Thinking Link A Media Company
So you want to make money with the content you produce? Don’t we all! The first step in making money with your content will come as a surprise to you. No, it’s not to produce content. It’s to start thinking like a media company does.
You can create all the podcasts, web videos, blog articles, webinars or any other kind of digital content you want, but until you start thinking (and acting) like media companies do, you’ll never be successful at making a living doing what you love to do; content creation.
How do you think like a media company? Before I answer that question, let’s talk about the three things you need to have to be a media company:
- You need to produce good content.
- You need to have some sort of talent or star
- You need to have an audience
Once you’ve accomplished the above, you can think of yourself as a media company. Let me expand.
You need to produce good content
Producing just any content is just not enough now-a-days on the web. There is so much content out there for free that to stand out, and most importantly, to make money with your content, it has to be good. What is good? That depends on your industry and the target market you are going after. However, in all cases, the content you create has to have a mixture of good information, somewhat entertaining and provide enough value added that viewers will pay for it, or at the very least, will attract enough viewers so that you can have companies sponsor your videos.
You need to have some sort of talent or star
I’m not saying you need to hire Brad Pitt for your next web video (good luck with that). What I’m saying is that if you are “known” in your industry or you have a person that is a “star” in your industry, then you have a good chance of getting enough viewers to start monetizing your video. An example of a person that is not Hollywood famous, but is “industry famous” would be someone like Guy Kawasaki or Chris Brogan or David Meerman Scott.
You need to have an audience
You may think that you don’t have an audience, but you really do. Do you have a website? Your visitors are your audience. Are you on social networks and have followers? Guess what, they are your audience. Do you create web videos and/or podcasts? Yup. There’s your audience too. The key is to figure out everything you produce and think of all those people as your audience members.
Once you have the three key ingredients for a media company (content, talent, audience), then you can start acting like one.
How do you act like a media company?
First of all, you need to identify who your audience is. You need to create a buyer persona and figure out what they like and dislike, where they hang out on the web and offline, what they purchase and what movie they watched last. This is of utmost importance because without knowing your audience, you won’t know how to market to them and more importantly, how to get your sponsors to sponsor your show. They want this information.
Second, you need to figure out what “pain” your content solves for your audience (buyer persona). For example, The Digital Scene Show, our web video show on CNMS TV, covers all the expo shows. The pain for our audience is that they can’t make it to all the shows we go to either due to budgetary constraints or time issues. The Digital Scene Show brings the expo show floor to them so that they can “attend” these shows, keep up with the latest and not spend a dime.
Third, you need to market to your audience in the right places. Maybe Facebook is the right place, maybe it isn’t. Maybe Twitter, then again, maybe not. How about putting an ad on a specific blog site or targeting a specific social network in Ning? To reach the right audience you need to know where they hang out and that goes back to the first section described above, where you create a buyer persona.
Fourth, well, I’m not going to tell you what #4 is because I’d love for you to take my free webinar, Monetizing Your Content (I know, life isnt’ fair sometimes). Seriously, I cover a lot more information and go into grater detail in that 60 minute webinar and best of all, it’s free. I know you think it’s funny that I offer a free webinar about monetizing content, however, sometimes, you just have to give it away for free to get some back later in the future.
So go check out Monetizing Your Content webinar and register for our next session.
Remember, New Media is the future, so start using it today before it becomes just media!
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