The not-so-dis­tant future may include more edi­to­r­i­al sites than cor­po­rate ones. In the mean­time, three brands are at the fore­front of this con­tent rev­o­lu­tion: Coca-Cola with Jour­ney, which it launched in Novem­ber 2012; Taco Bell with The Feed, which debuted in Sep­tem­ber 2015; and Adobe, which has run a sup­ple­men­tal con­tent site, CMO.com, for about sev­en years. These brands know not only how to cre­ate effec­tive con­tent and engage read­ers, but also what dis­tinct ben­e­fits can result.

Here are 12 top take­aways from Coca-Cola, Taco Bell, and Adobe for a win­ning con­tent strat­e­gy.

1. Tell New Exclusive Stories

Coca-Cola launched Jour­ney in part because it felt there were more sto­ries to tell about its com­pa­ny, peo­ple, and pur­pose than it could via a tra­di­tion­al cor­po­rate site, accord­ing to Doug Busk, glob­al group direc­tor of dig­i­tal com­mu­ni­ca­tions and social media at Coca-Cola. The brand there­fore decid­ed to bring back an inter­nal print mag­a­zine in dig­i­tal form.

“We’re able to pull back the cur­tain and share sto­ries bub­bling just beneath the sur­face of our busi­ness, brands, and cul­ture,” Busk said. “Jour­ney allows us to engage with read­ers and show them who we are, what we do and why we do it.”

Fur­ther, Busk said while not every brand may need to tell quite as many sto­ries, Coke thinks all mar­keters should con­sid­er how they con­nect with fans and crit­ics with sto­ries.

“With the con­tin­u­ing growth of social net­works of every stripe, the world is con­nect­ing to each oth­er via sto­ries,” he said. “Why would­n’t con­sumers expect their favorite brands to do the same?”

Taco Bell, too, is think­ing about its new edi­to­r­i­al ven­ture, The Feed, as a resource for untold brand sto­ries.

“If you can find the sto­ry in a com­mer­cial or a tweet or a prod­uct release, it’s not a sto­ry on the Feed,” said Joz­lynn Rush, social and dig­i­tal expe­ri­ence man­ag­er at Taco Bell. “That’s going to be the advan­tage The Feed has – it’s infor­ma­tion you can’t get any­where else. We can break a sto­ry about a new prod­uct or an amaz­ing team mem­ber that went above and beyond. I tru­ly think if you can only get it there, that will keep peo­ple com­ing back.”

2. Go Deep

Accord­ing to Ryan Rim­snider, senior man­ag­er of social strat­e­gy at Taco Bell, when the brand was look­ing to launch its ta.co site, which includes The Feed, Taco Bell want­ed to ensure user expe­ri­ence was incred­i­ble.

“We don’t want to just post a pic­ture of a prod­uct and say, ‘Go buy this,’ we want to tell a deep­er sto­ry and allow the user to fur­ther con­nect and give a bit of a wink and a smile,” Rim­snider said.

As a result, ta.co gives the brand anoth­er owned chan­nel for longer form sto­ries that high­light the brand’s per­spec­tive and top­ics it is inter­est­ed in, but also allow it to stay at the fore­front of rel­e­vant cul­tur­al top­ics out­side of food, Rim­snider added.

3. Use Analytics & Social Listening To Source Content

For his part, Daniel Berthi­aume, prin­ci­pal of CMO com­mu­ni­ca­tions at Adobe, said the brand is learn­ing about what types of con­tent read­ers respond to as it goes.

“It’s fun to sort of hear from read­ers and see which arti­cles they respond best to with ana­lyt­ics,” he said.

For her part, Rush said Taco Bell sources a lot of its edi­to­r­i­al con­tent via social lis­ten­ing.

“We’re find­ing sto­ries in social or from team mem­bers across the orga­ni­za­tion and we’re cur­rent­ly staffing to bring sto­ries to life through inter­nal writ­ers,” Rush said. “In the future, we see that expand­ing and fans play­ing a role and writ­ing sto­ries, as well as influ­encers.”

4. Be Relevant

Per Busk, Coke’s for­mu­la for suc­cess­ful sto­ry­telling is: qual­i­ty con­tent + con­nect­ed + cur­rent.

“The most crit­i­cal ingre­di­ent is obvi­ous­ly qual­i­ty writ­ing and, increas­ing­ly, visu­als,” he said. “Our most sharable sto­ries link seam­less­ly with the work of the rest of the busi­ness, the brands or our efforts in sus­tain­abil­i­ty or oth­er­wise – they are con­nect­ed to the over­all pic­ture of Coca-Cola.”

But a sto­ry tru­ly spikes when it com­bines these ele­ments with the cur­rent dig­i­tal dia­logue, Busk said.

“A fine recent exam­ple was our work back­ing up, sur­round­ing and div­ing deep into the sto­ry of the 1971 icon­ic ‘Hill­top’ ad when it was fea­tured on tele­vi­sion’s ‘Mad Men’ series finale,” he added.

Taco Bell, too, strives to make sure con­tent is rel­e­vant and con­tributes to con­sumers’ lives so it is ulti­mate­ly able to fuel a cul­ture of brand, Rim­snider said.

Sim­i­lar­ly, accord­ing to Berthi­aume, one of CMO.com’s pri­ma­ry goals is to help dig­i­tal mar­keters by giv­ing rel­e­vant insight and inspi­ra­tion.

“We start­ed doing this con­tent mar­ket­ing thing before it became the trend it is today and the rea­son is pret­ty sim­ple: Dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing is very reward­ing and com­pa­nies are invest­ing in it, but it’s also very dif­fi­cult and we found…digital mar­keters just real­ly need help,” Berthi­aume said. “This is a new fron­tier and not easy to pull off. They need advice and best prac­tices and opin­ions from oth­er mar­keters. The pur­pose of CMO.com is it’s not a place to pitch prod­ucts and com­pa­nies, but it’s a place where mar­keters can go to hear from oth­er mar­keters about what’s work­ing and what isn’t.”

5. Diversify Storytelling Elements To Enhance Content

Per Busk, fea­ture-length arti­cles with pho­tog­ra­phy, doc­u­men­tary-style videos, info­graph­ics, and oth­er dig­i­tal sto­ry­telling devices enable Coke to com­mu­ni­cate more deeply and add more val­ue.

Rim­snider agrees. Ta.co has what he described as “more of an Insta­gram look and feel…with fun prod­uct sto­ry­telling that felt clos­er to the brand ver­sus a reg­u­lar com­pa­ny web­site” and Taco Bell strives to cre­ate sto­ries that are com­pelling not just from an edi­to­r­i­al stand­point, but also visu­al­ly or by lever­ag­ing UGC or audio.

Berthi­aume said the CMO.com audi­ence, too, responds to dif­fer­ent for­mats and it is increas­ing­ly see­ing short-form video, as well as audio inter­views, as appeal­ing.

6. Hone Your Brand Voice

As the most nascent edi­to­r­i­al site, Rim­snider said Taco Bell’s voice on The Feed is still a work in progress.

“We’ve estab­lished the fun and friv­o­lous voice on social, so it’s about how to take the oppor­tu­ni­ty [with The Feed] to ele­vate the brand a bit more and not attempt to real­ly boil the ocean all at once. We have to get the voice and cadence,” he added.

7. Be Patient When Building An Audience

Rim­snider point­ed to Taco Bell’s rabid fan base on plat­forms like Snapchat and Twit­ter and said the brand will slow­ly and sure­ly find inter­est­ing sto­ries to dri­ve tune-in on its edi­to­r­i­al site as well.

“It’s a slow boil in terms of build­ing an audi­ence and mea­sur­ing and start­ing to lean in a bit more to reg­u­lar post­ing from a fre­quen­cy stand­point,” he said. “We’re still hit­ting our stride in terms of con­tent devel­op­ment and cadence.”

8. Don’t Merely Create Content – Build Community

While Adobe is his­tor­i­cal­ly known as a cre­ative com­pa­ny, CMO.com helps dri­ve an asso­ci­a­tion between the brand and dig­i­tal mar­keters, Berthi­aume said.

“It isn’t just Adobe writ­ing stuff out­ward to its audi­ence, we’re also tak­ing con­tri­bu­tions from the mar­ket­ing spec­trum, includ­ing free­lancers and we’re encour­ag­ing con­tri­bu­tions from agen­cies,” he said. “We believe it’s impor­tant to get a lot of points of view into the con­ver­sa­tion about dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing. All dig­i­tal mar­keters are in this togeth­er. We want to cre­ate a space where Adobe is ful­fill­ing that con­ver­sa­tion with senior mar­keters.”

9. Use Brand Journalism To Enhance Reputation

Adobe wants to be known as a leader in the dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing space and to be seen as the com­pa­ny that helps dig­i­tal mar­keters do their jobs bet­ter, Berthi­aume said. And CMO.com is a vehi­cle to do that.

In fact, he said two things cus­tomers find reward­ing about CMO.com are get­ting how-to guid­ance, as well as a plat­form to tell their own sto­ries. And it is Adobe that facil­i­tates.

“Great cus­tomers want to tell their own sto­ries and are doing very sophis­ti­cat­ed things in dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing, like Mas­ter­Card or Nis­san or the Tourism Board of Aus­tralia,” Berthi­aume said. “These are cus­tomers that have great mar­ket­ing sto­ries to tell and CMO.com has the plat­form to tell their sto­ries as well.”

10. Use Content To Humanize

Well-told sto­ries pro­vide a con­text for con­sumers to fill in details of a com­pa­ny they thought they knew, Busk said.

“Read­ers, espe­cial­ly Mil­len­ni­als, want to buy into a per­son­al­i­ty more than a prod­uct,” he said. “They want to sup­port brands and com­pa­nies that share their pas­sions. Through Jour­ney, we’re earn­ing the trust of read­ers that only comes from human­iz­ing the com­pa­ny via trans­par­ent, authen­tic con­tent.”

11. Maintain Journalistic Standards

Adobe has learned it is impor­tant to main­tain some neu­tral­i­ty, Berthi­aume said.

“There is a time and a place to talk about com­pa­nies and prod­ucts and we want to do that where appro­pri­ate, but we find mar­keters want a spot where they can hear about mar­ket­ing from the experts,” Berthi­aume said. “That les­son seems like an obvi­ous one, but it was reit­er­at­ed to us time and time again, so we are pro­tec­tive of the edi­to­r­i­al site and jour­nal­is­tic stan­dards and guard those close­ly.”

12. Never Stop Improving

Three years in, Jour­ney is still very much a work in progress, Busk said.

“We’re con­stant­ly learn­ing from both our hits and our miss­es, explor­ing new ways to use the plat­form to break Coke news and cre­ate a bet­ter over­all read­er expe­ri­ence,” he added. “But we con­tin­ue to learn every day about the brand jour­nal­ism space, which is still in its infan­cy, and how we can bet­ter tell our sto­ry through Jour­ney and our social chan­nels.”

What con­tent mar­ket­ing tips do you find most valu­able?