Brand­ed pub­lish­ing is a oft-debat­ed top­ic in the dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing indus­try. Many brands have ded­i­cat­ed pub­lish­er sites, dig­i­tal mag­a­zines, or blogs, but ROIs and attri­bu­tion remain com­plex to mea­sure. What are the best exam­ples of brands doing brand­ed pub­lish­ing well? And what can we learn from their efforts?

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As dig­i­tal mar­keters, we know con­tent mar­ket­ing is impor­tant, and as a exten­sion of this, that brands are increas­ing­ly becom­ing pub­lish­ers in their own right. Coca Cola’s ‘Jour­ney’ is one of the fre­quent­ly cit­ed exam­ples of a brand whose pub­lish­ing forms the back­bone of their con­tent mar­ket­ing.

And the soft drinks man­u­fac­tur­er is far from alone when it comes to brand­ed pub­lish­ing. In recent years, brands in indus­tries rang­ing from tech, autos, and trav­el have all upped their con­tent mar­ket­ing game, either with dig­i­tal mag­a­zines, dig­i­tal con­tent hubs (ded­i­cat­ed pub­lish­er web­sites), or sim­ply a qual­i­ty blog — and often it’s a com­bi­na­tion of many or all of these. We’ll explore exam­ples of these in greater detail below.

The branded publishing debate

Brand pub­lish­ing as a top­ic, is not with­out it’s own share of debate. Mark Hig­gin­son, writ­ing on Spark­sheet, wrote on how the aver­age num­ber of shares for a piece of con­tent on Jour­ney received just a spat­ter­ing of shares, lim­it­ed com­ments, and that “two-thirds of posts received no com­ments at all”. This he sug­gest­ed, was an indi­ca­tion that Coca Cola’s brand­ed pub­lish­ing was falling short of it’s goals:

“One of the biggest brands in the world gen­er­ates next to no inter­ac­tion through its pri­ma­ry win­dow to the world.”

-Mark Hig­gin­son

Hig­gin­son also revis­it­ed the con­cept ear­li­er this year, where he expand­ed on the con­cept incor­po­rat­ing back­link per­for­mance as an addi­tion­al met­ric, point­ing out that a great deal of brand­ed con­tent also per­forms poor­ly in this regard.

Cleary, brand­ed con­tent is a top­ic that has drawn con­sid­er­able con­tro­ver­sy, with oth­ers argu­ing that social share-counts should not be only met­ric on which brand­ed con­tent effec­tive­ness should be judged. After all, on the flip side, would a large num­ber of social shares nec­es­sar­i­ly mean that the con­tent is gen­er­at­ing mean­ing­ful inter­ac­tions and engage­ment? Per­haps not — for if the pur­pose for a piece of con­tent is to serve as a touch­point in a con­sumer’s pur­chase jour­ney, a social share is just one pos­si­ble inter­ac­tion in what we know are often much more com­plex buy­ing cycles.

The thing with content marketing…

The issue does high­light what is undoubt­ed­ly the biggest prob­lem for con­tent mar­keters. How do you mea­sure the effec­tive­ness of your brand­ed con­tent? Share-counts and back­links may be the most wide­ly stat­ed met­rics, but like­ly due to the fact that they are the eas­i­est to quan­ti­fy, and not because they are the most indica­tive of effec­tive­ness.

In oth­er words, just because con­tent per­forms less well than expect­ed in terms of shares and links, this does­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly mean the con­tent isn’t per­form­ing. And in the absence of quan­tifi­able met­rics, impact on bot­tom line rev­enues remains a dif­fi­cult area to assess and prop­er­ly attribute (short of a/b test­ing the entire­ty of a brand’s con­tent mar­ket­ing, we prob­a­bly need to accept that there will always be a degree of debate about whether of not [x] brand is doing con­tent mar­ket­ing, or brand­ed pub­lish­ing well — and even this would only give a chan­nel-wide mea­sure of effi­ca­cy).

Ulti­mate­ly, the hard truth for many brands at the moment is prob­a­bly that they aren’t able to mea­sur­ably quan­ti­fy the effec­tive­ness of their pub­lish­ing and con­tent mar­ket­ing. Not invest­ing in con­tent how­ev­er, remains too great a risk. So how are brands approach­ing their brand­ed con­tent?

15 Digital Content Hubs from Brand Publishers

Despite the uncer­tain­ties, there are many brands who are invest­ing in brand­ed pub­lish­ing. Here are fif­teen of the most notable pub­lish­ing efforts from top brands. In each case, we have also includ­ed total and aver­age share counts over the past twelve months (as of May 9th 2016) from Buz­zSumo.

1. Red Bull

Red Bull fea­ture con­sis­tent­ly in any list of top con­tent-mar­ket­ing or brand pub­lish­ers, and for good rea­son. Few brands  cap­ture an audi­ence so well with regards to their brand­ed pub­lish­ing, and focus­ing on emerg­ing nich­es such as adven­ture sports and gam­ing has been high­ly suc­cess­ful for the brand.

If there’s one thing that defines the brand’s dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing — it’s con­vic­tion. The Red Bull web­site _is_ the pub­li­ca­tion (no craft­ed artic­u­la­tions about caf­feinat­ed fizzy drinks here), mean­ing their domain is a whole­heart­ed com­mit­ment to dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing. Per­haps more so than any oth­er brand, Red Bull have proved the effec­tive­ness of brand­ed pub­lish­ing in build­ing val­ue and engage­ment. The vol­ume at which they pub­lish, and the respec­tive aver­age share count show healthy fig­ures too.

Arti­cles ana­lyzed: 14,342 Total Shares: 13,712,691 Aver­age Shares: 956

2. General Mills — Tablespoon

Gen­er­al Mil­l’s Table­spoon is an media rich web­site for recipes and food ideas. Design and nav­i­ga­tion is clean and sim­ple, and free of Gen­er­al Mills brand­ing. Table­spoon’s pri­or­i­ties seem to be first­ly to act as pub­lish­er with con­sid­er­able free­dom, and to pro­vide val­ue for con­sumers, over than any obvi­ous mar­ket­ing agen­da.

Arti­cles ana­lyzed: 612 Total Shares: 1,736,993 Aver­age Shares: 2,838

3. Intel — iQ

Intel’s iQ is a tech cul­ture mag­a­zine cov­er­ing fash­ion, sports, gam­ing, health and lifestyle, with the inten­tion of “[bring­ing us] deep­er into the lives of peo­ple and the tech­nolo­gies they are using to change the world.” Although they may not pub­lish as often, their con­tent cov­ers excit­ing and pro­gres­sive break­throughs in tech, such as solar pow­ered cars, and tends to be wide­ly con­sumed.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=6ELuq3CzJys

Intel iQ allows the tech­nol­o­gy brand to post excit­ing con­tent around fash­ion such as this incred­i­ble but­ter­fly dress.Arti­cles ana­lyzed: 212 Total Shares: 1,567,933 Aver­age Shares: 7,396

4. Coca Cola — Journey

Unlike Red Bull, Coca Cola’s pub­lish­ing on jour­ney feels more heav­i­ly brand­ed (and per­haps this could be a bar­ri­er to some for con­sum­ing the con­tent freely). Cer­tain things do come across in their mes­sag­ing, the brands glob­al val­ues are reflect­ed in sto­ries from all over the world. Jour­ney does give them a place to doc­u­ment their con­sis­tent stream of amaz­ing con­tent moments.

Arti­cles ana­lyzed: 491 Total Shares: 626,832 Aver­age Shares: 1,277

5. Target — A Bullseye View

Tar­get’s pub­lish­ing oper­a­tion, A Bulls­eye View, sep­a­rates itself from the typ­i­cal cor­po­rate blog on the strength of it’s edi­to­r­i­al. They do a great job of blend­ing their cor­po­rate news agen­da with more con­sum­able infor­ma­tion. For exam­ple, a post announc­ing the open­ing of a Chobani Cafe is round­ed off with a entic­ing recipes for Chobani yogurts.

Arti­cles ana­lyzed: 335 Total Shares: 288,270 Aver­age Shares: 861

6. Adobe — CMO.com

CMO.com is Adobe’s dig­i­tal pub­li­ca­tion, specif­i­cal­ly cater­ing for CMOs and senior dig­i­tal mar­keters. As report­ed on velocitypartners.com, accord­ing to edi­tor in chief Tim Moran, “CMO.com fills a need for today’s mar­keters, in that it helps them try to under­stand the mar­ket­ing and busi­ness issues that have arisen in our new dig­i­tal world. Our read­ers […] are hun­gry for good [and] inde­pen­dent infor­ma­tion”.

Arti­cles ana­lyzed: 4,518 Total Shares: 244,782 Aver­age Shares: 54

7. NerdWallet

Nerd­Wal­let are the lead­ing finance com­par­i­son web­site in the US. A huge­ly com­pet­i­tive niche, con­tent forms a key part of what dis­tin­guish­es the brand from their com­peti­tors. As a study by Linkdex dis­cov­ered, they oper­ate an pro­lif­ic pub­lish­ing sched­ule, writ­ten by a rich net­work of authors, that serves niche search queries as well as the high vol­ume head terms.

Arti­cles ana­lyzed: 2,736 Total Shares: 217,981 Aver­age Shares: 80

8. American Express — Open Forum

Amer­i­can Express’ Open Forum is a great resource for small busi­ness­es. Like Tar­get’s A Bulls­eye View, it’s the qual­i­ty of the edi­to­r­i­al that dis­tin­guish­es their pub­lish­ing efforts. Many of the posts are authored by gen­uine small busi­ness­es own­ers, impart­ing some of the lessons they’ve learnt, mak­ing it a great resource for like-mind­ed busi­ness­peo­ple.

Arti­cles ana­lyzed: 956 Total Shares: 128,062 Aver­age Shares: 134

9. P&G — Everyday

P&G every­day is a great exam­ple of a brand­ed con­tent / lifestyle mag­a­zine from a lead­ing FMCG brand. The site has a mem­ber­ship scheme, and offer coupons for their prod­ucts, as well as con­tent that is cur­rent, such as their “Thank You, Mom” cam­paign for the Rio Olympics.

Arti­cles ana­lyzed: 468 Total Shares: 97,844 Aver­age Shares: 209

10. Moz — YouMoz

YouMoz is “an SEO and online mar­ket­ing blog cre­at­ed by the read­ers of Moz”. The Moz com­mu­ni­ty is known for being one of the strongest and most engaged in dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing, and YouMoz has been a fan­tas­tic plat­form for the brand enabling their users to share con­tent and add val­ue. Aver­age share count shows that the con­tent is well shared.

Arti­cles ana­lyzed: 87 Total Shares: 55,332 Aver­age Shares: 636

11. HP — Matter

HP’s dig­i­tal mag­a­zine, Mat­ter, has a fresh and respon­sive look and design, which sup­ports their excel­lent edi­to­r­i­al. Mat­ter often runs con­tent around a par­tic­u­lar theme — the cur­rent explores data, pri­va­cy, and oth­er tech­no­log­i­cal issues for chil­dren and younger gen­er­a­tions.

Arti­cles ana­lyzed: 298 Total Shares: 44,777 Aver­age Shares: 150

12. Shopify

Like Nerd­wal­let, Shopi­fy run an exten­sive blog­ging sched­ule, with a clear focus on pub­lish­ing insight­ful “How to…” and “Why…” arti­cles for their audi­ence. Often pub­lish­ing sev­er­al times a day, and undoubt­ed­ly with a rich author net­work, Shopi­fy are build­ing a for­mi­da­ble resource for dig­i­tal mar­keters and small busi­ness own­ers.

Arti­cles ana­lyzed: 107 Total Shares: 35,491 Aver­age Shares: 332

13. momentology

This one may be a bit cheeky / meta — but momen­tol­ogy itself is a brand­ed con­tent site, spon­sored by Linkdex. Edi­to­ri­al­ly, we oper­ate com­plete­ly inde­pen­dent­ly, and our sole goal is to cre­ate the best con­tent for con­sumer-cen­tric dig­i­tal mar­keters on the web.

Arti­cles ana­lyzed: 267 Total Shares: 25,592 Aver­age Shares: 96

14. IBM — Voices

IBM Voic­es is a bit dif­fer­ent in that it aggre­gates con­tent that has been shared by a curat­ed list of Twit­ter influ­encers. Voic­es func­tions effec­tive­ly as a con­tent hub cov­er­ing some of the best con­tent around ana­lyt­ics, big data, and oth­er pro­gres­sive tech­nol­o­gy top­ics from all over the web.

Arti­cles ana­lyzed: 1,673 Total Shares: 24,614 Aver­age Shares: 15

15. GE — Txchnologist

Txch­nol­o­gy is GE’s dig­i­tal mag­a­zine cov­er­ing emerg­ing tech, sci­ence, and trends. Whilst they may not pub­lish that often, what they do release is in-depth, and of very high edi­to­r­i­al qual­i­ty. Their mis­sion is to “offer an opti­mistic, but not utopi­an, take on the future and humanity’s abil­i­ty to tack­le the great chal­lenges of our era through indus­try, tech­nol­o­gy and inge­nu­ity.”

Arti­cles ana­lyzed: 49 Total Shares: 2,258 Aver­age Shares: 46

Branded publishing

The above exam­ples show that one of the things that makes suc­cess­ful brand­ed pub­lish­ing is a com­mit­ment to high-qual­i­ty edi­to­r­i­al. Some, such as Intel, HP Mat­ter, and Txch­nol­o­gist do so at the expense of scale, pub­lish­ing bet­ter but less often.

Ambi­tious brands may wish for their con­tent to become an every­day part of their cus­tomer’s lives (just as Coca Cola defined in their 2020 Con­tent strat­e­gy) but com­pet­ing for dai­ly eye­balls with ded­i­cat­ed pub­lish­ers is no easy task.

The fact that Yahoo have recent­ly report­ed flat earn­ings (there are cur­rent ongo­ing talks about a pos­si­ble acqui­si­tion), and with the Guardian hav­ing also announced cut­backs to their edi­to­r­i­al oper­a­tions in the face of “incred­i­bly chal­leng­ing” con­di­tions, it’s no won­der that there is so much con­tro­ver­sy about the effec­tive­ness of brand­ed pub­lish­ing.

One pos­si­ble course of action will be for brands to focus on their par­tic­u­lar niche, and add as much val­ue there for a spe­cif­ic audi­ence. Red Bull are the prime exam­ple of this, not try­ing to be all things to all peo­ple, but specif­i­cal­ly to focus on emerg­ing nich­es. Nerd­Wal­let and Shopi­fy have also done well pub­lish­ing for a spe­cif­ic audi­ence.

The val­ue of brand­ed pub­lish­ing may not be some­thing that can be eas­i­ly quan­ti­fied, and win­ning con­sumer engage­ment remains a high­ly chal­leng­ing area. As the above exam­ples illus­trate how­ev­er, there are plen­ty of oppor­tu­ni­ties for brands to take on that chal­lenge.