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
