Why Journalists Make Great Content Marketers

If you’ve been following the journalism industry in North America, you’ll notice that newsrooms are bleeding money and that has led to mass layoffs in the industry. As of late October, there were 28,637 layoffs across newsrooms in the U.S. alone this year. And it’s not looking much better in Canada. Nevertheless, journalists continue to hold some invaluable skills. Skills that make them amazing content marketers, an industry that is continuing to see growth. Here’s a look at why journalists excel at this growing field.

1.    Great Storytellers

Journalists can showcase your business’s products or services in a way that relates to your audience. Journalists have a knack for taking convoluted and dense subject matter, and write about it in a way that is engaging to readers. This is especially important in the B2B space, where the products and services are often more complex than those in the B2C space.

2.    Narrative Builders

Journalism schools teach you how to build riveting narratives. You’re taught to go into enough detail that keeps the reader wanting more, without leaving them bored. As companies look to track the online buyer’s journey in greater nuance, we’ll need even more narrative builders who can make every aspect of the journey more enticing for online customers.

3.    Excellent Interviewers

When you want quality content, you need to interview reputable sources. Journalists are trained interviewers. They know how to ask open-ended questions. They know how important it is to address the who, what, where, why, when and how of a story by asking the right queries. Interviews are important when you’re creating content from scratch. Insights from subject-matter experts add a wealth of information to stories. With the right interview questions, journalists build great content for the right personas.

4.    Deadline Driven

There aren’t many work environments as deadline driven as newsrooms. With stories being published on a daily or weekly basis, journalists are cognizant of the clock. When you hire journalists as content marketers, they’ll hit the ground running. That means journalists can create multiple blog posts or pieces of content for your business in a short period of time. And that is important. By creating content around the clock, businesses are at an advantage when it comes to increasing audience retention, larger social media traction, garnering trust, and driving leads & conversions. The time is now to hire a journalist to run your content marketing strategy.