How Small Businesses Could Leverage The Digital Newsroom Idea

The concept of Digital Newsrooms is catching on.

Big brands like Coke, Nike and Marks and Spencer’s have already launched magazine-style website with content that appeals to their core audiences. Can a small to mid-sized business with fewer resources do this?

Every business has a story. There is always news and information that the media and the public will find interesting and valuable. Every digital newsroom should have both original content and curated content about the industry or niche they’re in. It should cover new ideas and trends.

You can publish tips and instruction on using your products. Food brands can post tips and recipes. Apparel brands can publish fashion tips and cover the Designer shows. Travel brands or CVBs can publish travel tips and information about destinations. Medical or health brands should be curating health news and tips as well as information about their own products or services. A local dental group might want to post articles about dental care by their dentists and curate tips and information from other sites and magazines about dental care and procedures they specialize in. A concrete cutting company could post about work they’ve done on interesting buildings or structures.

Here are some ideas for the top 5 Inc. 500 companies:

Fuhu: They produce a durable tablet for kids. Their newsroom should cover early education news, trends and ideas. They could interview people like Nobel prize winner James Heckman and Sir Ken Robinson. They could be creating original content about kids and technology. They could post content from events that feature kids and technology.

Federal Conference: A service-disabled veteran-owned small business that plans and delivers conferences for the federal government and corporate clients. They have a great story. Their digital newsroom should have news about conferencing and event planning, as well as successes about events they have done. They can curate news on industries they serve and post content about events they’ve organized: interesting keynotes etc.

HCI Group: Their services include implementation of healthcare IT solutions – a hot sector. They could gather statistics on the current hospital IT landscape and create original content in an infographic that would appeal to potential customers. There is a ton of health IT news content they could curate that would interest the media and their core market.

Bridger Group: A crude oil transportation and logistics company that provides logistics solutions to the oil and gas industry – from truck transportation to pipeline injection stations. They have a wealth of news and information available to them. They could curate industry news and create original content about the increasing demand for crude oil infrastructure and the transportation needs in the US.

DataXu: A software platform that allows marketers to harness big data and use real-time multivariate decision technology for their digital campaigns. This is another hot area right now. Their newsroom should be a resource for marketers and PR folk interested in using Big Data to improve their campaigns. They could be curating content from around the web and producing original content on how various companies are using Big Data to improve their bottom line.

There really is no shortage of ideas for content for a digital newsroom. All you need is someone in your firm with an inquiring mind and the willingness to learn a few new skills. Get yourself a hosted newsroom and within a few weeks you’ll be publishing with the big brands.

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