Whilst the term ‘content marketing’ is now a pretty familiar one in most marketing departments (if they’re not already doing it, they’re probably talking about doing it), its sub-division ‘news content marketing’ is less widely known. Its benefits are so plentiful, however, that I doubt it will be long before it will achieve the fame and fortune it so greatly deserves.
Before we discuss it though, let’s quickly define what ‘content marketing’ is as it’s surprising how many different answers you will get when you ask someone to describe it. They can range from website copy and press releases to emails and magazine copy so it’s important to get this nailed before we continue.
What is content marketing?
Content marketing is industry-related (commercially-neutral) information that seeks to educate the reader. It provides solutions to their problems, subtly influencing their thought-processes and nurturing them towards a logical conclusion to buy from you. It does not promote your company, products or services. Some examples are:
- Industry news
- How-to guides
- Check-lists
- Blogs
- White papers
- Webinars
What is news content marketing?
News content marketing is publishing industry-related news which is valuable and educates your readers. It is not news about your company, products or services, not that this kind of news doesn’t also have a place on your website, of course.
How does news content marketing work?
OK, let’s say you are a fitness centre. You would publish news on your website and social media platforms about the fitness industry such as the latest fitness craze sweeping the nation, how people who work-out are less stressed, any sporting events in the area etc – the kind of information that people who are into fitness generally like to keep abreast of.
So why would you want to do this?
The news market has changed: it has moved from traditional print consumption to easily digestible online content. Whilst there are many stats bandied around, the most common one I come across is that over 75% of people now go online for their news. Many people no longer have time to browse through a newspaper or even browse online for that matter, they just want the news from their particular area delivered to their inbox or social media feed…job done!
Let’s go back to our fitness centre example: Mr Keep Fit likes to keep on top of all things fitness – yes he’ll probably buy his regular monthly magazine but he wants to know the news as it’s breaking. He likes to be first to find out about it. He signs up for news alerts from your website or maybe follows you on Twitter or Facebook so that he can get his daily fix. To read the news article in full, he clicks through to your website = traffic.
That’s not where it ends though. As long as your news is entertaining and valuable, Mr Keep Fit will share it across his social media networks: he wants to be the first to spread the news and it’s a great way to connect with his friends. They then spread the news amongst their networks and every person interested in reading the article clicks through to your site = more traffic.
That’s still not where it ends though. Every time your news is shared, more inbound links to your website are created and we all know how the search engines love inbound links. Websites with lots of inbound links give off ‘look at me’ signals to which the search engines reply, “this site must be a good one, let’s rank it higher in our search results” = more traffic.
Finally let me leave you with some interesting statistics:
- 3,600 visits into SellCar-UK.com website from one news story
- 100% increase in visitors into Randstad site through news articles
- 54% of Red Rocket Media web traffic through news articles
News content marketing is a very subtle marketing technique yet highly effective at driving traffic to your website and enhancing your organic search rankings. Given the ‘content-driven’ world in which we now live, there is little doubt that the time has finally come for it to take its seat at the marketing high table.
If you enjoyed this post, check out our others on news content marketing.
