Consider Your Media-as-Business Strategy

November 27, 2007 · Comments

Bloggers and Podcasters and Videobloggers and Media Makers who are interested in using their media as part of their business: Lend Me Your Ears. If you are rambling around and wondering what you’re doing all this stuff for, and if you’re wondering why someone hasn’t dropped off a bag of money at your door, please give the following concepts some thought: if you want to do something more than contribute to the overall blogosphere (and that’s not a bad goal at all), you might consider your media strategy. (NOTE: go no further, except for curiosity sake, if you’re just blogging for love and passion).

Here’s something to think about:

mediastrategy

Your Product

The first thing is, what IS your product. Because if you’re thinking your blog is the product, that’s one way to start planning your strategy. If you’re planning to derive secondary value, by pointing people towards something of value by WAY of your blog (or podcast or whatever), that’s another whole strategy. So first, which is the product: the contents of your blog (can we just use this word and you’ll know I mean whatever you’re making?), or something of secondary value.

Your Goals

For whatever reason, we don’t usually think about goals with regards to our blogging. We just do it as a means of expression, or because we’ve heard it’s important. But why not set goals in place. Some of the sample goals in the illustration above involve building reputation or generating leads. Remember, some products are there for entertainment value (like Something to be Desired). They are quality products that seek to entertain us. But even then, the media might not be the product. What if Justin sold enough tee shirts and product placement to make a living making his show? Then the merchandising is the product, and the show is the vehicle. Make sense?

So, determine your goals before thinking up plans.

Considerations

The strategy that’s right for you is the one that aligns your goals with your desired results. So if your goal is to have a blog that tons of people visit, and you plan NOT to make money, but to just build reputation to a vast audience, you’ve decided that the size of your audience matters. If you’ve determined that you want to reach a specific, targeted audience, and that your goal is to make money servicing that target audience (like the Financial Aid Podcast), then you might want to work harder at finding the RIGHT audience.

And again, this isn’t “how to make money.” It’s “how to consider a strategy that helps you achieve your goals.” My goals for [chrisbrogan.com] right now is to build reputation and awareness for the things that interest me. If some day I choose to make money directly off the media I create, I’ll put different plans into action. I don’t need my blog to make me money, in other words. I just need it to speak to the people that I’m trying to reach and communicate with.

Next Steps

It’s incredibly powerful to write down your goals. It’s even MORE powerful to share these goals with others, and have some kind of accountability for what you’ve set into place. If you’ve never heard of the SMART goal method, consider making your goals, Simple, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely. (google “Smart Goals” for more).

From there, consider how to measure your efforts. Produce what you’re making. And then implement more of your plans based on the other items in the graphic, including marketing strategy, setting up check-ins to determine milestones, and then times to re-adjust your plan (because we’re rarely right the first time).

If This is Your Business (Or You HOPE It Will Be)

For those of you blogging and making media for love, entertainment, community, or whatever other reasons you have, great. But for those of you who are thinking of making a business out of your media, you have to start treating it like a business. That means learning the value chain of your product. It means truly, deeply knowing your audience. It means understanding how to message that audience, how to motivate that audience to interact with you and your product, and how to make your goals align with your business needs.

You can’t NOT DO the parts of strategy that aren’t attractive to you. Well, you can, but you might consider paying someone to do those parts for you, because they still probably have to get done to complete your goals. To that end, start thinking that way. Start looking at this set of community tools as something you’re using for a purpose.

Business isn’t evil. BAD business is evil.

What do you think? What does this make you think about with regards to your own media?

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  • I've found myself approaching this problem from what might be a different angel. When I think of the notions of personal branding I think "well, what are you branding?" I mean this in a very deep sense. This video gets to what I mean. According to Jungian psychology we each spend half our lives getting to know the world around us and the other half getting to know the world within us.

    So within us is a very deep mystery.. The reason why I think this is important has to do with the question of what is you're definition of success? That definition would seem to be the metric all else is defined by.. And it seems to be that a "true definition of success" has to be the expression of that very deep inward mystery, and if its not you'll be dysfunctional in one way or another. According to Jungian psychology psychosis happens when the way you live is so far away from your nature that you're nature eventually says "stop it" and forces you into a new challenge of personality integration, basically.

    Here's another good video that illustrates this idea.

    As more and more the lines between our personal lives and our business / work lives becomes blurred, and the more this revolution that we are only in the early stages progresses, the more these kinds of questions will gain importance. So I think, when thinking about media monetization strategies its very important that we try and think holistically about these problems.

    The journey I start off with is an inward one. My goals and strategies must come from a kind of inner voice.

    I think the difference between this and a surface level way of looking at what you're talking about has to do with what defines the shapes that articulate our definitions. This comes down to the metaphysical presumptions that underly how we think. The evolution of language is driven by questions, needs, conflict, and power relationships.

    So how you break up (or down) the problem of media monetization into a diagram, or a whatever, is all about the underlying questions. I think of Joseph Campbell talking about the problem of Buddhism: Basically Buddhism is about realizing your Buddha consciousness. We all innately have Buddha consciousness, we "are all it" the trouble is that the world is always trying to tell us that we are not it. So.. what's the center of all human values.. is it in us, or is it something outside of us?

    I might have lost track of where I was going with all this, but anyway...

    The way I go about it is not the "plan your work work your plan" sorta method, its more of a dialectic with the unconscious. It's sorta like plans are "these man made things," much like laws, and what does justice have to do with tragedy? Like that poor girl who committed suicide because a peer's mom pretended to be a boy who was interested in her and then turned against her. There was nothing illegal about it, but doesn't it make you want to do something uncivilized to that mom?

    I find that when I set out to make my plans.. that there's something deeper inside that's more important that needs to be honored, I guess. So maybe it has to do with something like you're existential relationship to your plans, and what it means to treat something like business.

    I suppose it doesn't help that business grew up, for quite a long time, by trying to eliminate the human element.. what with industrial engineering and all that.. and so now the challenge is personality integration, in a sense.. as the answer to our collective psychosis.

    Hope that adds something to the conversation
  • Chris, thank you stating very clearly one of the tenets of new media: your blog / your podcast is NOT a strategy. Too often, in a rush to get on the new media bandwagon, companies have a classic knee-jerk reaction: we need a blog, we need a podcast, etc. These are tactics, not strategies.

    Your point dead-on: first determine your strategy, your goals. Then and only then can you build an effective program around it.

    And one of the other essentials is, if you've got a traditional marketing plan, how does new media fit in with it? We online types spend a lot of time thinking about our channels, but the reality is, social media is not the end-all, be-all of marketing. There should be smart integration between online and offline media where appropriate, and ways to drive interaction with both.
  • I agree a strategy is needed, and that you have to blog from the heart but somehow make that part of your stategy. My experience has been to follow Nik Butler's advice, and blog to be useful and express my own personality without the business hat on (http://bloggingforblondes.com) out of which I was asked to write a magazine article about women blogging and got a radio interview, all of which reflected back on my business with some free advertising.

    Now I need to work out how to continue that as part of a strategy, and integrate my upcoming PR campaign, with no real role models to follow.

    So far I have integrated my desire to encourage technophobes into online SN by creating a Ning site for my clients, but it will take a year of hard work to get them really involved because this is all new stuff to them (and me!).

    If anyone can give me some mentors or role models on how to create a cohesive strategy that supports the marketing of my businesses and reflects my desire to be a useful person, send them my way!

    I look forward to more on this topic Chris. Lead the way.
  • For individuals, your strategy can be simply generating awareness for your brand, opening up new opportunities by networking with others or to learn the fundamentals of web 2.0 by actively participating.
  • Seth Godin has some interesting things to say about Souvenirs. People buy books, t-shirts, mugs and other stuff as souvenirs, or reminders, of a good experience. Whether it's a collection of shot glasses from places you've been, books by a favorite author, or a twitter t-shirt- all act as memory prompts of positive ideas and experiences. We surround ourselves with these things because they make us feel good, and recreate small bits of these experiences for us.

    I think this goes back to having something remarkable and worth remembering in the first place. And that requires authenticity, and knowing yourself as Matt said above. You can be that something remarkable, you can "monetize" it through the selling of souvenirs of the experience, with a book, or a speech, or a tshirt- whatever "it" is, but the "gift" of the thing is really a memory and how it touched someone enough to want to remember it and have a reminder hanging around in the first place.
  • Great post Chris, thanks.

    I think both you and Scott hit the nail on the head - a blog or podcast is not a strategy unto itself. To succeed with anything, you need to know what success means, right? To know that, you need to know what your goals are, how you want to achieve them and then plan which tactics you need to take you there. That's the strategy - you can't do it backwards.

    Personally, I 'lurked' for a long time, reading blogs and listening to podcasts and bouncing around social networks, before deciding to get involved. I worked out what I wanted to achieve before I decided how to achieve it, and I think this has paid off immeasurably.

    This leads me to one comment on your chart. I would argue that the 'your blog/podcast/whatever' box should be the third one from the top rather than at the head of the chart. That seems to gel more with what you're saying than where you currently have it. You don't indicate a flow on there though, so I may be reading more into it than I should.
  • AJY
    I just want to say thank you for your post today. I am new to social media and have been taking my time investigating its potential to my particular interests and desires. I feel your post today clarified so many questions I had for this new type of communication and marketing, and I feel grateful that I was introduced to this blog by a dear friend. I think what you say is awesome- and I look forward to reading your blog daily.

    Thanks Chris-
  • I'm confused by your post. Maybe you're being to abstract when you explain your ideas.
  • I really appreciate your mindmap ... and this post. Thank you. I came here on a mission to read something else, but I find that I'm so interested in what you're writing that I can't resist. Thank for great content.
  • Chris,

    Great post. I definitely agree with you on having a plan.

    But sometimes you don't even know how to start. This was me a year ago. I had no idea where to start. But I started doing something anyway and I am finding my voice and building my plan as I go.

    Just a thought for those people who feel they have to have everything planned out and perfect before they start.

    Joel Mark Witt
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