One of things we do at Livingston Communications with our clients’ corporate social media initiatives is encourage them to create editorial missions. Great publications use an editorial mission to guide their content creation and fulfill a purpose. Unwaveringly that content is written to educate or inform readers, listeners or viewers about a particular or general subject matter. If content wavers from the mission, it’s often discarded by a managing or executive editor whose job revolves around fulfilling the editorial mission and serving the community. Since corporations are now creating media content on a regular basis, it only makes sense for them to adopt this editorial best practice.
Unfortunately, many practitioners are unable to guide their clients in this sense. A classic public relations error involves not understanding targeted publications’ missions and what they write about. This often leads to horrific rants from reporters, some of which make it to the blogosphere.
When asked for a Buzz Bin interview (to be published later today) if an editorial mission can benefit a blog, FCW Executive Editor and author of the FCW Insider blog said, “Absolutely.” Marketing minds have to understand the importance of editorial missions, not only for outbound PR efforts, but for their own new media efforts. By sticking to an editorial mission statement, the new media stays on track, creating value for its community by providing regular, intelligent copy that stays on topic.
Creating value builds opportunity in a win-win fashion for both your organization and your larger community. In this particular instance, valuable and well structured content towards a social networks needs allows you to contribute, participate and garner respect. By create content that better suits the social network’s needs, they will inherently come to trust your effort, and will want to work with you.
Creating the Right Editorial Mission Can Be Difficult
How cool would it be for [BMW loyalists] to interface directly with a BMW representative on a regular basic, asked Todd Defren of SHIFT Media. “Pretty cool. And more importantly, it would show visitors to the highly-trafficked blog that BMW truly cared about its customers and prospective buyers. I recognize that there are challenges for any company to scale and train and monitor a group of “community managers� that could serve as adjuncts to the marketing group. But what’s worth doing that isn’t going to be a challenge?�
And that’s really the rub. Going through the difficulty of creating value for the community so they find it worthwhile (a.k.a. cool for BMW owners). This requires a) knowing what the community wants, b) understanding the intrinsic value the company has to offer, and c) being creative enough to deliver this value in a way that’s interesting and compelling. This is where the art of marketing can help your new media initiative.
There’s one major pitfall to avoid in an editorial mission: Trying to overtly promote the company. This error remains one of the most common reasons corporate new media initiatives fail. Companies engage in social media because they want to market themselves, and they think new media forms are just another way to promote their wares. This error creates blogs that are never read, videos that are never played, and podcasts that don’t buyers don’t download.
Promotional blogs bore the casual social network member. Sales pitches have no inherent value to someone whose interested in the company’s general category. Getting sold to fails to address why they’re surfing the social network. Content must appeal to the community, and this means giving it valuable, interesting content. Promotion only works when it creates substantial value for your community. That doesn’t mean a corporation should create yet another day in the life blog.
“If you want to create a blog that covers your industry rather than offering the typical company diary, that’s fine, too — even if the blog pharisees criticize you for not adhering to blog orthodoxy,â€? said Scott Baradell in a recent blog post. “Ultimately, it will be the quality of what you produce that will matter — not whether your ideas fit into someone else’s box.â€?
Content should be authentic, providing information that’s inside the organization’s natural and obvious areas of expertise. The organization’s subject matter expertise represents its primary source of value to a community. Further, sharing relevant and interesting subject matter-specific content allows the company to build its image as a community leader or expert.
Hi Geoff,
I completely buy into what you are saying, and the value of using something you call an editorial mission. I have taken the same sort of approach throughout my career – to pin down exactly what the organisation wants to say, in what sort of tone of voice, and ensuring that statements are justifiable and credible, but also differentiating, desirable to audiences, and used with enough clarity and regularity that the messages reach their destination (relatively) unhindered by ‘chinese whispers.’ Its true that social media contexts raise additional points for consideration.
Sometimes the appropriate name for this was a ‘branding strategy,’ a ‘messages architecture,’ or a ‘positioning statement’ – among many others I’m sure – depending on the current need. What matters more than the name is the approach taken to decide what you want to achieve, and what you need to do and say – over the long term – to achieve your goals. A controversial point I know, that organisations have businesses to run and responsibilities to shareholders, employees, and other groups, but this shouldn’t stop them being able to ‘get’ social media, and join in the dialogue accordingly.
What tends to get in the way of this, particularly in larger global organisations, is the difficulty to get any unity of objectives in the first place! Therein lies the real challenge.
Ronna
I completely, totally, absolutely, unequivocally, 100% agree!!
Without getting too bogged down in an overused analogy – it’s a battle vs. war outlook. If your consultant is shortsighted and seeking success in the short run through pop-shot projects, you’re overall brand won’t be as strong.
If on the other hand you carry an editorial mission, it’s a strategy that can navigate you through rocky waters and ease decision making.
Thank you both. Yes, to me it is the war vs. the battle. It’s also a principle of service. Companies forget they are here to serve their customers…not the other way around. This happens daily, and the mission helps them keep their focus.