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Why Brands Need to Care About Blogging, Mailing, or Podcasting

Written by

Paul Lipen

Last Updated: May 7, 2024

7 mins read

Why Brands Need to Care About Blogging, Mailing, or Podcasting

Table of Contents ↓

Which Businesses Need Brand
Media and Why

Almost every brand wants to be widely recognized by its target audience — to build user relations with the product and the brand, demonstrate expertise, or create a community. Corporate media can help with that. Blogs, mailings, podcasts, and social media channels are the exact places where target audiences gather to solve their problems and just have fun.

Some believe that brand media is an expensive quirk of large companies, something like “we also want a beautiful website with long-posts.” Is it really so?

In most cases, projects turn to quirks because customers don’t understand how much content costs and how media works. Some think that logos are the only thing paid for, and design doesn’t matter at all. Once that poorly written text with the wrong layout is published anywhere on the internet and people get down to reading it, the business will skyrocket. But it doesn’t work like that.

Brand media has:

A decent concept
An understanding of why the target audience needs it
Good quality content and design
A distribution system that works well and solves clients’ problems

Successful brand media isn’t too expensive. The monthly cost is roughly $10 000 – 30 000, which is a small percent of most companies’ marketing budgets.

What Issues Can Brand Media
Solve?

Content marketing issues

When a brand needs to communicate with its target audience about something more complex than just a motto or provide more information than will fit in a video, it gets down to wrapping the necessary information in up-to-date media formats. If it’s a one-time story, native advertising will be enough, but if the company needs regular advertising, it’s better for the company to create its own channels.

Brand media can be straightforward and explain the product, or it can act more broadly by changing the perception of the market to push it toward a required direction or just entertain users, thus creating a positive relationship with the brand.

For example, BMW’s brand media mostly deliver text about the vehicles and motorcycles it produces. Conversely, Kod (a journal about programming and technology) says practically nothing about its producer, Yandex.Practicum, while trying to change the audience’s relationship with the programming. Yandex.Practicum’s marketing director has recently stated that the company had been using brand media for the year and a half. Its educational project has made sales totaling six times more than the capital invested in Kod.

In general, brand media can

Strengthen the target audience’s trust and brand loyalty
Expand sales opportunities via both increased numbers of interactions with the target audience and more detailed or alternative descriptions of the product’s advantages
Make the brand an ideological leader and reinforce its influence in the targeted field

Digital media isn’t just blogs. It also includes mailings, podcasts, shows, and special events. Which formats are mainstream, which are outdated, and which are shaping the future?

Multiple formats are everything. We don’t share the idea that there are 100% effective formats and old-fashioned ones that don’t work. Content is the primary factor, and the format is secondary. It’s more important to focus on the audience’s media habits. If the target audience like podcasts, then the company needs to produce a podcast. If they like videos, then it’s weird to offer audio material. In the meantime, text remains the most popular and convenient format for most audiences.

If it’s hard to define the audience’s preferences, try all formats and look at what works best. It’s not expensive to try something one time — you can produce a podcast or video for $200–300, and text is even cheaper.

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Do all brands need their own blog? Who should try it, and who should focus on standard social media?

Digital media isn’t just blogs. It also includes mailings, podcasts, shows, and special events. Which formats are mainstream, which are outdated, and which are shaping the future?
Multiple formats are everything. We don’t share the idea that there are 100% effective formats and old-fashioned ones that don’t work. Content is the primary factor, and the format is secondary. It’s more important to focus on the audience’s media habits. If the target audience like podcasts, then the company needs to produce a podcast. If they like videos, then it’s weird to offer audio material. In the meantime, text remains the most popular and convenient format for most audiences.

If it’s hard to define the audience’s preferences, try all formats and look at what works best. It’s not expensive to try something one time — you can produce a podcast or video for $200–300, and text is even cheaper.

The market is highly competitive right now. You can find media addressing any inquiry. Isn’t it easier to use alternative ways to attract attention to the product instead of all that fuss?

Let’s assume that a frozen waffle brand decides to go with brand media. Where should it start? Look for a big idea, a budget, and a team? Find a format and define the target audience?

First, we have to form business goals. They could be to increase sales, explain why this breakfast is healthy, or explain that people should forget about frozen pancakes and switch to your waffles. Next, it’s wise to turn to those who have experience in launching brand media. They will help advance the project’s configuration, terms, and budget.

When we calculate the budget, we give an initial vision of the concept — you can’t estimate a budget without it. Then, you choose a contractor and align the budget.

The agency will then offer you a publisher, who will gather a team and start to think the project through. It takes us around three months to create website media. Sometimes, it may take up to nine months or a year. In most cases, if it takes that long, it means the team is lacking proficiency. People are unprepared and can’t make decisions because they lack experience and expertise. As a result, they spend a lot of extra money.

Let’s talk about the team. How many people do you need, and who are they? Where can you find authors? Can the company employees be authors?

You need 10 to 15 people to make media:

A publisher
An editor
Authors
A content manager
An SMM specialist
A targeter
A corrector
An art director
A photo editor
A designer
Photographers
Illustrators

If a brand is building its own independent editorial department, it can’t hire all these specialists. It will sooner hire one universal employee instead of an SMM-specialist and a targeter, but either creativity or targeting will inevitably suffer. Instead of both an art director and a designer, the company is likely to hire a designer only, but the image quality will suffer. A content manager is the next area to economize on, supposing that an editor can manage all the content-related work, which will increase the cost of the layout.

In general, it’s either quality or budget that suffers, and there’s no way around it. It’s much easier for an agency to deal with multiple projects to guarantee efficiency. We provide the required team participation — if you need 30% of a targeter, you get 30% of a targeter.

Next are authors. Can the company’s employees be authors? If an employee has the skills and desire to write text, sure. Why not? But it can’t be the basic model or the employee’s obligation. Such text will eventually become more expensive — it will take more time and effort from the editorial office, and the employees who write text are usually paid higher than regular staff.