Think Like a Journalist. Tips For Improving Your Content Marketing by Melanie Deziel at The Inbounder New York
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Melanie Deziel's presentation at The Inbounder New York, May 22 2017.
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Think Like a Journalist. Tips For Improving Your Content Marketing by Melanie Deziel at The Inbounder New York
- 2. MELANIE DEZIEL THINK LIKE A JOURNALIST: Tips For Improving Your Content Marketing @mdeziel
- 4. The importance of TRUTHand the power of authentic STORIES#theinbounder
- 8. The importance of TRUTHand the power of authentic STORIES#theinbounder
- 13. HOLIDAYS CULTURE & SOCIETY CURRENT EVENTS SEASONS TRENDS TRUTH #theinbounder
- 15. BEHIND THE SCENES HISTORY DIY & HOW TO PROFILES & FEATURES DEEP DIVES TRUTH #theinbounder
- 18. “BECAUSE I SAID SO” TRUTH #theinbounder
- 19. THIRD-PARTY DIVERSITY EXPERIENCE & EDUCATION CORROBORATED RECOGNIZED AUTHORITIES TRUTH #theinbounder
- 24. TRUTH YOU NEVER READ A STORY ABOUT A PLANE THAT DIDN’T CRASH #theinbounder
- 26. TRUTH YOUR PRODUCT’S EXISTENCE YOUR EXISTENCE PLANES THAT DON’T CRASH YOUR COMPANY’S EXISTENCE PRESS RELEASES #theinbounder
- 28. TRUTH SURPRISING JOURNEYS FIRST OR ONLY DIFFERENT (OTHER SUPERLATIVES) #theinbounder
- 31. DEBATE OR “SIDES” ACCOMPLISHMENT QUESTIONS RISK OR STAKES STRUGGLE TRUTH #theinbounder
- 38. #theinbounder
- 39. #theinbounder
- 40. #theinbounder
- 41. #theinbounder
- 43. #theinbounder
- 45. EARNED MEDIA ORGANICALLY “MOST EMAILED” OMMA: BEST NATIVE AD DIGIDAY: BEST BRANDED VIDEO A THESIS… TOP 2% ON NYTIMES.COM IN 2014 #theinbounder #theinbounder
- 49. The importance of TRUTHand the power of authentic STORIES#theinbounder
Editor's Notes
- Journalists are a strange bunch… You have to be pay a little crazy to pay for a degree in a shrinking field with horrible hours and atrocious pay, knowing you’ll be despised by most people of power. A recent study has shown that most journalists actually struggle with certain cognitive functions later in life due to the prevalence of stress, alcohol and caffeine. For most journalists, it’s not about the money. Not about the prestige. We’re driven by something deeper.
- We believe in the importance of truth, and the power of authentic stories. We act in service to our readers. We’re called the voice for the voiceless. The fourth estate. Watchdogs.
- Journalism is essentially the opposite of advertising, which generally forces information that you don’t want, while you’re trying to do something else. it’s disruptive. It’s invasive. It’s persistent. Quite frankly, it sucks. ANIMATION: so needless to say, it wasn’t an easy transition. I went from telling objective stories, to telling stories with a sales objective. Many of my colleagues and former professors thought of it as selling out, going to the dark side. They thought that there was something dirty and deceptive about brand storytelling. But the truth is, while my job title may have changed, I was still driven by that SAME sense of purpose…
- TRUTH. I am still driven by truth. Truth has never been more important…
- We live in… interesting times. There is a incredible need for information to be accurate, truthful, and representative of real events and happenings. But journalism is more than that.
- I believed that if advertisers could adopt the journalistic mindset, hone their reporting instincts, leverage the same tools, they too could tell true stories that mattered. Because too often as marketers, we tell stories for the wrong reasons. We tell stories to trick someone into being sold to. We tell stories because we think we’re supposed to. We tell stories just to tell them. But if you’re not thinking about what stories your audience actually wants and needs, it doesn’t matter WHAT your reasoning is.
- I already mentioned Truth, and that’s a given. Tell true stories. Don’t lie. I mean it! but TRUTH is going to be our core today, to remind of the five other elements of journalistic storytelling.
- Timely Topic Reputable Sources Unique Perspective/Approach Tension/Action Human Connection
- The T is for timely.
- Most of the content we engage with is timely in some way, either new or related to something new and relevant. While there’s history, and reflections, and memoir, for the most part, we want things that are new to us.
- Here are some things that can provide inspiration and jumping off points for your content, just like journalists do: Election Mannequin challenge Summer/Back To School Mother’s Day Traveling Safely
- BUT if it’s not timely, then it better teach
- The R in truth stands for Reputable.
- Your storytelling needs to include reputable and reliable people and data to help illustrate its point. I’m perfectly qualified to stand up here and tell you about journalism, but if this were a theoretical physics conference, I wouldn’t be anywhere near this stage. Same applies to your storytelling and sources.
- “you never read a story about a plane that didn’t crash,” Now there are a few exceptions COUGH
- Here’s how to make sure you have reputable content: People who lived it & learned it People other people trust Multiple confirmation Someone else’s data Diverse sources
- U is for Uniqueness.
- To help explain this, I’m going to need a show of hands…
- How many of you have ever witnessed, heard of, or experienced a dog biting a person. All of us. Not news.
- Now how many of you have heard of a man biting a dog? NEWS! This is a phrase you learn in journalism school “a dog bites a man every day. when a man bites a dog, THAT’s News”. Another way to say this is…
- “you never read a story about a plane that didn’t crash,” Now there are a few exceptions COUGH
- COUGH
- But for the most part, “things went right and nothing happened” isn’t a story. More than 300k flights take off and land each day. This is why we don’t read about it, and we shouldn’t write about it. Here are some other things that are NOT unique, and therefore not newsworthy: More than 1000 press releases per day As of 2008, There were more than 30M businesses in the US. Amazon sells more than 480 million products 7 Billion people on earth
- It literally means worthy of remark.
- Here are some things that are unique and worth of remark First or only Best, most, longest, biggest, etc. Different Surprising Journeys
- T stands for Tension
- As before, a story needs some action, some drama, in order for it to be interesting. \ I’m not talking about wars or battles.
- Here are some of the things that can provide tension for your story…
- The H is for human connection.
- What do I mean by that? People relate to people.
- This is a chart of the number of daily civilian deaths in Syria. Whether it’s a tiny bar representing just a few deaths, or a tall spiking bar like the one on April 19th representing nearly 100, it’s just that: It’s a blue line on a white background.
- This is five-year-old Omran Daqneesh, whom many of us have now seen. He’s a Syrian child, and he’s sitting in am ambulance covered and blood and dust in the aftermath of an airstrike. Alhamdulillah, which means praise god, He didn’t become one of the lines on that chart, but his face and his fear and his situation captured our hearts and moved people to action. It’s not that Americans don’t care that people in Syria are dying. It’s that this boy’s face resonates with us more deeply than a blue line on a grid ever could. It’s not unique to syria, or to death.
- This chart shows you that women are the fastest rising of population in prisons. But this doesn’t really make us feel anything. We can’t relate to this chart. What are we supposed to take from this?
- This is Rusti Miller-Hill, whose children were put into foster care and subsequently adopted while she served 2.5 years for a non-violent offense. She hasn’t seen them in 20 years. PEOPLE RELATE TO PEOPLE. If you put people at the center of your stories, you’ll have people reading them.
- Rusti is not a random story I pulled from the internet. She’s a women we met while creating a piece of branded content for The New York Times in partnership with Netflix’s Orange Is The New Black.
- The piece, called women inmate, why the male model doesn’t work.
- Timely - was an issue being discussed, both convictions and over-incarceration Reputable – researchers, doctors, prisoners, prison workers, government reports/data Unique – new formats, new perspectives, new findings, got inside the prison Tension – morality, right and wrong, crime, family dynamics Human Condition – you relate to these women, their stories, their families
- Widely covered in industry press Appeared in most-emailed module Won multiple industry awards Top 2% of content on NYTimes.com in 2014
- David Carr was an old school reporter, who valued relationships and asked the tough questions. He was the NYT’s media reporter with a grizzled past, a gravely voice and a playful acknowledgement that he didn’t exactly look like the typical NYT employee. Notoriously high standards and he didn’t take attitude or excuses. Gained attention after the Page One documentary about the NYT, Lower left, telling Vice: “Just because you put on a fucking safari helmet and looked at some poop doesn’t give you the right to insult what we do. So continue.”
- As I was joining the Times, he wrote a piece about the danger of native ads. It carried weight in the industry; his opinion was respected. But I idolized him, and I was convinced I’d win him over. I’d do this right. So the day that Netflix piece came out, I sent him a link. I asked for his honest, uncensored thoughts. He didn’t answer.
- But at 1:13 p.m., he tweeted this. He called it journalism. He called it a peach. He said it doesn’t suck!
- THIS is the importance of truth and the power of authentic stories. Now I want you all to go out there and make brand journalism that doesn’t suck too.