Content marketers can think and act like journalists to draw in readers and cover important issues
How do you get your daily news?
If you’re like many people, you likely rely on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, which both allow you to follow just about any media outlet in existence. Many of these platforms—most notably Facebook—have their own separate feeds where you can view top news stories (or at least what these platforms deem as important, but that’s a entirely different topic).
According to the Pew Research Center, about 62 percent of U.S. adults cite a social media network as one of their primary sources for news, and 18 percent say they check these sites for news often. These numbers have increased significantly over the past several years, and the trends point to social media soon becoming a dominant source for news and current events.
This is not happening by coincidence. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has gone as far as to declare his intentions to make his platform a “personalized newspaper” for every person in the world. And increasing numbers of professional journalists consider Twitter an important reporting tool.
This situation presents an opportunity the best copywriters can leverage, especially when it comes to blog content creation. Brands engaged in a content marketing strategy should be sure to focus at least a portion of their efforts on timely content, such as recent news stories related to their business or industry.
Scooping the story
In this way, the best copywriters think more like journalists, keeping an eye on breaking news and taking the time to cover important “stories” on their blogs when they arise.
We do this all the time at ProPRcopy. In one recent example, we covered Google’s recent efforts to test a new content publishing platform. We felt that this issue could have a big impact on content marketers across the country, and we wanted to share the news with our audience. Over the past couple months, it has been one of our most popular blog posts—providing more anecdotal evidence of the value of these more timely articles.
When planning your blog content editorial calendar, we recommend making room each month for a number of time-sensitive blog posts focused on recent news items. This can be difficult to predict, so it’s important to work with a content writer who is able to jump on stories as they come up.
In other words, the best copywriters create blog content that features a healthy mix of timely content and “evergreen” content (articles and blog posts that do not have an expiration date). Be sure to keep this top of mind as you work on improving your content creation strategy—and when working with a content development service.