Brand Journalism for the Influential Communicator

How to plan, create and manage great content in the digital age

#raganBRANDJO

AGENDA PRESENTER WHO ATTENDS Locations REGISTER NOW

Agenda

9-10:15 a.m.

Brand journalism 101

If you're in PR, you're learning to adjust to a fractured, weakened news media. If you're in internal comms, you plead your case to an audience less engaged and more distracted than ever. The old formulas don't work anymore. Press releases, boring intranet copy and slick corporate brochures are out. Storytelling is in. Visual and mobile communications dominate. Social is THE delivery system. Measurement is a must.

In our opening session, you'll learn:

  • Why you need to become your own publisher
  • Where your organization fits on the broad spectrum of brand journalism news sites
  • Why the best brand journalism begins inside your walls and works its way out
  • How to make the business case for brand journalism

Exercise #1: Write your business case for brand journalism in your shop.

10:30 a.m.-12:15 p.m.

Welcome to your newsroom

You can't create and publish good stories if no one has the time to tell them, or if you're forever reacting to the latest inane request from the far corners of your organization. You need an editorial process to evaluate content needs and plan creative storytelling. You need an editorial structure that allows content creators to thrive. You need your very own newsroom.

We'll show you how to:

  • Reimagine your newsroom
  • Build your news desk to plan, create and publish great content
  • Develop editorial standards for your content
  • Tear down silos between PR, marketing and internal comms
  • Make the transition from order taker to main storyteller
  • Build a news desk—train your team to conceive, plan, execute and deliver content

Exercise #2: Before you go to lunch, submit a story idea to the news desk.

12:15-1:15 p.m.

LUNCH

1:30-3 p.m.

Running your news desk

It's time to make the donuts. In this session, we'll select a few of the story ideas you submitted at lunch and run them through the news desk. Is this a story worth doing? What's the best way to tell it—and in what formats? Where should this story run: internally or externally, on a marketing site or pitched to media? How about "all of the above"?

We'll show you how to:

  • Choose the right format for the right story
  • Tell stories in diverse formats that reach your audiences
  • Match your words to pictures and sound
  • Create vivid infographics to tell a story in words, data and images
3 p.m.

BREAK

3:15-4:30 p.m.

Drawing a crowd: Delivering great stories to multiple audiences

It's not enough to create great content. You have to meet your audiences where they live: on your news site or intranet, and on their mobile devices and social media channels. We'll show you some great examples of how brand journalists are winning the day with great content in a variety of formats and delivering those stories to hungry audiences through social channels, e-newsletters and media placements.

In this session, you'll learn how to:

  • Build a news hub that people can find and search
  • Use social media tools to reach your audiences, highlight stories and even break news
  • Develop new methods to share content with third parties
  • Pitch stories to the news media successfully
  • Measure your effectiveness