Guess What? Brand Journalism is Really Really Hard

BRAND JOURNALISM: NOT FOR WUSSIES.Valerie Combs, VP of Communications at Ask.com

BRAND JOURNALISM: It’s really, really hard.

“78% of CMOs think custom content is the future of content marketing.”

- The State of Content Marketing 2013, Wishpond

Brands are jumping into the content marketing game with fervor, shouting “Content drives relationships!”

But the truth is,

brand journalism is

not for wussies.

In 2013, Ask.com launched our own content marketing experiment, called TheKnow -- a soup-to-nuts digital lifestyle enterprise designed to answer the questions people didn’t know they had through entertaining and compelling content.

We did not mess around.

We determined our point of view and brand vision

We hired an editorial director We tapped a slew of professional

contributors And we developed a robust, multi-

layered editorial calendar, marketing and social media strategy.

BRAND JOURNALISM: It’s really, really hard.

BRAND JOURNALISM: It’s really, really hard.

What is realistic to accomplish with a

strategy like this – and what, frankly, isn’t

(and how to get executive buy-in either

way). Where to take short cuts, and where you to

invest How to avoid falling into bad BuzzFeed

habit (no cat memes!). The biggest trade-offs you’ll make. Non-starters: What to avoid at all costs. The biggest wins: some of which you never

saw coming.

ONE YEAR LATER: What we learned