Nissan drives the conversation with content marketing-focused website

Brand journalism is all the rage. And rightfully so. Also known as content marketing, brand journalism puts the power of shaping one’s brand image into the hands of the organization.

Nissan sought to harness this power by revamping its online newsroom space to create a “multi-market, multi-language, hemisphere-wide news site with a goal of making the journalist’s life much easier.” The results were impressive, and won the automaker top honors in the Best Online Newsroom category of PR Daily’s 2013 Media Relations Awards.

Here’s how the car company did it:

The goals
With the help of Wieck, a media relations technology, strategy, and solutions agency, Nissan set out to repurpose content in an attractive, fluid, and engaging way. Key goals for the new site included creating a more modern, eye-catching design and fostering broader appeal. The overall goal was to build a hub of information to make it easy for journalists to quickly gather videos, press releases, pictures, and other data they might need to inform stories.

Imagery
The revamped newsroom features scrolling, clickable stories accompanied by attractive images of various Nissan car models. Stories featured below the eye-catching features reel are paired with shareable images and videos to supplement the voice and message of each post.

Shareable
Nissan knows that creating a loyal audience is about appealing to—and understanding—the power of word-of-mouth marketing. All the videos, posts, and images are shareable and downloadable. Nissan allows site visitors to easily access Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Google+, and email to share content.

Nissan’s Facebook page and Twitter account are regularly populated with stories from the newsroom and supplemented with articles from other sites and clever headlines.

Help the journalist
The easily navigable site features a tab titled “News” that houses video reports, event information, sales reports, and more. To the right of the “News” tab, journalists and reporters will find the “Galleries” tab that has photos, videos, company logos, and other information to help create a robust story around Nissan’s brand. Additionally, the website offers press kits by year and model.

The results
Nissan’s site is clean, navigable, attractive, and informative. It’s easy to understand the message the car company wants to convey upon entering the site, as well as the audience it wants to reach. Nissan’s audience has taken note—the relaunched site has grown from just over 90,000 unique visitors per month one year ago to more than 300,000 visitors in the latest month.

Check out their site here.

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