Blog profiles of Canadian journalists boost page views—and new business

“Meet the Press” is a weekly blog series from CNW that profiles Canadian journalists. It’s part of an effort to draw more viewers to CNW’s blog, and it’s worked—while also taking first place in the “Best Series” category of PR Daily’s 2016 Content Marketing Awards.

The journalists selected for profiling meet specific criteria based on social influence, beat coverage, and current events. CNW used social media to draw more attention to its posts, which have featured journalists from Canada’s key media outlets, including The Toronto Star, Canadian Press, The Globe and Mail, Huffington Post Canada and VICE Canada. 

Getting to know reporters is, of course, an important part of media relations, and analytics from the blog suggest the series did exactly what it was designed to do: It drove a 300+ percent increase in web traffic—far above the original goal of 50 percent. “Meet the Press” accounted for 15 percent of all CNW’s web traffic and 70 percent of post views that were part of any series. 

CNW didn’t let it go at blog views, though. It kept the sales team updated about posts they could use in pitching new business. Further, CNW has entered into a syndication agreement, with “Meet the Press” posts appearing monthly on a French-language journalism site. 

The consistency of the profiles still gave the blog’s writers room to personalize the posts based on individual journalists’ traits and characteristics. 

Congratulations to Laurie Smith, Nadine Tousignant, Melissa Meyer, Amanda Laird and Amy-Louise Tracey.