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Content marketing expert Amanda Milligan is back with three more ways to make your content more newsworthy. If you haven’t seen part one, be sure to check it out!
Video Transcription
Hi, everyone. Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. My name is Amanda Milligan, and I am back with a part two for how to make newsworthy content. So when I made part one, I was working at Fractl, and I talked about three things. Let’s see I remember them. It was data, emotion, and impact as three elements you need to be considering when creating newsworthy content. Those are still important. If you haven’t seen that Whiteboard Friday, check it out after this one. It doesn’t need to be in any particular order.
Now I work at Stacker. stacker.com is a publication, but it’s also a newswire. So like the AP for breaking news or Reuters for financial news, Stacker is a newswire for data journalism. So I work on the brand side though, where we partner with brands. They underwrite content, and we syndicate it to our newswire. I’ve been talking to the team, since I’m still relatively new, and they told me that these are three additional things that they consider when they are creating content for their publishing partners.
So it was fascinating to get their take on this, and I’m really excited to share this with you.
Is it serviceable?
So let’s just dive in. Three things to consider. The first is if the content is serviceable. Basically, all that means is how can it help the reader. So as marketers, we’re actually already pretty good at this. This is like the how-to content of the world just with more of a news spin.
So it’s not going to be your standard blog post. It’s going to be more along the lines of how do you take something practical that’s happening to people, that’s also newsworthy, which we can get into exactly what that means. This will overlap with a lot of these other different qualities. So if it’s serviceable and it’s also adding context to a greater story, if it’s serviceable and also based on new data, or it’s based on an emotional component or it impacts a lot of people, those things all help it be newsworthy.
Is it contextualized?
The second is contextualized. This is something that Stacker really excels at and I find fascinating. So we can’t break news as marketers. That’s not our job. We’re not in the business of doing really quick reporting off of big events. That’s just not what we’re doing.
So contextualizing is taking a look at what’s trending, what people are talking about, what’s happening and thinking about the other angles, the other perspectives that tell a more comprehensive story to that. This has worked really well. I think it’s something that all brands should be considering when they’re following like if you have those websites or blogs that you follow in your niche, thinking about what those kind of like top news stories are and how you can add to the conversation.