I owe the idea in this post to a conversation I had with David Meerman Scott, author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR.
Most every business these days is really a publishing business of some sort, whether they think that way or not. The need to produce lots and lots of educational content has become standard operating fare in today’s Internet search driven marketing world. But, publishing content in blog posts, ebooks and articles, while considered compulsory, is not the easiest thing to do for some.
A smart move that businesses should consider these days is to hire a journalist, rather than a marketing person, to act as their primary content producer. If you think of your business as a publishing business, the need for journalists becomes obvious.
- An experienced journalist will usually look at content in the objective, source driven, and factual way they’ve been trained – precisely the way that marketing content must be viewed and communicated these days.
- An experienced journalist knows how to start with the kernel of an idea and develop an entire story quickly – another key success factor in more is more publishing business.
- An experienced journalist, particularly one that’s worked in your industry, may possess key contacts throughout your industry and with publications that cover your industry – making them much more than a content production machine.
The good news, for you at least, is that there is a growing pool of very experienced journalists finding themselves without a publication to write for as traditional publishing operations downsize and go out of business, so now is a great time to snap one up, even if just for a few hours of work a week.
