Brand journalism strategy boosts Web traffic by 451 percent

For almost a decade, I’ve recommended that companies of all kinds model their sites not on their peers’ boring, old, brochure-like approach but rather aspire to becoming like a media site such as Forbes, the BBC, or The New York Times and that they hire reporters and editors, not marketers and copywriters, to produce the content.

One look at the Raytheon home page shows it does exactly that. There are real-time news, images, and a top stories section. And Raytheon is a B2B (and B2G) company.

“You can see our home page is very much a news operation,” says Corinne J. Kovalsky, director of digital and social media at Raytheon. “We’ve got feature stories and trend stories about cool products.”

I’ve engaged with Kovalsky for several years on social networks and recently had an opportunity to visit with her and the team at Raytheon headquarters to learn how they built the brand journalism approach to marketing and public relations.

Kovalsky, a former TV producer, explains: “I did national news up in Canada for the CTV Network for a number of years. I produced the Canadian equivalent of ‘Meet the Press,’ and I have very fond memories of having journalists on staff.”