#AskJon: How can PR specialists use brand journalism?

So, I’m talking to all you fellow PR folks out there when I say, you know and I know that at the heart of it were all storytellers. In the good old days, we told that story through the media. When there were tons of media to pitch, and there were tons of outlets out there.

Well, there are fewer media to pitch and much fewer outlets out there, and it’s becoming harder for us. But, technology has enabled us to become our own publishers. So, PR folks can take the stories they want to tell, publish them online, control a hundred percent of the content and also better control the audiences that we want to see that content.

So, as PR folks in 2017 and moving into 2018, we have to look at ourselves as storytellers, but in a different way. We have to use the new tools of the trade. We have to learn how to write again. We also have to learn about the paid element, which hasn’t always been our strength. How can we use social channels to identify the right audiences, post the content on those social channels and then mix in the paid piece — the Facebook advertising, the LinkedIn advertising — to target the right customers and make sure we tell those stories, now directly to those audiences, in a way that, perhaps — and this is a bit blasphemous — maybe is better than the old way.