AS A JOURNALISM STUDENT TURNED MAGAZINE EDITOR TURNED CONTENT STRATEGIST TURNED CONTENT MARKETER, I’VE BEEN LUCKY ENOUGH TO SEE CONTENT FROM MANY ANGLES.

But my early experience in journalism and magazine publishing gave me a unique perspective for content creation, and I’ve been able to use what I learned in my early days as an editor to inform the way I’ve thought about and approached content marketing.

Content marketers know better than anyone else that it can be challenging to get prospects to engage with their content — let alone read it. With the proliferation of content creation, and all the noise that’s been created as a result, our messages get lost, glazed over or just don’t resonate.

So how do marketers create content that gets read? We have to create content that our readers want: answering the questions they have and covering the topic effectively and in a way that’s engaging and relevant. And, historically, who has done this the best? Journalists. Longer than anyone else, they’ve been crafting stories readers actually want to read.

For content marketers to succeed — and create content that gets consumed — they have to tell a good story. Here’s how content marketers can learn from journalists and apply these age-old lessons learned to create better content.