Are you thinking about your content strategy for your blog, podcast or YouTube channel, and are considering covering the news within your niche as well?
While this can be a great way to produce additional content and comes with a whole host of benefits, there are also some drawbacks that you’ll want to be mindful of as well.
So, in this article I’ll be covering both the pros as well as the cons of covering news, and share my personal beliefs on whether or not it is worth doing!
Benefits Of Publishing Industry News
Let’s start by covering the exciting benefits that publishing news-type content can provide you!
1. Your Website Can Show Up In Google News And Google Discover
If you run a website, news content can be very powerful!
This is because publishing news content opens up the opportunity to get found in two additional Google programs, both of which can drive extremely large volumes of traffic very quickly.
The first is called Google News. Chances are, you’ve already seen the Google News widget while searching for newsworthy content on the web:
Only news content is eligible to be picked up by Google News. While submitting your site is no longer required, you should still add it to Google’s Publisher Center once you begin publishing news content. You can reach Google’s Publisher Center by clicking here.
The second is called Google Discover. Essentially, Google Discover provides users suggested content based on an individual user’s interests.
If you’ve used TikTok before, it can kind of be thought of similarly to the ‘For You’ page – Google learns what you’re interested in, and then gives you recommended content they think you’ll enjoy.
While news content isn’t required to be featured in Google Discover, it can help – and this can drive thousands of visitors (or far more than that) overnight!
2. News Content Works Well On Any Platform
Next, I’d like to point out that news content works very well across all major platforms.
As already mentioned, publishing on a website can grant you massive visibility via Google News and Google Discover.
On YouTube, newsworthy content gets pushed out heavily via the suggested videos and browse features, allowing you to rapidly get shown to new audiences – even if they weren’t actually looking up the news stories themselves.
Finally, a lot of people actually prefer to get their news from podcasting. And even if your audience isn’t interested in the news, it is very simple for them to simply skip over your episode without feeling anything negative about it being published.
3. News Content Gets Shared
This one might not come as a surprise, but news content gets shared.
A ton.
If you think about it, it makes sense. People want to spread the word about things that are new, noteworthy, or trendy.
Sharing a piece of news that’s unfolding right now is a lot more interesting than an informational piece of content about some obscure topic, that won’t be relevant to 99% of people that share it.
So, if you are trying to grow a social media presence, sharing news content is a great way to get your content spread quickly, while simultaneously showing people why your account is worth following.
By becoming a reliable source of news, you can grow a brand quite quickly – even if your long-term goal is to pivot away from news content in the future.
This alone makes it worth considering!
4. News Content Attracts Backlinks
Similarly to #3, news content gets backlinks.
Because people don’t want to take the time to develop news content on their own (or they don’t have anything to add), they’ll instead link out to other publications who have done a good job covering the news.
This means it’s likely that some of your content will attract links as well.
The real benefit of this though isn’t just the traffic they will send to you.
Instead, the greatest benefit will come from the links making you appear more authoritative and trustworthy to Google – lifting up not only that content piece, but all of the content on your website!
5. It Positions You As An Authority
Finally, if your goal is to become a recognized brand, a thought leader, or an authority figure in your space, news content is a great way to achieve that.
This is particularly true if you are able to add your own insight or commentary to the news, or if you are able to acquire information that other news publications aren’t covering.
Remember, even if you aren’t going to be the one covering the news and changes in your space, your audience will to turn to someone to stay updated.
So, if you can be the one sharing the news and helping people interpret it, it can go along way to making you an authority in your space. They say the news / media companies are the ones that hold the power. There’s a lot of truth to this!
Drawbacks Of Publishing Industry News
Now, let’s look over the drawbacks of publishing news within your niche.
Although there are fewer drawbacks than benefits, they are quite significant – so, you’ll want to ponder them carefully!
1. The Content Isn’t Evergreen
This is the big one.
As you might expect, news content has a very short shelf-life. It may attract a big spike of views at once, but then the views are practically non-existent after the content is no longer newsworthy.
This essentially means that you need to keep pushing out more content in order to keep the same level of traffic. It also makes your business far less passive, as you can’t continue earning from the work that you’ve done in the past.4
While this business model works for some people, it’s tough – and hard to pull off.
So, just keep in mind that the easy views won’t last – you’ll have to keep fighting for them, and publishing new content just to maintain the same viewership.
Tip: Even if the content stops getting views, leave it published! It may have gotten links or embeds on other sites, that help your business appear more authoritative to Google – lifting up all of your other content!
2. The Content Isn’t Always Unique
The truth is, most people publishing news are simply rehashing it from another source – which can be a problem.
Unless you have some insider information or are willing to dig deep to obtain it, chances are you’ll end up simply republishing content that is already available from a larger creator.
This can result in wasting your audience’s time, or can even get you penalized by Google / YouTube if it’s deemed that you’re plagarizing too heavily.
That being said, covering a piece of news that has already been covered by other publications isn’t always a bad thing.
If you are able to put your own insight onto it – or share your expertise via your commentary, this can be a great branding tool while also delivering additional value to your audience.
So, look for opportunities to inject your own personality, thoughts and ideas into the news pieces that you cover!
My Personal Verdict
So, taking all of that into account – is it worth publishing news content, or is it not?
It ultimately depends on the platform you’re using, where you’re at in terms of your business, as well as your own values.
Personally, I recommend that most people avoid creating news content until they fall into one of three categories:
- They can hire a full-time person to create the content from beginning to end, and this person actually goes deeper into their research – sending questions to companies, running their own interviews, collecting unique data, etc.
- You opt to simply cover the most important topics, and most of your content is still evergreen in nature.
- You choose to simply summarize the most important news for the entire week or month, rather than trying to be one of the quickest people to publish a piece on it.
If any of the above three scenarios is true, then publishing news content may be a good idea.
However, for most people, I recommend focusing on publishing evergreen content, that will be found for years to come.
This is key to making creator businesses work in 1 hour a day or less – over time, you have so many people discovering you from your old evergreen content, you don’t actually need to work that much in order to make life-changing money from your business.
If you’d like to learn more about the exact system I recommend to get to $10,000 a month – without having to work full-time hours, sign up for my free workshop by clicking here.
Anyhow, the problem with news is that it’s kind of the opposite of this.
The content doesn’t have any longevity, and it’s expected that you’ll be there continuously and quickly pumping it out.
So, if the benefits are worth it to you, then by all means – it can certainly help your blog, podcast or YouTube channel grow quicker!
However, for a lot of people, there are simply better things to be focusing on.
Conclusion
Writing news content has a lot of benefits – it positions you as an authority, will earn you more backlinks, and get you a lot of traffic quickly when it’s done right.
However, the content has a very short shelf-life, and won’t really get any views in the long-term. Therefore, you’re constantly on a treadmill, having to produce more in order to keep your viewership high.
I hope that this article has given you some ideas, and remember – if you want to learn the content strategy I recommend instead (that allows you to scale your earnings without having to sacrifice your time), sign up for my free workshop to learn more.
To your success,
– James McAllister