Not long ago, emarketer discovered that 84.5% of companies in the U.S. with 100 or more employees will leverage digital content marketing strategies. And according to a HubSpot report, more than half (55%) of marketers said blog content creation is a top inbound marketing priority at their company.
Today, the general consensus is that every company is a media company. The ship has been turning toward self-generated content for a long time now, and the ship is not turning back. Arguably, this trend started since corporate blogs came online 15+ years ago and YouTube took off (long before this eight-year-old was making $26 million per year).
The world is now a place where you don’t have to invest in a printing press, or a satellite, or a sales team in order to distribute your story and your messaging anymore. Everybody is able to use the internet – or rather the tools being built on it like YouTube, Medium, Instagram, and Twitter – for distribution of their content. Over the next decade, more and more people are going to come to realize this, be it companies or individuals.
And that brings me to my main message here. Not only is every company a media company. Every person is a media company, also
Whether you like it or not, every person is now a media company. The tools are there, they are easy to use, and they are free. There are no excuses not to use them anymore. More importantly, producing content is now what the market expects from all brands and companies. It literally doesn’t matter what business you’re in, what industry you operate in – if you’re not producing content, you basically don’t exist.
If you aspire to be an online entrepreneur, or a webtechpreneur as this site would name it, then you have to be producing content. If you don’t, you shouldn’t bother trying to become a webtechpreneur in the first place.
What do I do as a media company exactly?
Once you get used to the idea of being a media company first, and whatever you do second, then your mind starts to think differently about what you post, how you post and when you post. There are a couple of good practices that you should consider following when you consider yourself a media company:
1. You need to throw away your marketing hat and put on your media hat
To succeed at this, it’s important to approach your content like a media person would do versus the lingo of a marketing person. The content creator (YOU) should think and write more like a journalist and produce content that can answer the question: “Why should your followers care?” or “How does this affect your followers?”. Constantly looking to add value to your audience is what makes people stand out today.
2. Serve your audience, not yourself
It’s critical to create meaningful content that is produced with the audience in mind — not yourself. Making the piece of content meaningful to its intended audience involves connecting with them by injecting a human dimension. This can drive engagement and build trust faster than your wildest dreams.
3. Use the power of authentic content to create community, and stay consistent
To create a community around your brand, avoid selling. People are smart, they can taste when you put on a face that is not authentic. Instead, authentically speak to how your offerings can help positively shape outcomes for your audience. If you can demonstrate this, and engage your audience through real, relatable examples, then the reader will be more likely to naturally want to engage. Even better, she or he could become an advocate for you and pass your content to others that matter. As you know from yourself, word of mouth is the number one way to grow anything.
4. Content is not just written
Let the message decide the medium. Is what you choose to convey better illustrated by storytelling from others? Perhaps it’s a video piece that includes several experts sharing their knowledge and talking about their experiences. Or maybe it’s about something tangible that is better shown rather than described. You need to play around with all formats, whether its written form, picture form or video form. Get out of your comfort zone and start playing.
5. It’s not just about content creation, it’s about content distribution
What good is thoughtful content if no one engages with it? You should put just as much thought into how you will distribute content as you do in producing it. Just like you need to play with different formats, you will have to try out different channels as well. Don’t just stick to one or a few that you are used to, you might miss out on an enormous audience craving your content.
6. All distribution platforms are not always the best fit. Choose wisely
While it’s key to ensure you make an effort to push your content out to your audience, it’s also important to be able to look at a platform and ask: Will that work for me? Does this reach my audience? Does this distribution platform properly represent me? For example, a neurosurgeon might not belong on TikTok. There are a gazillion platforms for distribution these days, be it written or visual content. Don’t just “go wide” — it’s important to choose wisely.
So now that you know how to be a media company first, the question remains – what is your excuse?
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