4 steps to run a stellar brand journalism site

You know your customers and employees don’t care about that groundbreaking ceremony last week, yet a senior executive wants you to cover it. What do you do?

Try to find a human interest angle.

“When you work real people, and what real people are dealing with into stories instead of dry, press-releasy kind of stuff, it’s going to resonate with the readers,” Jim Ylisela, head of Ragan Consulting, said in a session at Ragan’s 2013 Content Marketing Summit.

In his session, “Running the news desk: How to build an editorial process for brand journalism,” Ylisela explained how you can restructure your communications department to operate like a news desk. Doing so can help you turn boring corporate stories into interesting content your audience and employees will actually want to read.

Here how:

1. Learn how to filter.

The first thing you must learn how to do is say no, Ylisela says.

When people from every department want you to run their stories, this can be hard. You only have so much time and so many people on your team.

“The news site has to be very clear about what it will publish and what it won’t,” Ylisela says.