Your Company Should Act Like A Newsroom

Not long ago, the idea that your company should (and could) act like a news organization was all the rage among marketers and PR professionals.

Instead of relying on the media to break your news, you could just do it yourself and share it immediately with your audience. Companies, both large and small, were employing teams of writers to cover certain beats within the company. Those writers would create content in journalistic fashion that would then be housed on the company’s public-facing site.

It was the next step in the evolution from a website that housed press releases, to a repository for all of the stories that made up the DNA of the company.

The companies that do it well – GE & General Motors come to mind – do it to this day, and they continue to tell compelling stories within the broader scope of the work they do.

But you don’t have to be a Fortune 500 company with a massive marketing budget to do it well. It just takes commitment and the right stories to get started.

Create Buy-In From Leadership

This might be the most important part of the newsroom: getting leadership to buy into this approach to communications.

If you are doing this right, you are going to request the time of subject matter experts within the company on a regular basis. But if they don’t see the value in spending their time talking to somebody about a project they are working on, it will be nearly impossible to create anything worth reading.

You need to get those in charge to put their stamp of approval on this idea and show everyone else this is something they should, and can, invest time in. To get to this point, we recommend putting metrics against the work to earn that approval.

Short of an email from the CEO telling the company this is happening, perhaps a Q&A with the CEO, or a guest blog post to open the new site you are going to use to tell your company story, is a subtle way to prove it has worth and get everyone committed to the cause.

Mine the Stories

If telling the stories that make your company tick is truly something you want to do, you first need to find the right stories to tell.

Besides the obvious stories – new product announcements, earnings, etc. – there are other stories that have been buried within the organization that need to be uncovered.

These stories will go beyond your products or services; these stories will show your audience how the work you do matters and why it impacts them.

That will be the key: how do you frame the work your company does around a central theme of being helpful and making the world a better place? We are not saying every piece of content has to save the world, but it should be helpful, educational or inspiring while mapping back to a central company core value.

To start finding these stories, reach out internally to ask employees what drives them to come to work every day, who inspires them, the projects they’re most proud of, and where they find their purpose. As you speak to employees more regularly, more stories will pop up, leaving you with a wealth of content to choose from.

Pick Your Team

With buy-in achieved and a handful of stories mined, it’s time to decide who is going to manage this work.

Not unlike editing a publication, this individual (or group of individuals) will oversee everything from story ideas to story execution, and everything else in between.

Part of this decision involves being honest about who is a good writer and who is not. A story is only as great as the person who is doing the narrating, so it’s imperative you put someone on the team who is skilled in the art of writing.

If that person doesn’t exist within your current structure, perhaps agency support is warranted. Some agencies (like us!) have personnel in place to help guide the stories and, in some cases, manage story creation altogether.

When you find the right agency, they can be a boon to this effort and help to get your story out to the right audience.

Create A Space

Now that you have some stories, you need to decide where those stories will live.

It can be a blog that lives off of your main page, your newsroom, or a completely new URL that points back to your main site, but is clearly connected to your company.

When the General Motors Fastlane blog existed, it was a unique URL that was clearly associated with the company, but it lived on its own to differentiate the purpose of said website.

If you are going to make this work, it’s imperative you create a space for your stories.

Create A Content Calendar

It’s one thing to create a home for you stories, but it’s nothing if you don’t populate it with stories, images and videos that dive deeper into what makes your company tick and its employees proud to come to work every day.

Having a robust content calendar in place will ensure you follow the schedule and keep you and your team honest. While we suggest having monthly calendars in place, it’s not uncommon to have content scheduled three months out in case there are unexpected changes to stories. And since it’s rare for anything in our world to go smoothly, you should expect disruption and delays, and a calendar will keep you on schedule.

Get To Work

Once it’s all in place, it’s time to get to work.

The stories you tell at first don’t have to be perfect, but you should put them out there and use your social media channels to help promote them.

As you get the hang of this new storytelling channel, you will come to find more ways to share the content and engage with others who are consuming it.

You’re not going to gain a huge following overnight, but slow and steady is definitely going to be in your best interest.

And while there will never come a time when you should forego earned media altogether, this will enable you to house stories that might not necessarily warrant a press release, but are worth putting out there.

If your company is ready to kick off its storytelling efforts, we can help! Drop us a line to learn how we can help tell your story to the right audience.