After 30 years as a successful journalist, Steve Hamm quit his job as a writer and editor at Business Week in December 2009 to work as a content creator at IBM. His move raised more than a few eyebrows, but Hamm knew what he was doing.
He saw the potential to advance his own career as IBM became one of the first B2B brands to realise the power of content marketing. The company had seen that they had a valuable opportunity to generate leads, as well as educate business people about IBM’s products and services through insightful content. This helped people gain valuable market knowledge while building their awareness of the IBM brand – a win for all involved, including Hamm.
Six years later, Steve Hamm is still at IBM as the brand’s chief storyteller, writing everything from tweets to books, and even making mini-documentary videos. He is effectively shaping IBM’s marketing and communications strategy to business customers, with engaging content sitting at the heart of their paid, earned and owned strategies.
IBM is just one example of the many brands out there proving that content-led marketing can pay off, and Hamm is just one of many former journalists who doesn’t regret the jump to branded content.
NewsCred’s recent report, ‘The Rise of the UK Brand Journalist’, which surveyed both marketers and brand journalists, also found that the growth of content marketing has changed the way both groups see branded content as a profession. With in-house editors and content creators becoming common for many UK brands, it’s hardly surprising that half of the journalists surveyed see branded content as a career offering as much satisfaction as traditional journalism, especially for those who possess the right mix of creativity and marketing savvy – nearly three-quarters of brand editors (73%) feel that brand journalism will be considered a mainstream career choice in five years’ time.
And as IBM proves, it’s not just consumer brands like ASOS and Red Bull that are taking advantage of journalists’ skills to build their brands.
Take Telefonica, for instance, who hired Shivvy Jervis, formerly a broadcast journalist with CNN and Reuters, to spearhead their digital content offering including the YouTube series Digital Futures. The series looks at the hottest digital tech topics, from big data to the internet of things to crowdfunding.
Launched in February 2013, the Digital Futures series is slick, fun, and features interviews with global tech leaders and game-changers like Aaron Levie of Box. Episodes regularly have over 50,000 views, with some reaching over 100,000 – not bad for a telecoms corporation.
Similarly, General Electrics (GE) is determined to show its audiences that the brand stands for much more than just household appliances. But for a big corporation, it isn’t always easy to explain to consumers the depth and breadth of what it does across the energy, water, healthcare, aviation, and transportation sectors.
That’s where the experience of Tomas Kellner, managing editor of GE Reports, as a technology reporter for titles such as Forbes Magazine has proven invaluable to bring GE’s website to life. GE’s multiple corporate content properties now include GE Reports, Ecomagination, healthymagination, Txchnologist and GE.com, which all give consumers an exciting insight into how GE technology and products are being put to use in the world around them.
And the efforts have paid off. GE has won awards for its consumer-friendly visual storytelling campaigns across social media, positioning itself as an innovative and competitive science and technology leader.
Yet there is still a long way to go for most brands to make their content more effective, regardless of whether it is business or consumer focused. ‘The Rise of the UK Brand Journalist’, shows that only 38% of UK marketers polled feel that their current content marketing efforts are very effective. Another 50% feel their attempts are only ‘somewhat’ effective.
Part of the difficulty is knowing exactly how and where to reach your audience. As one respondent told us: “Keeping up with new mediums and new technology is always a challenge. It’s easy to stretch yourself too thinly, taking content across every ‘in’ channel, but you need to understand where your audience is.”
IBM, GE and Telefonica have mastered this challenge by focusing on the messages and channels that work for them – and taking advantage of content creators like Hamm, Jervis and Kellner’s storytelling expertise, research skills, and market understanding to develop these messages.
So what is the next step for brands looking to push their content marketing further? Continuing to build their content teams with the right mix of talent and experience – including the senior hires necessary to build and implement the strategy behind the creative content.
According to NewsCred’s research, more than half of the marketers and brand journalists surveyed have a content manager within their organisation, yet the number of senior hires such as editorial directors and chief content officers is much smaller.
This lack of senior hires shows that despite the value of content marketing, many brands are still afraid to invest fully. There’s still a ways to go before most brands have a chief content officer or chief storyteller like Hamm, Jervis or Kellner, but IBM, GE and Telefonica are all proof that investing in the right talent and giving them the right amount of editorial autonomy pays off – for both the brand editor and the organisation.
This advertisement feature is brought to you by Outbrain, sponsors of the Guardian Media and Tech Network’s digital content hub
