What if you had a way to move your marketing investment across the balance sheet, from a cost centre to a long-term asset? A strategic approach to content marketing can do that, but it requires more than a plan to publish marketing collateral. By taking a page out of the playbook for traditional media, CMOs and marketers can drive value for their brand and build authority with their target audience. Operating as a brand newsroom is the best way to get there.

What is a brand newsroom

Alt Text 1: Graphic describing a brand newsroom, what it is, and how it works. It has four red boxes with text in each addressing the need for an integrated content marketing strategy, focusing on business goals, having a hub or publishing platform, and using journalistic integrity, aka brand journalism, in publishing.

Any business, large or small, can operate a brand newsroom. When done well, it mirrors the ethics and structure of traditional journalism rather than sales-driven marketing. The goal is to meet the needs of your target audience so you can attract and retain them as subscribers. You do this by publishing information they need and educating them when they’re ready to learn. Like any news organisation, a brand newsroom:

  • publishes multimedia content with a balanced viewpoint, devoid of marketing spin or hard sales messages
  • distributes everything they publish to their current subscribers
  • amplifies their content to attract new subscribers in their target audience and increase circulation

Audience-first communication

A brand newsroom model for publishing is a way to leverage a company’s content marketing initiative into an audience-first publishing operation. A brand newsroom’s primary role is to serve its audience, not the brand itself. It may seem counterintuitive, but focusing on the information needs and pain points of the target audience positions your brand as a trusted authority for your industry. In other words, responsibly delivering value for your audience puts you on the path to long-term brand loyalty. A brand newsroom is the perfect vehicle to deliver that value.

Brands can build trust through journalistic integrity

Truthful, original content developed with the editorial rigour used by traditional media positions your brand as a trusted source of news and advice. By publishing consistently and avoiding clickbait and hard marketing messages, brands can build trust and authority with the target audience.

The ideal brand newsroom has editorial independence within brand boundaries. The brand newsroom team has the autonomy to develop stories that matter to readers. Their processes, workflows, and tools keep publishing cadence and quality high.

Thinking like journalists within the business

Brand journalists work much the same way traditional journalists do — curating, prioritising, and storytelling on behalf of your business. They’ll cultivate relationships and sources with industry and subject matter experts. They’ll report industry news and travel to industry events. They’ll be adept at interviewing people and finding the story no one else is telling. Brand journalists contribute to features, blog posts, case studies, white papers, video scripts, podcasts, documentaries, or whatever content has been defined in your integrated content marketing strategy.

The brand newsroom is the engine driving content that educates, entertains, and informs audiences. To be successful, it needs to align with strategic business goals which help drive the editorial mission.

Integration of teams and skills

A brand newsroom is a cross-functional publishing model with writers, editors, subeditors, proofreaders, videographers, strategists, and communication professionals operating under a unified editorial plan, not separate marketing silos. It’s informed by audience data and analytics that are continually monitored and updated to ensure brand goals are always at the front of all content creation. This model supports collaboration, rapid response to market trends, and consistency across media formats.

How does a brand newsroom work?

Alt Text 2: Image showing how a brand newsroom operates starting with messaging, defining an integrated strategy, staffing with brand journalism, and editorial operations.

Brand newsroom step one: editorial messaging

The first step for any brand newsroom is to determine the editorial messaging for your platform. Editorial messaging is a set of guidelines and boundaries to ensure everything you publish is aligned with your content marketing strategy and consistent in how you’re communicating with your audience. There are two parts to this step:

  1. Editorial messaging framework: Editorial messaging is distinctly different from brand messaging and product messaging. To create meaningful content, it’s essential to find the intersection between what you want to say and what your target audience wants to hear. An editorial messaging framework defines three to five key messages that resonate with your target audience. It requires consultation with customer-facing people in your business to understand what motivates your customers and prospects, what concerns them, and what they want from you.
  2. Editorial mission statement: This statement guides your editors, writers, and content creators in the direction of your newsroom. Traditional media properties all have an editorial mission statement that defines what they publish, for whom, and why. For example, Condé Nast Traveler, the global authority on luxury travel, has a very different editorial mission than Lonely Planet, who believes travel is for everyone.

Examples of editorial mission statements for traditional media brands

Wall Street Journal: We are the definitive source of news and information through the lens of business, finance, economics and money, global forces that shape the world and are key to understanding it. Our audience is anyone who wants or has a job, a career or an ambition; who seeks money, makes money, spends money and saves money; who desires an edge as an investor, an employee, a manager or an entrepreneur; or who simply wants to better understand how the world works.

Computerworld: Computerworld, which has covered enterprise technology since 1967, is the go-to online publication for IT decision-makers and IT professionals looking to understand and implement technology in the workplace. We provide authoritative analysis of IT trends, offer insights into how technology is used in the enterprise, and explain how IT is evolving.

Food & Wine celebrates the global epicurean experience with its award-winning magazine, website, social platforms, newsletters, podcasts, premium events such as the Food & Wine Classic in Aspen, and accolades like its annual Best New Chef awards. With rigorously tested recipes and the most trusted restaurant, drinks, culinary travel, and home coverage, the brand inspires and empowers people to discover, create, and devour the best in food and drink—every day and everywhere.

Examples of editorial mission statements for brand newsrooms

Cleveland Clinic Health Essentials: As one of the world’s top hospitals, Cleveland Clinic wants to empower you with the trustworthy information you need to understand your body and make decisions about your health. We’ve curated health and wellness articles that explain hot trends or how to live healthier every day.

bluenotes is a publication of ANZ’s newsroom, a forum for insights, opinion, research and news about the economy, financial services, investment and society, from within ANZ and outside. Building on ANZ’s position as Australia and New Zealand’s international bank, this publication is home to diverse commentary, analysis and stories in text, video, photography and new media.

NOTE: Editorial messaging and mission statement are in addition to brand or product messaging.

A half-day workshop facilitated by SALT can help drive consensus among stakeholders about the best way to go to market.

Brand newsroom step two: integrated content marketing strategy

Once your editorial messaging is determined, it’s time to decide what your newsroom will cover. You can read more about how that’s accomplished with an integrated content marketing strategy, but the main points are:

  • Build an audience of subscribers who have given you permission to market to them. This is your circulation.
  • Develop content brands that become long-term assets for your company. A content brand is known and desirable outside of your normal target audience and could potentially be sold as a standalone product. Examples include This Old Marketing Podcast from The Content Marketing Institute, The Red Bulletin from Red Bull, and Workouts At Home videos by Adidas.
  • Create a three-pronged strategy with original content, distribution, and amplification as primary considerations.

Brand newsroom step three: staffing with the right roles and responsibilities

Your brand newsroom should be set up with the same roles and responsibilities as a traditional newsroom. It’s a great opportunity for brands to hire people from traditional media and benefit from their skills. Journalists have been trained to produce stories with speed and efficiency and focus on storytelling, while writing to deadline and word count. They can help build internal capability so your marketing team can produce high-quality, audience-driven content.

The roles you need to consider include:

  • Publisher: brand, usually represented by the CMO or CCO (Chief Content Officer)
  • Chief Editor: person who has oversight across the whole newsroom and all content types. The Chief Editor is heavily involved in developing the strategy. Reports to the Publisher.
  • Managing Editor: operational role responsible for operating the editorial calendar and ensuring the newsroom is publishing with quality and consistency. There may be multiple managing editors depending on the size of the newsroom. Reports to the Chief Editor.
  • Newsroom Staff: consists of the talent needed to produce required content, including Editors, Writers, Subeditors, Proofreaders, Graphic Designers, Social Media Coordinators, Videographers, Animators, Audio Engineers, SEOs, and Data Analysts. All these roles report to the Managing Editor.

Brand newsroom step four: processes, workflows, and tools

A brand newsroom operates like a traditional newsroom, so it’s important to develop the tools you need and have the right processes and workflows in place. Every organisation and implementation will be different, so this is a guide to help you plan what you need.

  • Editorial guidelines: Editorial guidelines outline your editorial mission, the values of your brand newsroom, and what kind of content you’ll be creating and for whom. It should also give a rundown of who your editors are, what kind of stories you tell, and how to contact the editorial team.
  • Contributor guidelines: If your newsroom accepts articles or contributions from outside sources, you’ll want a document giving the rules about what kind of content you’ll accept, the rules of engagement, and what’s expected if someone is writing for you. The more detail you can provide, the better quality you’ll get. This document is usually a work in progress and is refined periodically.
  • Sponsored content/advertising guidelines: If you’re monetising your brand newsroom by accepting advertising or sponsored content, you’ll want to define what that looks like and how people can engage your brand. It will outline what kind of content is accepted and the editorial process required for getting things published on your brand newsroom.
  • Media kit: This is a standard document outlining what advertising options are available, what your rates are, and information about your audience and circulation. This should be reviewed and updated annually.
  • Style guides for written and visual content: This gives the newsroom team direction on how to develop content to ensure consistency in messaging, tone, grammar, spelling, and style. It may also include things like naming conventions and information about the processes and workflows used for publishing. You can have separate documents for written and visual guidelines, or they can be combined into one document.
  • Editorial calendars: The heartbeat of a brand newsroom is the editorial calendar, which shows everything that’s been published, everything that’s in production, and what’s planned for the future. It should show the status of every piece of content and identify key dates, staff assignments, and where to find each piece of content. It can be as simple as a spreadsheet or implemented with project management software.
  • Project management software: For larger projects, tools such as Monday, Basecamp, or Trello can help keep everything ticking along. File sharing software such as Dropbox, SharePoint, MS Office, or Google Docs can improve collaboration.
  • Website: Ideally, the brand newsroom is implemented on a company website or platform.
  • Email marketing: Allows brands to distribute their content to their audience. Email software such as Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, and Constant Contact are commonly used.
  • Content/social channels: LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, or Spotify let you distribute your content to fans and followers while also providing the possibility of amplification to new people.
  • Marketing automation platforms: For large and complex newsrooms, publishing platforms like Marketo, HubSpot, and Salesforce can help you implement your brand newsroom strategy across multiple channels, allow for scheduling, and provide reporting.

Why does a brand newsroom return value?

We’re all familiar with the quote attributed to John Wannamaker about his advertising spend.

“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”

Many CEOs and CFOs experience the same frustration about the ROI of content marketing. When content marketing is run as a brand newsroom, CMOs have the ability to create strategic assets that return long-term value to the company.

Executive Director of Digital Marketing at Cleveland Clinic Amanda Todorovich spoke on the Content Disrupted podcast about how the Health Essentials brand newsroom has enabled Cleveland Clinic to dominate the digital health space globally.

“Marrying the health library with Health Essentials has led to dramatic growth, incredible brand awareness and trust, and has evolved our entire strategy to be able to serve a little bit more of the funnel with content, but also really think through where and how we use that content,” Amanda said.

She goes on to say keeping an audience focus has been a hugely successful strategy.

“It is definitely something that has led to a much stronger brand presence and has certainly helped us reach some big aggressive goals pretty cost effectively.”

Ways to measure the ROI of a brand newsroom

An insightful article can continue to drive traffic and be cited for years after it was written. Content can be repurposed and used again and again in myriad ways. Content created for a brand newsroom is not just a long-term asset, but an asset you can leverage.

A content brand can grow a reputation outside the brand and develop a value of its own — one that can even be sold. Vital parts of a brand newsroom operation are continual measurement, reporting on outcomes, and refining the strategy to ensure your content continues to resonate with your target audience.

Other ways a brand newsroom returns value include:

  • breaking down internal marketing silos
  • creating thought leaders inside the organisation
  • assisting with building personal brands for key personnel
  • building authority and credibility for the brand
  • demonstrating subject matter expertise and authority in your industry
  • generating public speaking opportunities for your thought leaders
  • generating invitations for appearances on podcasts and webinars
  • generating opportunities to comment to the media, contribute to news features, and write opinion pieces for traditional and industry media.

bluenotes Managing Editor Andrew Cornell discovered ANZ’s brand newsroom elevates the return on value in many ways.

“BlueNotes delivers a new form of quality journalism and is regularly republished or cited in traditional media,” he said.

“Our content is increasingly used as a launch point for other media, it is seen as an authoritative voice on ANZ itself, interviews with executives regularly cited in the investment community. Our external content comes from some of the region’s best business journalists and prominent business and policy experts.”

What does investing in a brand newsroom mean for your business?

A brand newsroom guided by an integrated content marketing strategy turns brands into publishers of news and information for their target audience. It allows them to totally control their own messaging and develop a loyal subscriber base they can communicate with directly. When staffed by a team of experienced brand journalists — and run with objectivity — brand newsrooms can propel a brand into industry leadership. A brand newsroom can also become a Google news source, so everything published on the platform has the potential to show up in news searches.

Developing a brand newsroom is not a small undertaking. It requires buy-in and support from leadership to ensure it has the resources to get off the ground and the time required to build its circulation. A successful brand newsroom must have the oversite of the Publisher (the brand) and a Chief Editor who work collaboratively to ensure the strategy and messaging are continually refined based on data collected from multiple places about what content is being consumed. Above all, the strategy must focus on business goals, not marketing objectives.

When all these things come together, a brand’s marketing expense converts into a brand asset that returns long-term value in multiple ways. It happens slowly at first but then builds steam and delivers value that grows exponentially over time. The ideal brand newsroom is a trusted, audience-driven editorial hub inside a business, guided by journalistic principles, focused on audience value, and built to achieve sustainable value.

Let SALT help you develop a brand newsroom strategy

If you’d like to know more about how SALT can help your business convert marketing expenses into brand assets, get in touch. We’d love to have an obligation-free chat to explain our views on integrated strategies and developing brand newsrooms that will deliver value for years to come.