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The troubling spread of disinformation doesn’t appear to be going away any time soon. But news consumers don’t view media sources as the leading culprits.

According to the 2019 IPR Disinformation Report, 63 percent of Americans view disinformation – defined as deliberately misleading or biased information – as a significant problem in society, up there with gun violence (63 percent) and terrorism (66 percent). However, nearly two-thirds of respondents to the IPR survey say local newspapers (62 percent) and local broadcast news (62 percent) are trustworthy. And some of the country’s largest newspapers – USA Today (47 percent), The New York Times (46 percent), The Wall Street Journal (44 percent) and The Washington Post (42 percent) – are widely viewed as trusted sources.

But simultaneously, according to another research report, Americans’ trust in the mass media dropped over the past year – findings that echo the sentiments of panelists at a recent event in Chicago.

Reporters Not Feeling the Love

The current media landscape is something we plan on digging into a lot in 2020, specifically with the upcoming presidential election. But we had a chance in 2019 to hear from some members of the media during the panel, “Preserving the Truth in an Age of Misinformation,” sponsored by Indiana University’s Chicago Alumni Association. Several reporters who spoke said public perception hasn’t swung back in their favor after years of intense attacks against the news media.

Veteran Reuters reporter and foreign correspondent Elaine Monaghan moderated the discussion, which focused on how best to navigate distorted information and share news responsibly. The panel included Meghan Dwyer, WGN Chicago; Traci Rucinski, Reuters; Andrea Hanis, Chicago Tribune; Hannah Alani, Block Club Chicago; Eric White, Chicago Sun-Times and Kale Wilk, Times of Northwest Indiana.

Several panelists blamed the disinformation crisis on a singular culprit: “fake news.”

Dwyer said that the phenomenon is (literally) hitting broadcast reporters on the streets. She recalled doing a story about Jazz Fest in New Orleans. After throwing a beer can that hit her in the head, a heckler shouted, “FU – You’re fake news! Get out of here!”

“We have terrible things said to us daily while standing in the cold, trying to give people the information they need to know about a shooting,” she added.

Hanis agreed. “The fact that people feel journalists are reckless about the truth is hilarious. As journalists we live in a constant state of paranoia,” she said. “Our job is to make sure our reporting is right. We wake up at 3 a.m. scared we got something wrong and run to our laptops in the dark to make sure we didn’t.”

Hanis walked through the process for addressing corrections at the Tribune, illustrating how serious the paper is about getting things right.

“We have a full-time standards editor who creates the policy and holds us accountable,” she said. “Everyone knows that when we get something wrong it’s a big deal.”

Elani addressed how accountability drives her work. “At Block Club, we work for the people, and they pay our salary. We don’t have advertising streams; we don’t have shareholders. The readers own us; we must be accountable,” she said. “They also live and work in the neighborhoods where we live and work, so that impacts our accountability as well.”

Elani talked about how a reader reached out via Twitter with a suggested change to a story. Elani didn’t have time to respond but that same reader happened to see her out that day while jogging and followed up on whether she had caught her suggestion.

Elani handles the fake news talk by taking the time to educate her community about the job of a journalist. “Many times, fake news comes from people recycling the term, but not understanding what journalists do and why they do what they do.”

Headlines and Other Ways to Combat Fake News

While the panelists agreed about the importance of accuracy, they also addressed sensitive topics such as whether they are pressured to create “click bait” headlines to drive readers to stories.

“While our goal is to use a headline to get a reader to read a story, we don’t include anything in our headlines that is untrue,” said White, of the Sun-Times. “That would go against everything we do.”

At Reuters, while headlines are essential, they’re mostly targeted towards the publication’s fastest-growing clientele: media clients.

“We are cognizant that our media clients like Google, Apple, MSNBC and Yahoo are looking towards our headlines and our ability to turn a story around quickly and accurately so that they can repurpose them for their platforms,” Rucinski said.

The reporters also provided great advice for consumers of news who would like to help combat the “fake news” epidemic.

“Talk about the news and cite where you read an interesting article,” Dwyer said. “If you see someone sharing information that’s false, comment on it and then link to the actual source. Sign up for multiple news outlets. Pay for the news, because the news can’t pay for itself.”

Keep Calm and Carry On?

The evening concluded with a final question from the audience: “What keeps you all going given the constant pressures and doubts about your commitment to truth and accuracy?”

“It’s the comradery,” White said. “We’re understaffed and trying to do a good job every day. You feel responsible for the others sitting with you and doing this thing that matters even though it’s not easy and the hours suck.”

Added Dwyer: “I really believe in what we do. We are the Fourth Estate, damn it, and we must hold people accountable. I still love it, even on my bad days.”

Wilk, a reporter and photojournalist at the Times of Northwest Indiana, says that it’s his love of the craft that drives him. “Photos are an incredible and concrete way to capture humanity,” he said.

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What if a yogi with a JD was a law firm’s highest-paid employee? What if a law firm committed to paying a law student’s loans once they passed the bar – if they committed to stay with the firm for two years?

These were just some of the ah-ha moments that Greentarget team members and students of DePaul University’s Public Relations & Advertising (PRAD) Grad class arrived at during a problem-solving workshop guided by innovation sherpa Howell Malham, founder and managing director ofGreenHouse::Innovation. Malham drove the conversation using Innovation Dynamics, his groundbreaking approach to true social innovation and problem-solving that involve large groups of actors: people, in other words.

Our goal? Find answers to the following question:

How can the legal industry attract and retain new talent in an age of clashing cultures?

That question, a critical one for many Greentarget clients, centers on how old-guard attorneys might be more comfortable with long work hours, whereas younger attorneys yearn for wellness programs, robust cultures, professional development opportunities and work-life balance.

The workshop could have taken a lot of different paths, but Malham kept us on track and used his Innovation Dynamics playbook – designed to seek out unseen social forces holding the status quo in place – to produce ideas to disrupt the legal industry. Malham’s playbook identifies six elements that form norms, unwritten rules that govern our behavior and interactions.

Over the course of two hours, we focused on one of those elements: actors, people with close relationships to the problem. Identifying law firm partners, clients, law schools and the students themselves, lateral recruits and families and spouses as just a few of the key players involved in recruiting and retaining legal talent, we discussed their motivations and asked questions such as:

What are the actors’ behaviors related to the problem? What do behaviors suggest about actors’ interests and motivations? What current behavior by a current actor could subvert the norm? What behavior by a new actor might subvert the norm?

The answers present clear challenges to the traditional law firm model.

The partner track is not necessarily attractive to all incoming attorneys, and compensation and benefits are not necessarily enough to keep them around. Younger people are waiting longer to settle down and have families, leaving them flexible to explore options at all stages of their careers. They also enter the job market hungry for meaningful work and purpose. Putting in long hours as an associate to earn their spot on the partner track can clash with those motivations.

Figuring the law firm model is still valuable to many law firm employees and partners, Greentarget and the PRAD Grad students brainstormed the following ways to better align that model with younger lawyers’ motivations:

  • Ex-Lawyers on Staff: Hire and engage employees who have earned their JDs and pursued alternative career paths, such as yoga instructors, journalists and therapists, to tackle recruitment challenges. These individuals understand the pressures of working at law firms and can provide fresh perspectives on the culture and wellness elements firms are trying to employ.
  • “Scott’s Tots”: Inspired by “The Office” episode when Michael Scott (Steve Carell) promises to pay an entire third-grade class’ college tuition after they graduate high school, a firm could sponsor a class at a target law school for recruitment and offer to pay their law school loans if they pass the bar. This level of financial support when so many students are drowning in debt promotes a sense of loyalty from employees.
  • Pro Bono Focus: Once a year, host a marathon where the firm’s lawyers focus solely on pro bono matters and work in shifts for one straight week, 24 hours a day. This level of commitment would not only drive good publicity but also engage all employees in purposeful work outside of their standard client work. 

DePaul’s PRAD Grad students participated as part of a course called Chicago Corporations & Their Agencies, which focuses on working relationships between agencies and clients. The Greentarget team had a great time – and it sounds like the students did too.

“The class couldn’t have gone better,” said Ron Culp, instructor and professional director of PRAD. “Seldom do students linger afterwards, especially when the evening runs past 8 o’clock. No complaints last night.”

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A few weeks ago, our copy editor, Stephanie, walked into my office and handed me a piece of paper. “Want this?” she asked. Assuming I didn’t, I took it from her. But before I could drop it in the recycling bin I took a quick peek and…oh! An award! We won! (Kind of.)

Turns out the Content Marketing Institute named ThinkSet a finalist for Best Digital Publication in its 2019 awards. Not long after, ThinkSet also earned an honorable mention in the Ragan’s PR Daily Content Marketing Awards in the Electronic Publications or E-Newsletter Category.

ThinkSet is our client BRG’s magazine; we’re its editors. We plan, manage and edit all ThinkSet stories, and produce all the podcasts, in collaboration with BRG’s design, marketing and internal editing teams. Along with the marketing team, including Phil Rowley, the Chief Revenue Officer, we identify the story ideas that will showcase BRG’s smartest, most original, most advanced thinking. Our job is to use our editorial experience and know-how to help turn the firm’s best ideas into stories, or podcasts, that will connect with business leaders.

Happily, BRG is loaded with ideas. That enables us to produce stories like this one, describing the role business leaders and investors must play in combatting opioids. Or this one, which mines the PC and smartphone revolutions to reveal what the advent of autonomous vehicles could mean for the automotive business. Or this column about how big employers were driving innovation in healthcare long before Amazon got in the game.

Articles like that arm BRG’s team with powerful business development tools. Our media-relations team amplifies the impact, sharing the stories with reporters to demonstrate the authors know their stuff. That’s led to BRG consultants getting quoted in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The American Lawyer, among many others.  

We didn’t win the CMI award – it went to this amazing graphic novel instead. No argument there, and we were in good company among the finalists. Qantas Airways and Volkswagen (that one’s in German) also made the list.

The recognition is gratifying because, alongside the BRG team, we’ve worked hard to make ThinkSet a compelling, valuable business magazine. Maintaining a weekly publishing schedule takes a lot of effort and producing a quality magazine takes a lot of talent, commitment and creativity. The BRG team brings it all, every week. We’d like to think we do too.

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Curiosity. Empathy. Trust. Grit. These are the essential elements that inspire our work — both with our clients and the journalists who cover them. These elements are also the foundation of our development and implementation of successful media relations programs at Greentarget — and they have been since our firm’s earliest days.

The media landscape is constantly shifting, and news organizations are in the midst of disruption that would have been unthinkable not long ago. As print newspapers and magazines continue to fold or shrink, digital news and social media grow. Faced with tight deadlines and demands to produce content online and through social media, journalists are under constant pressure. To top it off, the public’s trust in traditional media sources has declined.

Get the media relations strategy that works for today’s world.

Greentarget’s Media Relations VisionDownload

Against this backdrop, there are some rumblings that earned media might become obsolete — rumblings with which we wholeheartedly disagree. While Americans are consuming the news in evolving ways — with nine out of 10 adults now getting news online — there isn’t less interest in news. We’re seeing explosive growth in digital journalism, with emerging outlets adding resources and staff. As a result, earned media will continue to be a preferred way for B2B and professional services companies to enhance their reputations and direct smarter conversations to key stakeholders.

Known by clients and colleagues as the “guardians of the lost art of media relations,” we at Greentarget are keeping a close watch on the changes to the media landscape and adapting as need be. However, more often than not, we’ve found that staying true to the principles and approaches that we’ve had since our company’s founding is the best approach for our firm and our clients.

At our core, we believe successful earned media campaigns are about aligning our client’s business objectives with communications goals. This means finding clients the right platform to get the messages in front of the right people. We pride ourselves on offering journalists reputable spokespeople who add value to their stories — which, in turn, forges strong relationships with these journalists who return to us time and time again. It is through this process that clients get the third-party validation they need that can turn a quote into a measurable sales impact.

Get the media relations strategy that works for today’s world.

Greentarget’s Media Relations VisionDownload

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Most CMOs, in-house counsel and C-suite officers agree they want research reports that are educational, in-depth and relevant. But actually finding those reports can prove surprisingly challenging, according to the 2019 State of Digital & Content Marketing Survey.

For instance, while 68 percent of CMOs, 64 percent of C-suite executives and 51 percent of in-house counsel say they appreciate that research reports are “educational,” only 9 percent of the C-suite and 19 percent of in-house counsel identify the attribute “easy to access” as one that intuitively appeals when it comes to research reports.

What makes these valuable sources of information so difficult to find? The disconnect likely stems from how research reports are typically disseminated — and suggests that, instead of depending on readers to find the reports on a firm website or microsite, marketers should employ a mix of targeted earned and owned content (leaning heavily on interactive charts — which are especially appealing to C-suite members). Trade publication websites, websites from outside professional service providers and vendors, and podcasts represent three potential areas of opportunity.

Approximately three-fourths of both in-house counsel and C-suite officers highly value trade publications — both online and in print — that cover industry news, with a significant majority visiting these publications at least weekly. CMOs nearly unanimously (95 percent) agree that trade publications are a valuable marketing source. Strategic placement of select research findings in these publications — cited and hyperlinked in staff-written, bylined or sponsored articles, for example — provides an impactful, coordinated marketing opportunity.

Both C-suite executives (67 percent) and in-house counsel (63 percent) also consider professional service provider websites a high-value source for news and information — and research reports offer these providers a means of refreshing their website content. The key, however, is to draw targeted audiences to where a particular report lives on the site. One way to achieve this would be to use social media to promote select findings — via infographics or teasers, for example — replete with links to the full report.

Podcasts again made gains in 2019 among both C-suite executives and in-house counsel as a preferred content source. So marketers should seriously consider developing podcasts around select reports. A growing number of other professional service providers are already doing this, to great — and even award-winning — effect. Though some might think podcasts an unlikely medium for in-depth research, our survey found that nearly 70 percent of C-suite officers perceive them as “educational” — suggesting that this segment welcomes receiving research through this medium.

Beyond distribution, research reports face challenges related to timing: Both in-house counsel (60 percent) and C-suite officers (57 percent) place high value on content that is current. Interactive charts likely appeal to C-suite members in part because the reader often feels like this reporting is especially dynamic. Lengthier research reports, while providing the in-depth information that both survey groups may value, could be months or even years in the making. Upon publishing, the information may be — or appear to be — of little use to decision-makers.

As Isaac Rogers of 20/20 Research says, “Research providers might publish a year-end review, but I need something timely. They do good work, but by the time major publications are out, I already know what is covered in the report.”

Shorter, more frequent research reports provide a solution. And strategic distribution of timely, actionable content through diverse channels will help meet the goals and preferences of the C-suite, in-house counsel and CMOs alike.

This article originally appeared in the 2019 State of Digital & Content Marketing Survey.

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“If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”

Philosophical thought experiments and professional services marketing don’t appear to have much in common. But in a content ecosystem where every firm is vying for the mantle of thought leader, the comparison is pertinent. Except the question might be, “If a single tree falls in a forest where hundreds of trees are falling around it at the same time, does anyone notice it?”

We’re at a point in the arc of thought leadership where the term itself has lost some of its meaning. That’s because most firms approach content marketing from the thought perspective — attempting to create useful, novel, urgent analysis on the issues of the day – while ignoring the leader angle that implies cultivation of heavy readership within key audiences. The result is a lot of well-written content that isn’t breaking through to those audiences.

For years at Greentarget, we’ve studied this phenomenon and it was a key consideration in our 2019 State of Digital & Content Marketing Survey. We found that busy executives increasingly prefer vendor websites and blogs as sources of information. And they still trust traditional media’s credibility above all other sources.

That gives firms and their marketers multiple avenues for engaging C-suite audiences. But to do that effectively, they have to ensure their owned content and published bylines are conveying true authority – by providing the value executives want: relevance, novelty, urgency and, above all, utility.

The beautiful thing is that SEO, when combined with expert editorial judgment and a deep understanding of the relevant issues, can help deliver all of those things. In other words, it’s not just a tool for optimizing your web pages – SEO can actually make content better. In fact, combining these three elements will supercharge the editorial process.

SEO research is a proxy for user interests: because search queries represent informational needs, this type of analysis helps marketers identify the topics that matter and how they can answer audiences’ most burning questions. Instilling SEO techniques into your editorial process will not only lead to more effective website architecture and better search ranking for your content, but a much deeper understanding of your customers and their current needs that translates into stronger and more relevant points of view. All of this is essential for organizations working to pinpoint and focus on the topics and attributes decision-makers value most.

Finally, SEO is critical for lead generation. Traffic from search, known as organic traffic, is almost always going to be more engaged than traffic from other channels because it represents users who are actively seeking content in response to a need, rather than just clicking on an ad they were served or a post they stumbled across. Creating content that anticipates their most pressing needs is the most effective way to keep them coming back for more, thereby establishing a strong pipeline of leads from your content marketing efforts.

Optimizing your site for organic traffic means optimizing for strong user experience, and in an environment where dozens of firms with similar practices are frantically publishing similar content, SEO techniques will help make your thought leadership visible and valuable. Making that content findable, navigable, and actionable will create a lasting competitive edge that will establish your site as a repeat destination for thought leadership.

A version of this article appeared in the 2019 State of Digital & Content Marketing Survey, released in July 2019.

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