Thought leadership marketing and news media consumption

Thought Leadership Times Blog (Nov 8 2009)

  1. Thought leadership marketing and news media consumption

    Introduction:

    When speaking with a prospect of HiveFire, I received and noted the following objection from a Chief Marketing Officer: “What’s the point?  Why would we ever want to have our customers or prospects read industry news from us?  They already get their news from all the same sources we read and there’s just so much noise, anyway.”

    That statement is fair and reflects most marketing professionals view of industry news information:  Everyone reads the same industry news and much of is just noise   However, given that there’s so much noise, I believe that marketers are missing an opportunity by asking a critical question:   How do we harness the media noise to increase our influence and trust with customers and prospects?

    Below, I will briefly review a paper submitted to Communications Research that studies the behavior of individuals who were exposed to attitude consistent and counter attitudinal news information.  Out of those results, I’ll propose how marketers can harness industry news to influence customers and prospects.

    The Research

    In the paper “Looking the Other Way: Selective Exposure to Attitude-Consistent and Counterattitudunal Political Information” Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick and Jingbo Meng conducted a study to understand how individuals select political messages from the news media they consume.  How did political leanings, interest in politics or party news affect the exposure/consumption of counter-attitudinal information?  Did people simply consume all political news in the same way or differently?  The test was conducted on 156 respondents and their consumption of news media was measured

    The Results

    From their test, researchers discovered that participants were most likely to click on a news article that agreed with their views 58% of the time vs. 43% of the time for an article that disagreed with their views.  The research student also uncovered that, on average, participants spent 35% more reading time on an article that agreed with their views than reading time on an article that disagreed with their views.  Reviewing subject behavior, researchers also noticed that the more a test subject consumed news information, the more they selected attitude consistent articles that agreed with their point of view.

    The Marketer's edge

    Although this project was done with political news, the key take away I propose is that individuals will mostly consume news media with which they already agree, whether in political news or business news.  Here are my three ideas on this unique opportunity for marketing professionals.

    1.       Marketers often complain that their blogs don’t attract traffic and buzz, even with high-quality, original content.  However, if marketers understand where their customers get their industry news information, marketers can attract more customer and prospect engagement by sharing highly relevant news articles from these sources that their customers already read.  Customers may not only spend more time engaged with a brand, but also may increasingly click more content with which they agree.  Combined with a blog, attitude consistent news could result in higher traffic and buzz for brands.

    2.       When it comes to generating content, finding great discussion topics that attract interest may be difficult for busy marketing executives.  As such, marketers developing a content marketing strategy should consider the news media their customers and prospect already consume.  When blogging or practicing thought leadership, marketers can leverage the news media topics their customers consume as the basis for a dialogue with customers.  This makes it easier for marketers to find content in which to drive their thought leadership and customer engagement campaigns.

    3.       Most corporate marketers can’t track what information their customers and prospects consume.   However, publishing news that your customers find highly relevant, on your website, provides a new dimension to measure and understand customer and prospect intent.  Adding this new dimension to already established measurement tools will indicate the attitudes and intents of customers and prospects to which marketers can quickly respond.

    Conclusion

    Marketers struggling to rise above the noisy news media should relax.  Within the noise of industry news and blogs is an opportunity to increase contact with customers and prospects.  You understand your customers best, particularly their views and the news media channels where they consume these views.  Collect, filter and share the news to your online community.  What’s the point?  More opportunities to influence your customers, generate inbound leads and build business partnerships.

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