What is brand journalism? + How to develop a winning strategy
Afoma Umesi
GatherContent Contributor, Writer
Content marketing works. If you've been looking for a way to leverage content marketing to grow your business alongside SEO content, consider brand journalism.
Brand journalism has historically been more popular in the business-to-consumer (B2C) space. Still, many business-to-business (B2B) companies are adopting this format to boost their authority and connect with like-minded marketers, entrepreneurs, and business leaders. In this article, we’ll discuss what brand journalism means, how it can benefit your business, and how you can create brand journalism content that connects with your audience.
What is brand journalism?
Brand journalism (also known as corporate journalism) refers to using journalistic storytelling about a company with the goal of marketing, improving public relations, or building awareness about the brand.
Brand journalism writing is unique because it borrows elements from newsroom journalism, content marketing, public relations, and corporate communications like press releases.
Like in traditional journalism, brand journalists focus on telling a true, objective story about the brand they’re highlighting. They often draw on company values and goals, as well as industry trends and pressing social issues.
Brand journalism is not sales-driven and is typically not crafted for the company’s target audience alone. Instead, it is geared toward storytelling and designed to appeal to the public.
The result is often accessible brand stories published on the company website. These articles endear readers to the brand, attract potential customers, and generate conversations about the brand on social media and even media outlets.
Benefits of brand journalism
Although brand journalism often does not drive sales directly, the benefits of successful brand journalism can positively affect your company’s bottom line. Here are three ways brand journalism benefits businesses.
1. Create brand awareness
For customers to buy your products or services, they need to know you exist.
Top-of-the-funnel (TOFU) SEO content can reach members of your audience who use search engines regularly. However, brand journalism can generate visibility on various platforms, including social media and news publications.
Better still, journalistic content may appeal to a different audience who may not currently be in your target demographic. These people will first think of your company the next time someone they know needs your services.
2. Foster brand likability
Many consumers can smell content marketing a mile away—and they don’t like it. Brand journalism is a smart way to stand out in a sea of preachy, overtly salesy SEO content.
According to Stackla, 88% of consumers say that authenticity plays a role in deciding which brands to support. Sharing stories of your employees, how your company stands by its values, or what’s hot in your industry without the classic marketing calls-to-action can be refreshingly authentic for your audience. This, in turn, will make your brand more likable, and you’ll be top of mind whenever consumers have problems your products can solve.
3. Build thought leadership status
Research shows that having a solid reputation is one reason why consumers become loyal to brands. Sharing high-quality content about industry issues can position your company and its people as thought leaders in the space.
Brand journalism can build trust and credibility not just in your content but also in your products, values, and expertise. This easily translates to becoming a more reputable company, which is beneficial for driving sales and overall growth.
How does brand journalism work?
While it includes some features of traditional marketing and writing for media platforms, brand journalism isn’t exactly like either. So if you’ve only created SEO content, brand journalism can feel like wading into intimidating uncharted territory. We’ll break it into actionable steps for you.
1. Develop a brand journalism strategy
Like content marketing, brand journalism requires a marketing strategy to succeed. However, this is a different kind of content game. To build your brand journalism strategy, consider the following:
Your audience: Who is your content for? How wide an audience do you hope to engage? Brand journalism typically targets a wide audience, but visualizing your ideal readers will help you stay on track with your content goals.
Content types and formats: Which kinds of content creation will you focus on? Will you be writing articles about your company’s values, publishing podcast interviews with industry leaders, or running interviews with company employees in your newsletter? Decide which kinds of content will best support your strategy and choose the best distribution channels for them.
Content goals: Do you want to build brand awareness, increase social media visibility, or become an industry thought leader? Will you be creating any bottom-of-the-funnel content to support causes or grow your company somehow? Which metrics will you use to measure your success? Knowing your goal will make content ideas easier to source.
Tone: Creating an editorial style guide to maintain a consistent brand voice and tone will make your content more trustworthy and memorable.
With your strategy in mind, you can also perform keyword research to see which search terms align with your strategy. This is a great way to kill two birds with a stone—maintaining a strong brand journalist voice while tapping into search engine content.
2. Use your experts
With brand journalism content, take advantage of expertise to make your articles informative and entirely unique to your company.
Ideally, company employees should write your brand stories, but where this is not possible, consider outsourcing the project to ghostwriters and assigning bylines to your employees. Enrich the articles by basing them on interviews with actual employees, experts, and even customers and featuring their insights.
If you’ll be writing industry trend pieces, you can assign these to writers and interview external subject matter experts to create a more well-rounded article.
3. Tell the truth
Journalism is built on the foundation of truth-telling. Don’t whitewash or “greenwash” your company to make it more appealing to readers. Avoid half-truths and inaccuracies in your stories, as these could easily undermine your efforts.
When sharing industry trends or investigating industry issues, invest in thorough research. If you can’t do the research, only use data from reliable sources. When using quotes or statistics, be sure to credit the sources appropriately.
4. Take a stand
There’s no room for diplomacy with brand journalism. A recent survey showed that
“62% of customers want companies to take a stand on current and broadly relevant issues like sustainability, transparency or fair employment practices.”
The best way to reflect strong company values is to have opinions and share them. You don’t need to be crude or offensive, but being clear about where your company stands on major issues will help build trust and confidence in your brand.
8 exceptional brand journalism examples from our community
Because there’s nothing better than seeing things in practice, we’ve rounded up eight brilliant examples of companies connecting with their audience by telling stories about their brands.
#Paid (Banknotes)
#Paid’s Banknotes blog is excellent at tying industry news and trends into helpful articles for social media content creators. The site obviously knows its audience well and stays away from boring formulaic SEO content. This article on the viral Sing 2 TikTok campaign features quotes from industry experts and ends with valuable takeaways for the audience.
SparkToro Office Hours
The audience research tool SparkToro is designed to help users figure out their audience’s interests. SparkToro uses its bi-monthly live video sessions, accurately termed SparkToro Office Hours, to help its audience improve their marketing skills.
Hosts Rand Fishkin and Amanda Natividad bring on industry experts to make the sessions more informative. It’s a wonderful way to connect with potential and future customers while creating brand awareness and potentially lead generation.
Paystack’s Artwork
African Fintech giant Paystack runs a YouTube interview series called Artwork featuring creative entrepreneurs. In each short (under 15-minutes long) episode, viewers learn something about managing a small business—whether it’s maintaining professional communication with clients, crafting winning pitches, or scaling a freelance business.
Small business owners make up a large percentage of Paystack’s customer base, so this is a genius way to drive brand awareness without being salesy.
CMO by Adobe
Adobe’s CMO blog is almost entirely unrelated to the products they’re known for and has garnered a reputation as a site for digital leaders. The blog is a prime example of brand journalism, sharing everything from trends and research to customer stories.
Hotjar’s Blog
The Hotjar blog features articles showcasing the company’s culture, mission, and values. Each article is written by a company employee and tackles a wide range of topics from supporting employee side projects to running a sustainable business.
Telling brand stories is a fantastic way to stand out from other companies within the analytics space, where other companies may focus on SEO blog content.
Fellow app Supermanagers Podcast
Fellow is a software that helps companies have more productive meetings. It may be surprising to hear then that the company runs the Supermanagers podcast about being a great manager.
The podcast is on its 100th episode and has featured leaders from Mastercard, Coursera, Stripe, and other leading companies. Because it appeals to podcast-loving managers or leaders, it’s a clever way to draw company leadership’s attention to the Fellow’s meeting app (and score buy-in with credibility already locked-in).
Buffer’s Open Blog
Although Buffer shares SEO blog content, its Open Blog is focused on sharing transparent company updates about culture, salaries, work-life balance, and other relevant issues. Buffer has also been vocal about its support for remote work and four-day workweeks and has won the admiration of many customers (and non-customers) for its stand.
The Red Bulletin by Red Bull
Red Bull’s The Red Bulletin magazine is one of the quintessential brand journalism examples. Since 2005, the fitness lifestyle magazine, powered by energy drink Red Bull, has been sharing stories about athletes, culture, music, entrepreneurship, and lifestyle. The magazine is available digitally and in print in several countries and languages, including German and English.
Tell your brand story through brand journalism
Content marketing has proven effective, but if you want an edge over your competitors, it may be time to use brand journalism. Share your company’s viewpoints on industry trends, invite potential customers into your company’s day-to-day affairs, and inspire readers to make changes while generating brand awareness.
Whatever you decide to do, GatherContent is equipped to support your content efforts. With a content planning and production hub, you can build an editorial calendar, set up content workflows, collaborate on articles, and publish to your content management system (CMS) seamlessly.
Brand journalism has historically been more popular in the business-to-consumer (B2C) space. Still, many business-to-business (B2B) companies are adopting this format to boost their authority and connect with like-minded marketers, entrepreneurs, and business leaders. In this article, we’ll discuss what brand journalism means, how it can benefit your business, and how you can create brand journalism content that connects with your audience.
What is brand journalism?
Brand journalism (also known as corporate journalism) refers to using journalistic storytelling about a company with the goal of marketing, improving public relations, or building awareness about the brand.
Brand journalism writing is unique because it borrows elements from newsroom journalism, content marketing, public relations, and corporate communications like press releases.
Like in traditional journalism, brand journalists focus on telling a true, objective story about the brand they’re highlighting. They often draw on company values and goals, as well as industry trends and pressing social issues.
Brand journalism is not sales-driven and is typically not crafted for the company’s target audience alone. Instead, it is geared toward storytelling and designed to appeal to the public.
The result is often accessible brand stories published on the company website. These articles endear readers to the brand, attract potential customers, and generate conversations about the brand on social media and even media outlets.
Benefits of brand journalism
Although brand journalism often does not drive sales directly, the benefits of successful brand journalism can positively affect your company’s bottom line. Here are three ways brand journalism benefits businesses.
1. Create brand awareness
For customers to buy your products or services, they need to know you exist.
Top-of-the-funnel (TOFU) SEO content can reach members of your audience who use search engines regularly. However, brand journalism can generate visibility on various platforms, including social media and news publications.
Better still, journalistic content may appeal to a different audience who may not currently be in your target demographic. These people will first think of your company the next time someone they know needs your services.
2. Foster brand likability
Many consumers can smell content marketing a mile away—and they don’t like it. Brand journalism is a smart way to stand out in a sea of preachy, overtly salesy SEO content.
According to Stackla, 88% of consumers say that authenticity plays a role in deciding which brands to support. Sharing stories of your employees, how your company stands by its values, or what’s hot in your industry without the classic marketing calls-to-action can be refreshingly authentic for your audience. This, in turn, will make your brand more likable, and you’ll be top of mind whenever consumers have problems your products can solve.
3. Build thought leadership status
Research shows that having a solid reputation is one reason why consumers become loyal to brands. Sharing high-quality content about industry issues can position your company and its people as thought leaders in the space.
Brand journalism can build trust and credibility not just in your content but also in your products, values, and expertise. This easily translates to becoming a more reputable company, which is beneficial for driving sales and overall growth.
How does brand journalism work?
While it includes some features of traditional marketing and writing for media platforms, brand journalism isn’t exactly like either. So if you’ve only created SEO content, brand journalism can feel like wading into intimidating uncharted territory. We’ll break it into actionable steps for you.
1. Develop a brand journalism strategy
Like content marketing, brand journalism requires a marketing strategy to succeed. However, this is a different kind of content game. To build your brand journalism strategy, consider the following:
Your audience: Who is your content for? How wide an audience do you hope to engage? Brand journalism typically targets a wide audience, but visualizing your ideal readers will help you stay on track with your content goals.
Content types and formats: Which kinds of content creation will you focus on? Will you be writing articles about your company’s values, publishing podcast interviews with industry leaders, or running interviews with company employees in your newsletter? Decide which kinds of content will best support your strategy and choose the best distribution channels for them.
Content goals: Do you want to build brand awareness, increase social media visibility, or become an industry thought leader? Will you be creating any bottom-of-the-funnel content to support causes or grow your company somehow? Which metrics will you use to measure your success? Knowing your goal will make content ideas easier to source.
Tone: Creating an editorial style guide to maintain a consistent brand voice and tone will make your content more trustworthy and memorable.
With your strategy in mind, you can also perform keyword research to see which search terms align with your strategy. This is a great way to kill two birds with a stone—maintaining a strong brand journalist voice while tapping into search engine content.
2. Use your experts
With brand journalism content, take advantage of expertise to make your articles informative and entirely unique to your company.
Ideally, company employees should write your brand stories, but where this is not possible, consider outsourcing the project to ghostwriters and assigning bylines to your employees. Enrich the articles by basing them on interviews with actual employees, experts, and even customers and featuring their insights.
If you’ll be writing industry trend pieces, you can assign these to writers and interview external subject matter experts to create a more well-rounded article.
3. Tell the truth
Journalism is built on the foundation of truth-telling. Don’t whitewash or “greenwash” your company to make it more appealing to readers. Avoid half-truths and inaccuracies in your stories, as these could easily undermine your efforts.
When sharing industry trends or investigating industry issues, invest in thorough research. If you can’t do the research, only use data from reliable sources. When using quotes or statistics, be sure to credit the sources appropriately.
4. Take a stand
There’s no room for diplomacy with brand journalism. A recent survey showed that
“62% of customers want companies to take a stand on current and broadly relevant issues like sustainability, transparency or fair employment practices.”
The best way to reflect strong company values is to have opinions and share them. You don’t need to be crude or offensive, but being clear about where your company stands on major issues will help build trust and confidence in your brand.
8 exceptional brand journalism examples from our community
Because there’s nothing better than seeing things in practice, we’ve rounded up eight brilliant examples of companies connecting with their audience by telling stories about their brands.
#Paid (Banknotes)
#Paid’s Banknotes blog is excellent at tying industry news and trends into helpful articles for social media content creators. The site obviously knows its audience well and stays away from boring formulaic SEO content. This article on the viral Sing 2 TikTok campaign features quotes from industry experts and ends with valuable takeaways for the audience.
SparkToro Office Hours
The audience research tool SparkToro is designed to help users figure out their audience’s interests. SparkToro uses its bi-monthly live video sessions, accurately termed SparkToro Office Hours, to help its audience improve their marketing skills.
Hosts Rand Fishkin and Amanda Natividad bring on industry experts to make the sessions more informative. It’s a wonderful way to connect with potential and future customers while creating brand awareness and potentially lead generation.
Paystack’s Artwork
African Fintech giant Paystack runs a YouTube interview series called Artwork featuring creative entrepreneurs. In each short (under 15-minutes long) episode, viewers learn something about managing a small business—whether it’s maintaining professional communication with clients, crafting winning pitches, or scaling a freelance business.
Small business owners make up a large percentage of Paystack’s customer base, so this is a genius way to drive brand awareness without being salesy.
CMO by Adobe
Adobe’s CMO blog is almost entirely unrelated to the products they’re known for and has garnered a reputation as a site for digital leaders. The blog is a prime example of brand journalism, sharing everything from trends and research to customer stories.
Hotjar’s Blog
The Hotjar blog features articles showcasing the company’s culture, mission, and values. Each article is written by a company employee and tackles a wide range of topics from supporting employee side projects to running a sustainable business.
Telling brand stories is a fantastic way to stand out from other companies within the analytics space, where other companies may focus on SEO blog content.
Fellow app Supermanagers Podcast
Fellow is a software that helps companies have more productive meetings. It may be surprising to hear then that the company runs the Supermanagers podcast about being a great manager.
The podcast is on its 100th episode and has featured leaders from Mastercard, Coursera, Stripe, and other leading companies. Because it appeals to podcast-loving managers or leaders, it’s a clever way to draw company leadership’s attention to the Fellow’s meeting app (and score buy-in with credibility already locked-in).
Buffer’s Open Blog
Although Buffer shares SEO blog content, its Open Blog is focused on sharing transparent company updates about culture, salaries, work-life balance, and other relevant issues. Buffer has also been vocal about its support for remote work and four-day workweeks and has won the admiration of many customers (and non-customers) for its stand.
The Red Bulletin by Red Bull
Red Bull’s The Red Bulletin magazine is one of the quintessential brand journalism examples. Since 2005, the fitness lifestyle magazine, powered by energy drink Red Bull, has been sharing stories about athletes, culture, music, entrepreneurship, and lifestyle. The magazine is available digitally and in print in several countries and languages, including German and English.
Tell your brand story through brand journalism
Content marketing has proven effective, but if you want an edge over your competitors, it may be time to use brand journalism. Share your company’s viewpoints on industry trends, invite potential customers into your company’s day-to-day affairs, and inspire readers to make changes while generating brand awareness.
Whatever you decide to do, GatherContent is equipped to support your content efforts. With a content planning and production hub, you can build an editorial calendar, set up content workflows, collaborate on articles, and publish to your content management system (CMS) seamlessly.
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