Week 4 Reflection: RISE Self-Evaluation

The Era of Mobile Journalism: A Gift and A Curse

The Emergence of the Digital Journalism Era

Since the 1990's, digital journalism has been progressing at an exceptional pace. Innovative technologies have revamped the communication, media, journalism industries. Most importantly, it has transformed the journalism and communication industry. It has affected the way stories are presented to audiences around the world. In turn, customers are not plagued with adhering to the conventional consumption practices found in traditional journalism.

The Broad Differences Between Traditional Journalism and Brand Journalism

With brand journalism on the rise, it has become apparent that its credibility has been obscured. The intention of the brand journalist is to engage the consumer to purchase the merchandise or service. This has lead to some consumer being skeptical about the content infiltrated with subliminal messages.

The main intention of a traditional journalist is to get the information to the viewer. Because there is substantially a larger amount of content being published, there must be professional that work to distinguish credible sources from non-credible sources. Accountability journalism is a growing field that works to implement a type of checks and balances to the articles and media posted online. There are a number of new media tools that journalists use to verify the authenticity of published works. These news media tools include Document Cloud, Tor, Timeline JS, and Overview.

According to the American Press Institute, journalism is defined as "the activity of gathering, assessing, creating, and presenting news and information." Brand journalism and traditional journalism both seek to provide the audience with useful and updating information. However, the motivation behind traditional journalism and brand journalism is different. Brand journalism was created by businesses seeking to increase sales and customer engagement. While, traditional journalism is known to deliver the viewer with valuable information.

Recently, there has been a decline in the number of published newspapers and magazines. Journalists started being laid off and the media output shifted from print to digital at a very rapid pace. This has left a very small need for a large team of journalists at many organizations whether large or small. With the birth of the blog, the 1140-character tweet on Twitter, and the "wall" posting on Facebook, new and fresh publishing opportunities became available to journalists.

In the United States, there are 38,000 full time day-to-day newspaper journalists and there are nearly, 1,400 newspapers being printed. In 2013, there was a 2,600-person decrease from last years 40,600. Ken Fleming states, "Total newsroom employment has declined by 6.4 percent in 2012. 

The Effectiveness of Content Marketing in the Media Industry. 

According to Clare Hill, "Content marketing is the discipline of creating quality branded editorial content across all media channels and platforms to deliver engaging relationships, consumer value, and measurable success for brands." People like to view good content. Essentially, companied are looking to feed their target audience with good content to reach and watch. While they are doing this, they are subliminally underlining their messages with branded content. 

The Content Marketing Institute in the United Kingdom conducted research on content marketing and found that 60% of marketers used brand content while 20% of their budget was exclusively used to deploy it. Content Marketing is wonderful for brand building and long term customer engagement. However, companies must understand that using content marketing initiatives will not always work in the brand's favor. 

The same study found that if viewers can identify content marketing when they notice it, 28% of viewers would never act on buying it. For example, a user can like an ad on Facebook, follow it on Twitter, and visit the website and never purchase anything. Additionally, "more than 70 percent of respondents said that poorly produced content would in their view impact negatively on the brand, yet 31 percent said they would not be more likely to buy from a brand even if they liked what they saw. 

Therefore, companies must understand that viewers prefer viewing their content ad free. The key to getting around this downside is by producing quality content. For an organization to be on the tight track, the plug must be subtle enough to allow viewers to continue enjoying the content but outright enough for the viewer to know what you are selling. This can be a intimidating task, however, once it is mastered the orders will begin to roll in. 

The Challenges of Native Advertising

According to the Guadian News, native advertisers are using published content to build trust and engagement with potential consumers. Native advertisments can be found in a promoted Tweet, a suggested post on Facebook, or any other online social publication platform. They are designed to resemble the platform's usual content and can resemble regular articles.

Companies are looking to work with these social entities to reach their target audience in the most effective way. Publications of native ads are typically full of high quality content. Organizations that publish native ads are building creative content campaigns and teams to provide the target audience with the needed content to close the sale. Native advertising is envisioning to inspire outside conversation, to go viral, and to entice loyal readers.

Watch John Oliver Roast Native Advertising in Hilarious Way

This is an example of a Forbes Magazine cover subliminally using native advertising . The article the text refers to a native advertisement found inside the March 2015 issue. This article is apart of a larger set of articles published by Forbes on retirement.

Digital Tools Used In Content Marketing

Without a doubt, there is a wide variety o f software that can aid in deploying content marketing initiatives. 

Content Marketing Form provides a number of websites that offer web analytics:

Docalytics is a cloud-based platform that allows departments within organizations to view documents, evaluate analytics, and track leads.

Kissmetrics provides real time and links anonymous activity to known activity once a visitor becomes a customer.

Mixpanel measures actions such as searches or shares to gain greater insights into user behavior. 

Trial Fire assists marketers by allowing their website to be coding free. This helps when adding tracking on different webpages.

Webtrends offers tools for measuring and optimizing digital initiatives.

Conclusion: Is Brand Journalism Worth It?

Brand journalism and traditional journalism are working to produce the best stories for the on-the-go customer. However, brand journalism has enhanced the storytelling experience for some viewers while it has obscured it for others. Fortunately, content marketing initiatives are working to make this transition engaging and shareable for all audiences. 

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