kari paul: brand loyalty as a distribution strategy

BRAND LOYALTYas a distribution strategy

reliance respectgrowth

socialengagementaudience

retention

assuranceadvertisement

relationship

metricssecurity

trust

confidence

satisfactionquality

marketingsupport business

focusresearch

strategyreferrals

potentialexperience profitability

model

process

value

Freelancers & publications: a symbiotic relationship

Finding viral stories is beneficial for both

If your story gets no traffic it’s less likely you’ll be hired back

It all comes back to:

❏ Good news sense ❏ Headline writing ❏ Social potential

Personal traffic as a freelancer

VICE❏ Motherboard❏ Broadly❏ VICE❏ Noisey

NYMagQuartzCosmopolitanComplex

‘Hundreds of Witches Just Hexed Stanford Rapist Brock Turner’

Social media and brand loyaltyWith the rise of social media, people do have attachments to authors rather than publications

Ann Friedman

My experience:

❏ Full time contributor to full time freelance

❏ Full time freelance to full time reporter❏ Brought an audience with me each

step

From freelance → full time: a brand transition ❏ Benefits to me

❏ Larger audience❏ Consistent work❏ MarketWatch is the best

❏ Benefits to MarketWatch❏ I bring my young, diverse audience to their

older demographics❏ Freelance background gives me insight on

what people want to read across the web

MarketWatch and brand loyalty

Referrals for month of February● 33.8% of traffic comes from “Direct” traffic, meaning people came directly to that article

from no discernable place (clicked on link from an email, a PDF, etc.)● 28.9% came from Internal, which means they came directly to MarketWatch.com –

something rare for most media sites

High number of return visitors:

Average referral sources among top 100 news sites, May-July 2015

Top referrals -MarketWatch vs. average of top 100 news sites

MW top 8 referrers

1.MarketWatch.com (homepage)

2.Google

3.Yahoo

4.Facebook

5.Drudge

6.Twitter

7.Google News

8.MarketWatch Big Charts

Other sites top 8 referrers1.Facebook2.Google3.Yahoo4.Twitter5.Bing6.Direct Homepage7.Drudge8.NewsNow

Personal traffic as reporter

One story: a sample

Another sample

❏ Journalists, both freelance and full time, need to pay attention to metrics

❏ Personal brand = more views❏ Brand loyalty = more views❏ Combine these in a full time capacity for max increase in

engagement