Hey, Content Marketer: Soles Worn Out?

Companies don't run to ex-journalists for content because they write fine sentences.

They run to them because journalists live and breath stories.

I pity content marketers who lack skills in "shoe–leather reporting." They're at a continuous loss for brand stories to tell.

I pity their customers even more. They're subjected to the crap those marketers publish.

Shoe-leather reporting is the journalist's age-old means of unearthing good stories. It requires:

• Leaving the desk to mingle with the hoi polo;

• Burning time dogging leads (many of whom will prove useless); and 

• Embracing a bottomless form of inquisitiveness—the reason it's said, "Journalism is a vocation, not a job."

For content marketers without those skills, content marketing's just a job.

In ASJA Word, freelance writer Johanna Knapschaefer depicts her way of plying shoe-leather skills. Knapschaefer likes to:

• Befriend fellow business travelers, pick their brains, and follow up afterwards

• Get into the field to meet practitioners and follow the leads they provide

• Read and clip religiously from sources both inside and outside her specialty; and

• Reformulate story ideas and pitch them, again and again, with new story angles

How about you? 

Planted at your desk and in conference rooms all day? 

Or are your soles worn out?

FOOTNOTE: In case you missed it, by all means read David Meerman Scott's The New Rules of Marketing and PR. Try walking to a local independent bookseller to get your copy.