BlogHer 2012: Pathfinder Day

My Blog as Media Company: presented by Jaden Hair and Kathryn Finney

The 7 C’s of Building a Successful  Media Company

Great full day session – here are my notes from it:

1)      Commitment – Take charge of your business and know where you want to go.  Know what you stand for – essential for your brand!  Invest in your skills.

2)      Content – Invest in your owned platform – content that you “own”, ie something you can command (such as your own blog, your own Twitter account – anything you personally control not things you have to answer to an editor for OWN YOUR CONTENT)  Syndicating your content for free is valuable IF you will get a high return in terms of traffic to your blog.  Content must be useful, engaging, and entertaining.   It needs longevity.  It needs to live beyond today to have real value for you. What is your unique point of view – what makes you special? This is crucial for your business.   Your content must be searchable and flexible.  You can’t make money from it unless it is.  It must be viewable across all platforms.  You lose viewers if they’re trying to watch on HDTV and it doesn’t look good there or is hard to see on iPhone.    Don’t get a publicist.  Invest in SEO and get yourself to the top of Google search.    Keep  your titles very searchable and have a MAX of  4 words for best SEO.

3)      Channels – your owned platforms   In other social media, like your newsletters, what can you give the reader that you haven’t already on your blog. Add a nugget of gold, put a twist on it, make it new and special

4)      Community – Create a community through conversations, spirit of generosity with your readers and  each other

5)      Commerce – quick and dirty way to assign and assess value:  take how much revenue you bring in monthly and divide by number of readers to get a $ per person amount  Find tutorials that teach you how to track people who come to your site  Sometimes you get a better ROI from using ad space for your own stuff (fave posts etc) than from outside advertisers  You can’t really make money from advertising until you have enough readers to make it worthwhile   You may need to put up a few ads though to get your audience used to them or they can freak out when they start appearing.    When we consider endorsements, we also need to consider the intimacy of the relationships we have with our readers as bloggers  Ask for permission to pitch to brands in advance– most people will respond positively.   Advertisement, affiliate programs, custom branded products, endorsements, consulting , custom client projects,…….Create multiple streams of income!

6)      Crew – your board of advisors….they can be people you know in person or just ones you admire or can learn from.  For example, you might consider what would  Oprah do?   Form mentorships.   Your crew can also include your employees/team,  Partnerships, and  Protection (legal etc).

7)      Conversion – acquisition and retention of followers.=   Lifetime value of a visitor  How to get them from:  Search > website>RSS>email newsletters>commerce>social media>tell a friend and become your RAVING FANS.

Other interesting points:  If you can’t getting others to believe in your vision, there’s perhaps an issue in what you’re doing or how you’re presenting it.

It’s ok to pivot.  It’s ok to change direction.