Insights:Is editorial content right for your brand?

The simple fact is people like to buy products and services from experts. Knowing that a manufacturer, retailer or service provider understands every aspect of what they sell gives the consumer confidence. For this reason, positioning your company as the expert in your field can give you a strong competitive advantage.

Of course, if nobody knows about your expertise it won’t help your brand. So how do you establish your credentials? It all comes down to becoming a source for information that aims to educate and not just sell.

There are a variety of places to share your industry knowledge and get recognized.

• With the internet’s unquenchable thirst for information, it’s fairly easy to identify the key news or entertainment sites that reach your target market. Working with them to provide either complete stories or acting as a resource for them can get your brand a lot of great exposure.
• If you or one of your team members is comfortable presenting to groups, speaking at trade shows, public events and even civic clubs can get you in front of the right people.
• An often-overlooked area that requires fresh content on a regular basis is print publications. Editors are constantly looking for accurate and timely information for their publications. In addition to sending press releases, many publications will allow businesses to provide complete stories. It’s important that the story you submit does not appear to be just a promotion of your business or they most likely will not run it.
• Print pubs are usually well-respected sources for information and providing them with content will elevate your brand through association. Most print pubs also have a digital presence that will give you a wider audience and allow you to link your web properties to them.

At Insight we write editorial-focused articles for publication on behalf of our clients on a regular basis. These articles appear in trade pubs and lifestyle and business magazines. The length of these types of articles allows us to go in depth and demonstrate our client’s deep understanding of their subjects. The articles provide even more value because they are often used within social media marketing campaigns and for additional content on the company’s website.

For those who are thinking what good is editorial content if it isn’t 100%-focused on selling my product, it helps to remember selling is really just convincing and nothing is more convincing than facts from a trusted source.