream logo on the other side.įew content marketers possess either the skill or ability to truly tell stories with their content it’s one of the biggest challenges in content marketing. Just because I’ve filed tax returns in the past doesn’t make me a certified public accountant, and just because I drive a car doesn’t mean I can quit writing and join the professional stock car racing circuit. However, even the most experienced bloggers and content marketers are not necessarily “storytellers.”īloggers and content producers with no demonstrable experience in storytelling who claim otherwise are misleading themselves and their clients or future employers. Indeed, marketing as a discipline involves, if not requires, a great deal of creativity – and not just on the content side. Most people like to think of themselves as creative. Most Content Marketers are NOT Storytellers In today’s post, I’m going to talk about why this, as Sagmeister so succinctly puts it, is bullshit. We keep hearing about the importance of storytelling in content marketing, how marketers “need” to become storytellers, and how audiences respond strongly to storytelling within a content marketing context. See the documentation for more information.Īlthough Sagmeister is referring to the concept of the self-styled storyteller within the context of design, his remarks are equally applicable to content marketing. No video provider was found to handle the given URL.
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