ABOUT US | BEST PRACTICES | CLIENT BEST PRACTICES
ABOUT WP BRANDCONNECT
WP BrandConnect is a platform that connects advertisers with The Washington Post audience. All content is developed and paid for by the advertiser. The Washington Post Newsroom is not involved in the creation of this content.
PARTNERS
BEST PRACTICES
Washington Post readers trust us to provide them with everything they need to understand the world around them. They’re smart. They’re influential. They’re educated. They’re business-minded. They’re powerful. They want to consume and share content that is well-written and produced. This means that what you create through WP BrandConnect is valuable to readers: material that makes them think, feel, laugh, share and want more.
- • Tell a visual story
- • Be subtle
- • Go beyond a press release
- • Write for readers, not experts
- • Grab attention
- • Provide value
- • Surprise and delight
- • Create unique content
- • Offer behind-the-scenes glimpses
- • Provide an “exclusive”
- • Share some outtakes
- • Offer background context
- • Include all platforms
- • Adapt to breaking news
- • Leverage human interest
TIPS FOR PRINT
- Print is trustworthy. The printed word is still most often perceived as more credible than what can be found on the web.
- Print is palpable and has the perception of permanence. Readers still enjoy the physicality of print. Having a print component to your native strategy says something about your organization and the message you’re trying to send: you care about engaging with your consumer over the long term.
- The focus of print is customer retention. You’re not trying to “sell” the reader; you’re trying to engage with them to create brand loyalty.
QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER
In order to create the most successful content with WP BrandConnect, we suggest asking yourself the following questions before you start:
- Why am I producing/promoting this content?
- What marketing problems does it answer, and how?
- What does a successful end to this campaign look like?
- Who is accountable for the story of my brand?
- What’s the difference between a consumer who reads this content and one who doesn’t?
People come to The Washington Post for our news articles, videos, infographics and photo galleries. In fact, nearly every story contains a visual element. Create your content in a dynamic, visual story form; one that’s accessible on all of our print and digital platforms. By putting visuals to your content, our readers and users are more likely to connect and engage with it.
Use your lede and headline to capture the scanning eyes of our busy readers and users, and draw them in to the rest of your narrative.
Constantly engage our audience with articles, lists, trends, how-to guides, and real-world stories and profiles—all of which have proven to interest Washington Post readers and users.
When filming video content, make sure to have some fun and don’t stop rolling. Some of your behind-the-scenes materials and outtakes will help deepen your relationship with our readers and users (this is the type of content that goes viral!).
Cover your bases by making sure your message is spread across multiple channels and platforms—print and digital—to ensure our audience doesn’t miss your message.
Highlight the people involved in your story so that our audience can easily connect with your content. By doing things such as offering advice or sharing heartwarming stories, you’re more likely to have readers and users feel something about you and your mission.
CLIENT BEST PRACTICES
At WP BrandStudio, we utilize each of our own platforms and social channels to consistently promote and drive traffic to our advertisers’ sponsored content. We are also eager to make audience growth – beyond The Washington Post – turnkey for our brand partners. As such, we’ve determined best practices and offer full-service tools for our partners. Driving your partners, employees and customers to The Washington Post to engage with your brand story brings credibility to your storytelling, and is more likely to get a high level of engagement from those consumers and influencers that are important to you and your business. Below are our best practices that will help drive and grow the audience from your site(s), partner sites and other campaigns to your BrandConnect pages. Additionally, we are open to brainstorming ideas with you to help your WP BrandConnect campaign achieve the results you’re looking for.
Add a link to your email signature that shows those you connect with that they can click to see your organization featured on The Washington Post. Encourage your organization to add it to their signatures, and member companies and partner companies as well.
Add a content widget (designed and built by WP BrandStudio) to your website and to your partner websites. In addition to all the great content you already offer on your site, show your visitors that they can click to read more about your brand's initiatives on The Washington Post.
Extend the reach of your content by running custom content ad units (designed and built by the WP Brand Studio) on your site in house ad space, on partner sites, as a paid campaign using WP+ and/or in your own rotational media campaign anywhere on the web.
One of the easiest ways to quickly post content is to retweet, quote or share posts from WP BrandStudio.
Use your personal accounts on various social platforms to post content and be sure to include the handles or names of people that it may apply to. This is a great way to reach a broad audience and get engagement.
Hashtags make it possible to group messages, since you can search for the hashtag and get the set of messages that contain it. Including hashtags in your posts is a great way to extend the reach of your content (and get new followers!).
Let your audience know that there is a human behind the scenes. You can still post informative and educational content, but less formal, conversational tone is easier for people to understand and digest – especially in a newsfeed format.
Have fun with your social posts! It’s important to include fun images, videos and/or articles that are engaging to your audience (and that they’ll want to re-share!).
Optimize reader engagement by tweaking headlines, layouts and overall user experience to best compliment where and how a reader is consuming your content (e.g. social versus email versus website).
