Yes, You Can Be in the News Business, and Here's How

If you’re the CEO or CMO of a company of a certain size (say, a few hundred employees or more), chances are you’ve given some thought to建立内部新闻机构bob官网官方网站。This means going beyond the ordinary meat-and-potatoes content found on most corporate blogs.

And why not? Your company is full of interesting people with great stories to tell, so why not generate news on your own rather than waiting for the local newspaper or some industry blog to discover how great you are? You can, of course, also write about interesting people and trends in your industry (not just your own company) and establish your company as a thought leader.

It’s all good, as the kids say, and it’s not very expensive. And lately it’s been all the rage among forward-thinking tech companies -- Oracle and Cisco operate fairly large newsrooms, for example. Some companies are even hiring veteran journalists. Qualcomm brought in Michelle Kessler fromUSA Todayto lead itsSparkblog, a really professional-level publication that covers a wide range of topics. Steve Hamm, a former technology editor atBusinessWeek, now writes for IBM. Evernote hired Rafe Needleman fromCNET。Brian Caulfield, a former colleague of mine atForbes, now writes for chip designer NVIDIA.

Another benefit is that you’re creating material that other blogs and mainstream publications can pick up and use. Those journalists are always hungry for stories to “feed the beast,” and frankly, a lot of them get their ideas by seeing what other people have already written. So in effect you’re priming the pump and using your own news site as a way to generate coverage in other publications, says Bill Calder, the executive editor of Intel Corp.’sIntel Free Pressbob官网官方网站新闻网站。“我们写这个品牌,也为other journalists who may be looking for interesting angles or related stories and ideas,” Calder says. “In some respects, we’re a seed generator. Also, we’re providing free content for websites and other blogs.”

Some sites will simply pick up anIntel Free Pressstory and run the whole thing verbatim. Others will link to anIntel Free Pressstory. Others will read theIntel Free Pressstory and get excited enough to send out a reporter and do their own version of the story. From Intel’s perspective, those are all wins.

Calder’s group grew out of Intel’s PR department and was launched as an experiment in 2010. “We were a bit of a trailblazer,” Calder says. The goals are not tactical -- it’s not about generating leads, or hitting certain traffic goals. Rather the idea is to build brand awareness, establish thought leadership, and put a human face on Intel. It’s also a kind of service offering. You’re providing customers with a valuable service by helping them keep up with what’s happening in the industry. You’re also using narrative and storytelling to connect with people at an emotional level. That might sound touchy-feely, but some companies see value in building stronger connections with customers and prospective customers."

Intel’s新闻自由site relies on a handful of writers, most of whom, like Calder, work in Intel’s communications department but have some journalism background. They devote part of their time to the news site but have other duties as well. In addition, in 2011 Calder hired Benjamin Tomkins, a former managing editor ofInformationWeek, to be managing editor ofIntel Free Press。

How Intel Does It

我最近赶上了卡尔德（Calder），并问他对正在考虑建立新闻业务的公司会提供什么建议。bob官网官方网站这是一些提示。

Be transparent.

卡尔德说：“不要试图隐藏自己是谁，为谁工作以及您的任务是什么。”“英特尔支付我们的支票。我不想隐藏它。但是它们使我们能够以很大的灵活性运行该网站。”

Don’t do schlocky puff pieces.

“We’re trying to take a news-based approach. If I do a story with some element of Intel in it, then it has to pass the 'red face’ test to me. We can’t just put out a puffy article about Intel solution XYZ. You have to be legitimate and you have to be credible. Don’t just regurgitate traditional marketing materials. Tell stories. Make what you do, and what you make possible, interesting.” A news blog can’t run press releases. “I have colleagues who sit across from me and do a great job on those,” Calder says.

Dare to be critical of your own company.

“We actually do a fair amount of that,” Calder says. For example, in 2010 Intel created a new technology called Turbo Boost and put a lot of effort into marketing it. But it turns out a lot of people, including sales reps in stores that were selling Intel-based computers, still had no idea what Turbo Boost did. TheIntel Free Presspublished a story pointing out the lack of awareness。“我们没有在脸上做到这一点，但故事是，'这是英特尔将所有这些营销资金投入其中，没人知道这是什么。”我有点用手指在那上面。”他不必担心。英特尔营销团队认为这是有价值的反馈。

Find good storytellers.

“Former journalists are natural, but good writers and 'people persons’ could do well too, and often many of those skills already exist within organizations,” Calder says.

Think big.

Every story doesn’t have to contain a plug for your company, or even a direct reference to some product you’re selling. Sure, stories need to be relevant to the business that you and your customers are in. (At Intel they can cast a pretty wide net.) But each story doesn’t have to create a direct pipeline to a lead or a sale. One recent story at Intel was aQ&A with a scientist and National Geographic Society explorer, Dr. Albert Yu-Min Lin.

超越自己的网站。

You don’t need to have everyone reading the story on your site. You’re not selling ads, and you don’t need to worry about unique visitors and page views. All you want to do is get a story out there and have it spark an idea for a journalist. “Reporters will say, 'Hey I can’t run your stuff, but that’s an interesting person and I want to do a profile of my own,’ and I’m fine with that,” Calder says. “It’s a different communication mechanism.”

A few years ago the新闻自由did astory about how Intel’s “Sandy Bridge” microprocessor got its name。That story got picked up by newspapers and websites all over the world. “I’m looking for a new or interesting angle that someone hasn’t done yet,” Calder says.

Another新闻自由story about remote medical equipmentgot picked up by国家地理, which used one of the photos fromIntel Free Press。(The新闻自由site shoots a lot of original photos and keeps all of them on a Flickr stream where anyone can download and use them.)

Another time theIntel Free Pressnoticed a story in an internal Intel employee newsletter about employees with cool tattoos. The新闻自由created aphoto essay about the same topic for its audience, and that新闻自由post was picked up by theOregonianbob官网官方网站报纸，有关英特尔招聘的作品私人，年轻员工。卡尔德说：“因此，在这种情况下，内部生成的内容是为我们的外部受众重新使用的，并迅速被该国前20个发行报纸之一所吸引。”bob官网官方网站“结果是对英特尔员工的描绘，不仅是带有袖珍保护者的极客和工程师，而且是臀部，年轻，并参与了社区。”

Did that end up helping Intel recruit new talent or bring in new business? There’s no way to quantify, but Calder believes so. And his bosses at Intel seem to agree. “We’re not measuring ROI by how many leads we generate or how many page views we get,” Calder says. “The purpose here is to really provide some behind-the-scenes context, and cover stuff that we feel is relevant even if may not even be directly related to our core business.” While you can indeedmeasure the ROI of your marketing content, what we learn from Intel is sometimes things have worth even if you can't immediately tie them to one specific business metric.

请问贵公司采取了新bob全站app闻-吗bob官网官方网站style approach to marketing? Share your experiences with us in the comments.

Image credit:Erjkprunczyk