The Beat - Summer 2018

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08 Summer 2018 COVER STORY Q: To that point, as a media member, what’s your take on the current landscape where brands and media are using metrics such as views, likes, and clicks to measure success? JF: We are in this crazy moment where we are judging ourselves by the vast reach we can have, but these numbers defy reality. When you put a video on Facebook and it gets 30 million views—show me a person who will really sit down and honestly say that 30 million people watched it. They didn’t. One second played while they Every story has an audience and the trick is making the story reach that audience. scrolled down their Facebook feed, and everybody knows it. Let’s acknowledge that and move on from there. When I think of the world of marketing, I think of the phrase useful fiction. Everybody in marketing has agreed on the same useful fiction— doing these things in these ways and judging by these numbers what is an accomplishment. And I guess it works because at every stage of that chain, everyone benefits from this useful fiction. Everyone along the line gets paid—the production crew, the creator, and the marketers. So, quite possibly the only people getting ripped off are the brands who paid for it in the first place. Even the people inside the brand know it’s useful fiction, but they are tasked to get the numbers they can then show their boss. Someone is being victimized, but I’m not sure who it is! Q: How do you feel about advertorials and sponsored content? JF: We do it, but it’s important to keep in mind that the most important thing to any media organization—or brand that wants to act like a media organization—is the trust of the readers. You need to develop that trust and then respect that trust and not violate it. If we run branded content, it needs to be well marked, and the audience needs to be made aware of it. If someone feels like they are being tricked, you will almost never win them back. Q: How do you create buzz around articles? JF: To be honest, we could be better at it. We are good at producing, but we spend less time promoting. I was on a panel years ago with someone who was then at BuzzFeed, and this person said every story has an audience and the trick is making the story reach that audience. So when we produce a story, I will spend time reaching out to people who seem influential inside the audience that I think the story is for. I will also drop them a line telling them that I think they will really like the story, but I am always upfront in acknowledging in my message that what I’m doing is promoting our work and hoping they will share it. I also find groups on Facebook, then track down the moderator and share the story in hopes that he or she shares it with the group. Q: Do you have plans to use technologies such as augmented reality or virtual reality in the future? JF: I have yet to see AR or VR that has generally excited me. I think what we have seen thus far are solutions in search of problems. For example, I have experienced live sports through VR, but it didn’t solve problems—it created them. What solves a problem is the two-dimensional experience of my TV. If I am far away from the game, sitting in the stands, the TV experience moves me closer to it. VR plops me into one fixed location in the stadium, and it seems like I’m really there, except I’m not, so that’s not very exciting. Plus, I don’t have the good visual experience. So, will these things be improved upon? I’m sure. Will they find their place? I’m sure. But I don’t know what it will be yet. Q: What other new technologies excite you as they relate to your work? JF: It’s not new, but I’m really excited about the continued growth of podcasts. That space will only get better and better, particularly as we continue to have devices that speak to us and as audio and voice continue to evolve as important mediums. I’m excited to get past this wave of people starting podcasts and interviewing everyone they can. Then we will get to the place where people are getting really inventive with audio storytelling. Finding a better way to search and find podcasts will correspond with a culling of podcasting. Q: Do you know anyone who is doing a branded podcast exceptionally well? JF: A great example of branded content done right is a podcast called Twenty Thousand Hertz. The host and executive producer, Dallas Taylor, tells the stories behind the world’s most STRAIGHT TALK from Jason Jason Feifer offers candid insight into what makes a good story and what you can learn by looking at media outlets such as Entrepreneur. Find Jason on Twitter and Instagram: @heyfeifer Image Credit: Nigel Parry
Parry Summer 2018 09 recognizable and interesting sounds. He makes no pitch about his company, Defacto Sound. He only says the name of it at the end. He’s made these great stories of sound into a wellcrafted showpiece. It’s clearly produced by professionals who know sound and whom you would want to use if you needed to create a sound-oriented piece. Q: As an editor, do you need to have a strategy to move people from offline to online content and vice versa? JF: It would be nice if we could take people on a route, but we are reaching different audiences with different mediums. I was at Fast Company years ago, and the editor-in-chief had this idea that if a story was produced for online only (and it did exceptionally well), we would run it in print later. I was opposed to it because I thought it would be old news three months later and our print readers would have read it online. To my surprise, not a single person ever complained, because they are different readers. We reach a different reader with a different expectation on every platform, and you have to think about what reader you are reaching with each piece you produce. It would be wonderful if people were to follow us on Instagram, read us in print, read us online, and listen to the podcast, but they have to live their lives. I think about how each thing serves entrepreneurs where they need it. Q: Why still produce a printed magazine? JF: There are many reasons to stay in print, even in an increasingly digital world. One of them, to be totally frank, is that it’s the absolute best advertisement for the brand. It’s on newsstands and it gives us a weight of legitimacy and trustworthiness. It’s also why lots of big-name people will engage with us. Celebrities want to be in the print magazine, even if it has a smaller readership than online. And we ask people to pay for the print magazines, so we put more resources into it so that it will be of a higher ambition level. It’s good to have a premium product and serve a premium customer there. Every monthly magazine is printing evergreen 1. In a good story, the character changes. I don’t like success stories; I like problem-solving stories. In a success story, the person is already successful, so the character never changes. In a problem-solving story, the characters arrive in one place and exit in another. 2. People want to spend time with people. It’s more interesting to talk about a company’s founder or interview someone at the company than to talk only about the company. And the story should go on for as long as that person is interesting. Sometimes what will make or break a story is how engaging or colorful a person is and how open they are. If they aren’t so interesting, it may only be 500 words. If the person is fascinating, their story could be 3,000 words. 3. Voice matters. If a story is written by a writer who doesn’t have control over their own writer’s voice, that story is dead on the page. You need a writer whose writing voice communicates what the story is about and who can immerse a reader in the experience of that story. A writer’s voice is like an ingredient in a recipe, and you need to play the moment. If you expect readers to go long with you, the person telling that story must be well equipped to guide them through it. 4. Invest in quality storytellers. I don’t look at a ton of branded content, but I see a lot of blog posts published by companies and written by people who don’t come from a writing background. If you are not going to put out something that shines in quality and shows you have invested in it, don’t put out anything at all. There’s a reason media companies pay talented writers and put their content through a rigorous editorial process: so we know it’s top-notch. 5. Cool it on the sales pitch. If you pick up Entrepreneur, you will see that there is not one story telling you how great Entrepreneur is. People don’t like to be sold to. Luckily, we aren’t in the position to have to sell a product, but brands need to understand that the content is not a sales pitch. It’s a relationship builder. Just provide value, then trust that it pays off. If you are going to build content and you want it to find an audience, use it to prove your value, not to sell your stuff. 6. Make sure you are speaking to an actual audience and not one you imagine. Too many brands start by asking, Who is the audience I want to pay attention to my brand? My wife, who is a writer, was asked to write for a hard drive company that started a site about delivering creativity, but there was no audience for the concept. No one wanted creativity advice from a hard drive company. Talk to a real audience and identify what they really want. 7. Understand that media costs real money. It’s not something you can do on the cheap. It requires investment over the long term. Media is a long, slow game, and developing an audience is also a long, slow game.
Page 1 and 2: SUMMER 2018 IDEAS FOR MARKETING AND
Page 3 and 4: WELCOME Summer 2018 01 Welcome to t
Page 5 and 6: INSIGHTS Summer 2018 03 Ways to Use
Page 7 and 8: INSIGHTS Summer 2018 05 THAT’S FO
Page 9: Summer 2018 07 Q: Let’s start wit
Page 13 and 14: Summer 2018 11 Just reach out. From
Page 15 and 16: Summer 2018 13 KUTTIN WEALTH MANAGE
Page 17 and 18: Summer 2018 15 ONGOING ENGAGEMENT S
Page 19 and 20: BEST IN SHOW! Honored to be voted

The Beat - Summer 2018

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