Paying for Coverage of your Engineering Stories

In the month of September, ENGINEERING.com delivered over a dozen sponsored stories.  These were written at our clients’ request by members of ENGINEERING.com’s regular editorial team.  (In every case the author disclosed that the post was sponsored.) 

Why are so many marketers, from small start-ups to industry giants, taking this route to tell their stories?  I see three main reasons:

Engineers like the stories

On average, there are almost twice as many views and social votes for sponsored stories than for regular editorial.  Why would that be?

Having watched the development of these stories, it appears that the extra budget of a paid post allows for more shine and polish. We put good reporting practices into all of our stories, but the additional budget does permit extra time.  Also, access to client experts makes for a more efficient research process.

Another dimension comes from the marketer herself.  Although our clients don’t have editorial input, they do have veto and fact-checking approval.  That may make the editorial team more careful with their story-telling.

There is so much competition for attention

Marketers know what stories they want the world to hear.  But often those aren’t the top priority for the engineering media. 

Sponsored content allows the marketer more influence over which stories are told.  Bringing these stories to a broad audience has obvious value to the marketer. 

Paid posts are consumed by engineers as part of their regular reading, whether that’s on a web site or in their social media feed; whether viewed on a laptop, tablet or phone.  Written stories are inherently a better way to deliver a nuanced story than a simple ad. 

The story is told for you

The stories are typically developed by the editorial staff after interviewing the client’s product engineers.  As a result, the client marketer doesn’t need to create the content herself.  It’s a lot easier to get a product engineer to agree to a phone interview than it is to get them to write something.  Having the story told for you is a significant time-saver.

Now for the shameless plug – Google says ENGINEERING.com had over 600,000 unique visitors in the last 31 days.  We can help you reach them.  If you want to learn more about how to get your stories told to a large engineering audience, check out our Sponsored Post and Amplification program here.