Consumers are highly knowledgeable nowadays and apart from wanting original, relevant and valuable content, they want content that is impartial. They are aware that no business is perfect and they appreciate it when a business has the courage to acknowledge their imperfections. This is why you should encourage your content creation team to write articles about industry events without hesitation.
To gain an edge over your competitors, you should make sure that the content your brand is publishing is original and impartial. It goes without saying that you should also never use your content to unfairly criticize your competitors either.
Content without even the subtlest promotion of the brand and its products may sound absurd and useless. Here are two companies who are leading the way in creating absolutely impartial content that is working very well for them.
Alibaba
Alibaba Group is a Chinese company that operates a number of e-commerce websites in Asia. Its annual sales revenue is more than that of Amazon and eBay combined. The company has an excellent content marketing strategy and even has a very effective content publishing platform known as Alizila. This platform is used by the content creation team at Alibaba to publish articles on industry news and trends. The one thing that sets this content company apart from its competitors is the fact that it is willing to publish content even if it points out negative things about the company.
According to the company’s International Corporate Affairs Manager – Pamela Munoz, the editor of the company’s content marketing team is well aware that impartial content is more credible. In fact, articles are sometimes rejected if they are not impartial and credible. One of the biggest plus points of publishing impartial content is that fact that more media outlets will be willing to use your stories on their platforms. This can only be a good thing for your company.
Nissan
Another company that is making a huge push towards creating impartial content is Japanese automaker – Nissan. In 2011, the company launched the Nissan Global Media Center where company created content can be published. The content creation team at Nissan consists of experienced content creators and journalists who create content for the company using brand journalism.
The Head of Communications of Nissan – Paul Miles, says that the company is focused on reporting stores from the company’s point of view but they also publish content that points out flaws in their products.
Both these brands may not have a huge number of readers but many of their articles are picked up by other media outlets that are hugely popular. This just goes to show that if you want your content to be more share-worthy, make it impartial.