As a member of the Public Relations Society of America, I continue to monitor industry trends, thought leadership and best practices.  I was heartened to read a recent article in the March issue of Tactics titled, “The newsroom approach: Make customers care with brand journalism.”  The article suggests that more organizations are using strategic brand journalism and content marketing to create news and educational materials that benefits their audiences, rather than purely promotional advertisements.  Since joining Thomas Center in Spring 2010′, Tom Rose and I have tirelessly promoted the need to create and distribute proprietary, valuable content to target audiences to maintain leading brand identity within a market space.

We’ve been working together with clients to create short, news-based success stories that focus on leading industry solutions to the most common business challenges and opportunities within a market space.  Rather than simply promoting a product or service, our client’s website, blog, newsletter and collateral content is solely geared toward sharing latest industry trends, thought leadership and best practices.  Visit our newsletter section to read stories such as “Cox State-of-the-Art Dental Lab Among First to Utilize new 3D Edit Technology; Cutting-Edge Design to Church Entry Poses Challenge for Team of Stanley Roofing, Foushee Construction and atelierjones Architects; and Thomas Center Forges Alliance with Left-Brain Specialist- Extremely Good Sales Hunter.”

The article concludes that while these strategies require sustained effort and budgeting, they deliver tangible returns for companies.  The era of strictly promotional PR/Marketing content is gone.  If you haven’t already, contact Thomas Center to learn how to create a newsroom approach to establish a credible “connection” with your vital audiences.  Take the step to lead your market in brand identity.