Managing Your Brand Newsroom Like A Pro

As we're in the process of helping our customer and the winner of the #100Million campaign, Hövding, manage their newsroom, we thought we'd give you a little insight into our thought processes behind each step... 

#Step 1 - Define the purpose of your newsroom

To create content and be consistent, you need to set the aim of your newsroom from the off. Taking Hövding, as an example, we've decided to create content around the following: "Make cycling your lifestyle choice". Why? Because it's relevant to the company's offering and their audience's needs.

Crafting communications that people would like to read requires some mastery in the art of storytelling, but also in identifying a higher purpose. Notice here that we are not focused solely on communicating the Hövding product. Quite the opposite: we want to concentrate on the enjoyment and benefits of cycling and deliver engaging articles for cycling enthusiasts.

#Step 2 - Create your goals

Once you have defined your purpose, the next step is creating your goals. Again using the Hövding newsroom as an example, our initial goals are to:

1) Create an editorial calendar, identifying potential topics of interest for existing and potential cyclists. Instead of being product focused, we are going to address subjects such as the health benefits of cycling, safety issues, scenic routes, character stories, etc. Click here to see an example.

2) Publish consistently. In Hövding's newsroom, we've committed ourselves to posting three times a week. Note that building an audience doesn't happen overnight. You need to make a long-term investment, and it starts with producing content regularly and publishing consistently, as well as answering the unanswered questions of your readers.

3) Set measurable performance goals such as average views per week, the number of visitors, average time spent on the site, the average number of page views, etc. If you don't set goals, you will not be motivated to improve and increase your performance. Start with the quick wins and then aim higher.

Over the next four weeks this is what we're striving to achieve in Hövding's newsroom:

• Triple the number of views per week
• Triple number of visitors
• Go from 2.41 to 3 average page views
• Increase average time spent on site by 41 seconds

We will let you know if we achieve it...

#Step 3 - Track results, test and optimise

Once you've identified the purpose of your newsroom and set your goals, the next step is keeping track of how well your content is performing. Are you achieving your goals? If not, why? What content works best? Find out!

Finally, focus your attention on your top stories; expand on them and go into detail. Also, use Google Trends and see which search queries and topics are the most popular. If you want to stick out from the crowd, our recommendation would be to go niche and cover untapped topics that could be of interest to your readers. Manage that, and you will win an audience.