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The Chief Content Officer calls it "short-sighted" and "silly" for a media company to insist on owning a reporter's social media. Instead, they encourage and provide resources for reporters to authentically grow their personal accounts, fostering trust and individual brands.

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Bashify uses two distinct Instagram strategies. The business account acts as a polished "catalog of work," while the founder's personal account provides personality, opinion, and behind-the-scenes content. This bifurcated approach allows them to capture different audience segments with tailored content.

Trust is now built through credible personalities, not just branded content. Channels like podcasts and newsletters succeed because they are personality-driven. HubSpot's CEO advises businesses to identify and empower internal figures with high authority to represent the brand.

Relying on a single executive for social presence is a missed opportunity. Training all employees to share insights creates a collective reach that generates more leads, attracts better talent, and builds a more authentic company brand.

Modern buyers want to hear directly from human experts, not a faceless brand. Instead of focusing all social media efforts on the corporate account, identify and elevate the voices of knowledgeable individuals within the company. The brand page can then serve as a secondary 'news ticker' for official updates.

Former BBC CEO Deborah Turness warns that large media brands must learn from the creator economy. She urges them to stop "managing" the news and instead empower talent to build authentic, direct relationships with audiences, mirroring platforms like Substack and YouTube.

Brands struggling with the bandwidth to manage creators should shift their mindset. Viewing creators as human partners, rather than fungible "media units" or "affiliate links," is crucial. This requires both technology that empowers them and dedicated support to build authentic relationships.

Encourage employees to "build in public" and share their work. This builds authentic trust and connection with customers in a way that corporate accounts or paid ads cannot. It turns your entire team into a powerful, organic marketing engine.

Legacy media, like The Wall Street Journal, are hiring coaches to help reporters build personal brands. This mimics the success of social media creators who are displacing journalists on the press circuit for major celebrity and political interviews.

The old strategy of a single brand account across multiple platforms is obsolete. A more effective modern approach is to supplement the main account with numerous persona-driven accounts (human or AI-generated). This distributed model creates a more authentic presence and multiplies the chances of content going viral.

Large companies often stifle authentic stories with restrictive social media policies. The guest advises them to "put your brand ego aside" and trust employees to share. Personal profiles and individual stories have far greater reach and build more trust than polished corporate content.

News Outlets Should Support Reporters' Personal Accounts, Not Demand Branded Ones | RiffOn