A Journalist’s Take on Producing Editorial Content for Brands
A few months ago, David Carr wrote about the trend of fashion brands becoming their own editorial outlets, citing examples like Mr. Porter, which employs the editor of British Esquire, and the Gilt Groupe, whose Beta version of Gilt Taste now has some hard-hitting articles. Of course this makes sense for fashion brands, who’ve been not-so-quietly pulling the strings behind women’s magazines for years, but editorial content also makes sense for any brand that wants people to visit its website. Just look at Burton’s new homepage. I don’t snowboard, but I actually want to spend some time there.
Creating editorial content means that brands have to shake off their marketing hats a bit – this is a journalism game. As a journalist myself, I’ve thought a lot about merging these two worlds, and these are my basic guidelines:
1. Trustworthiness is key
First of all, a major tone change has to occur. Customers are used to brands speaking in the imperative voice (“Relax tonight with our margarita mix!”) while being generally straight-forward about the quality of their product, as well as their intention to make you buy it (“This is America’s favorite summer movie! See it this weekend.”). This doesn’t fly on an editorial site. It has to be clear that your first motive is to entertain and educate visitors, and not just in how great your product is. In order to gain trust, you need to make it lifestyle-centered and full of real information, not something that seems recently conjured up from your market research lab. For example, “10 Tips for Taking a Better Polaroid Shot” beats “Why Polaroid’s Technology is the Future.”
What about authority? I read Esquire because I think the writers are talented and know what they’re talking about. It helps to create equity in your authors by showing they have above-average taste and understanding of the lifestyle.
2. Update frequently and regularly
I have friends who run a blog that they update once a day, and over just 8 months it has grown tremendously and is now syndicated on a major website. Updating once a day is fairly doable, effort-wise, although a brand’s need to put everything through legal can, admittedly, slow down the process. If this isn’t possible, it’s at least important to let your customers understand how often you’re updating. If someone’s engaged with your content, a regular schedule trains them to check back to see what’s new, which is the key to repeat visitors.
3. Social media (duh)
This is probably obvious by now, but social media works wonders for drawing people in. Throw a Facebook “Like” button at the bottom of every article (that’s how newspapers and blogs do it, so putting it elsewhere might seem “brand-ish”), and Tweet the occasional post as well. Just don’t link all your services to create automatic, non-human-feeling updates that occur too frequently.
4. Integrate products subtly
Visitors to your site are interested in your products, and editorial content helps you weave them into your site in a way that provides engaging context and doesn’t oversell. Mr. Porter does this beautifully by, say, writing an article about bowling and suggesting clothes to wear on the lanes at the very end. A “related products” sidebar lets you keep an article content-centric while helping customers find what they’re looking for.
This was a fairly high-level guide to creating an editorial site. Producing engaging content is a whole other game. I’ll try to write some ideas about that this week, as well as thoughts on the reverse of this article – how working in marketing helps me as a journalist/writer.
Please leave your thoughts or questions in the comments.
-Becky Lang