Hire a Journalist to Create Compelling Content
“Businesses of any size looking to create great content have a simple solution: hire a journalist.”
David Meerman Scott,
The New Rules of Marketing & PR
"Let’s face it: Marketers are busy focusing on driving demand for their products. It’s difficult to step back and think about products from the customer’s informational perspective. But that’s just what journalists’ do."
Joe Pulizzi & Newt Barrett,
“Hiring someone trained as a print or broadcast journalist 
is a good option because journalists are trained in how to tell a story using words, images or audio, and they understand how to create content that draws an audience in.
Their innate understanding of audience also gives journalists a critical outsider’s perspective – a nuance that marketers can sometimes miss.”
Ann Handley & C.C. Chapman, Content Rules
Journalists possess the skills and training allowing them to create interesting, compelling content effortlessly; they:
- Know how to tell a compelling story with tension
- Are great listeners and superior interviewers
- Are quick studies and critical thinkers
- Are resourceful and full of creative content ideas
- Know how to research and find things quickly
- Are experts at dealing with deadlines
- Easily juggle multiple tasks
- Think and organize before they write
- Use snappy, active words
- Keep themselves out of their writing
- Write tight
- Write conversationally
- Shun adjectives, puffery and jargon
- Write short sentences moving readers along
- Often can summarize a story in a great headline
- Know how to change writing styles to match different audiences and media types
Working with a freelance journalist who has been a business reporter means you’ve found a journalist that understands your marketing and sales goals, the whys behind creating great content and understands why it’s important to deliver what your customer desires.
Why Not Follow the Advice of David, Joe, Newt, C.C. and Ann?
Compelling Content Starts Here:
Hire M. Sharon Baker, Freelance Journalist