Mark W. Schaefer - Exclusive Q&A

But Mark, one of the quite interesting topics that came up several times during this week was the role in media distribution of social media. And you've been asked several times how do we go about this? And we see some beginning signs that media companies actually post or publish content directly on Facebook. And I actually think I heard you in a podcast a little while ago mentioning that you had been talking to an American newspaper who had started to say not digital first, but social first. Could you maybe elaborate a little on that? What is the thinking behind that? Well, this is a very, very interesting topic. And what we're experiencing in the United States is maybe what you're seeing here as well is that there's a dramatic decline in print newspapers. And we need journalism. We need newspapers. And so there's been this just really this fight and this battle and this struggle. And I had a very inspirational meeting with in the United States. Each state has a has a capital and the newspaper in the capital is very important because this is what covers the politics for for the state. And in Pennsylvania, the newspaper had gone down, down, down. It was more than 100 years old and it went from every day to three days a week. And in this and everybody was just stunned and they just said, we just can't make with the finances. So they just completely redid their format. They went completely to digital. And one of the things they've been doing is they are breaking news on Facebook first. And what they're doing now is using the newspaper to curate the best stories. And so this is what's really driving the following. And it has increased their advertising revenue so dramatically they've been able to reinvest in political reporting. So it's just an amazing success story. And it just makes me feel so good because we've seen bad news for so long. Now, the other thing that's significant about this is we're seeing this trend that all of the social media platforms want to own the content. So they don't want you to post a link and bring you back to your site. They want the content there. So what Facebook is doing is it's rewarding dwell time. How much time do you spend on the stories? And if you get a lot of dwell time, you go you rise in the news feeds. But the problem is if you post your content there and your videos there, it doesn't drive people back to your site. It doesn't drive the ad revenue. So now we're facing the next problem is how do we play this Facebook game? Because I was I mean, the instinct of every media business person would be to say we need people on our own platforms. Do you think that is always always the right position to take? I know it's a hard question, but is there a benefit from the news? Well, my my my instinct is is that the most popular platforms win and we're going to have to find a way to win. And we've had to adjust and adapt and adopt so many times in the last 10 years in media. I just think we're going to have to find a way to adapt again. And you were telling me that that Facebook is offering some of the large media publishers all of the revenue or a great portion of the revenue that they're driving. And that's because Facebook is in a tremendous war right now. Apple's going to be introducing their Apple News program. Google's going to be everybody's trying to get into the content business. We just heard micro or Apple and Microsoft are now starting to develop original content. So the people with the content will win the people. And another thing we talked a lot about in our trip is the importance of branding, how branding is more important than ever. And one of the things that I've written about and I've been thinking a lot about is how do we win in this world of overwhelming information density? There's a statistic that really got me thinking about this. It said in the next five years, by 2020, the amount of information on the Internet is going to increase by 500 percent. So if you could imagine how big the Internet is in the next five years, we're going to have five of those. How do we win? How do we rise above this noise to become the signal that we're with, that we are with our readers today or our viewers today? And so I've come. But I've studied this for two years. I've done research for two years. And what I'm coming up is that we need to not just think about the content, but the ignition. How do we drive the content? The content doesn't have value unless it's seen and it's shared. And this is different than a like. When people like your content, they wave at it. When they share your content, they're in a virtual way. They're standing up and saying, I believe in this. This inspired me and it will inspire you. I love this. And you should love this, too. They're becoming advocates for you and advocates for your content. And so this suggests we need to start thinking about who is sharing our content. So I'll just have you think about this, because in the last nine months, I've been talking to a lot of companies about this. And I'll ask their digital marketing people or their publishing people. I said, do you know the people who are sharing your content the most? Do you know who they are? And no one has said yes. And this is these are the people who are creating the economic value for us. These are our advocates. And I'll just say one more statistic that I think that we need to keep in mind. In 2013, the New York Times did probably the greatest content research, the most comprehensive content research that I've seen. And one of the things they determined was that adult readers in America, 70 percent of them said that their purchasing decision is based on content they see shared from their friends. 70 percent. And I think this number is going to go up because the millennials are coming and they don't trust anybody except themselves. And they'll trust content shared by a stranger on the Internet before they'll trust information from a company or an advertisement. So this idea of learning how do we get the content to move? How do we get the content to ignite? Who is moving our content? How are they moving it? Why are they moving it? Where are they sharing it? This needs to be a competency, I think, for content creators to win in the face of this information density. Can I just ask you one follow up question and then we'll open up? Many journalists also shy away from engaging too much in social media because it can be so painful. Are you actually saying that us, these people in this room, are you so concrete that you're saying that we should actually all know these people who are sharing our stories, our content? I think it will depend. I think it will depend on the organization and the size of the organization. But I think that in the future, our finances and success are going to be linked to getting people to ignite. So people share content for basically three reasons. One, it makes them look good. It makes me I share content because it makes me look smart. I don't want to look smart. Number two, they share content to help people. They help others. I was inspired by this. I want to inspire others. Now, the third reason is very interesting. It has nothing to do with the content. It has everything to do with the person or the company creating the content. There's an emotional bond where they love a news source or they love a blogger or they love somebody so much they'll share the content just because of who they are. I believe in this person. Here's a word we don't use in business too much. Love. I love this person. I respect this person. I'm going to support them and help them and share their content. And this suggests that branding is more important than ever. And we were talking about this earlier that last year for the first time in history, the Los Angeles Times ran a news story written by a computer. And some are projecting by 2020, 75 percent of our news could be coming from computers. Here's the here's a key idea. No one has ever had an emotional bond with some computer at the L.A. Times. So how are we going to win? Because I think this is one of the things that suggests is that our brands, our organizations, we need to work on bringing our faces forward, bringing our stories forward, creating an emotional way. People share content because they're emotionally connected to the content or the person. This is a new way to think. It's an uncomfortable way to think about things. I started out as a journalism major. I was taught you never do that. You never insert yourself, but it's a new day. And I think the only way to win is to create this bond, to create this trust and never let our our readers down with our content. Yeah. Questions from. Could you give us an example of the smallest thing you've seen done on social media last year, for instance? The smart. Oh, boy, there's so many good examples. Well, the one the one that comes to mind that I just love and maybe it won't make so so much of a difference here. But there's a there's a restaurant chain in America that it's an old, old restaurant chain. And basically, when you think of this restaurant chain, you think of old people and their walkers coming into this restaurant chain. They realized our customers are literally dying. They're going away. We have to find some way. So I have a son who's 30 years old. I know that's hard to believe, but it's true. I have a son who's 30 years old and he came up to me and said, Dad, have you seen the social media program done by this restaurant chain? It's so funny. And what they're doing is they're using this really crazy, bold kind of humor. So, you know, we have sausages in America. They're called a link. Right. So they will just post pictures and they'll say, click our link. And it's just it's just crazy, just constant crazy humor like this. And they kind of make fun of themselves. And they've just taken this totally new approach. So I said to my I said to my son, well, would you go to the restaurant? He said, yeah, I would. And what they're saying is, is that it's one of these restaurants, it's open 24 hours. And so they completely repositioned. They said, we're going to give you your food any time you want it. And millennials love that. So I think that's it's just been totally unexpected and fun. And they make fun of themselves. And it's human. And so that's that's one that I've that I've I've liked a lot. What else? Yes, ma'am. So what's the name of the Pennsylvania newspaper you were talking about? It's the Harrisburg Patriot, Patriot News, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Patriot News. And there's someone in Harrisburg that's writing that up as a case study for my blog. So I'm hoping in the next week or two that I'll have a case study on that because I'm just I just it makes me feel so good that we finally have a success. And and we've got a system that's driving digital revenue and it's allowing us to pay attention to real news. So I'm really excited by this. And the New York Times is doing better, too. The digital revenue is coming is coming back up with the New York Times. And they've struggled for years. So I'm hoping that the things are starting to make a difference. Yes, sir. Do you see all the future in the free content with advertising? Do you see other kinds of models with the paywall, some kind of paywall, some like third option? Because all the sharing you're talking about is really great if you have free content. But if you have some paid content, then it's really hard to make people share. There's a there's a really interesting book. It's probably about five years old now. It's called. It's either I think it's called You Are Not a Gadget. And you know this book? Yeah. And so this was written by one of the pioneers of the Internet. And he discusses this problem. And he said all everybody says, we'll find new ways. We'll find new ways. Look at musicians today. Right. Musicians are going broke. I mean, the Internet is not saving musicians. And and and the Internet is not saving writers. There are people on the Internet who who scan my book. And give away digital copies of my book. It took me two years to write. And so they're saying, well, in an economic system that will find a new way forward. And what this author says in this book is this has been going on for 25 years. No one's found where the micro payments, where are all these things that were supposed to happen? We have the same model today that we had 20 years ago. Nothing has worked. I'm still hopeful that something is. But I think for the time being, now I did see something interesting. There's this site called Page Patriot, Patreon. And this is where you can give donations to people for their for their content. What I did for my book, I self published my last book because I was so frustrated with the with the publishers. And so I self published my book and I got corporate sponsors. So I on the first page of the book, I have ads. It's just like the Renaissance time. You know, I'm the new Michelangelo looking for people to pay me. But but it works because now I can write the book the right way. I can I can promote it the right way. And I don't have to deal with these publishers that all they care about is selling paper books in bookstores, which doesn't happen anymore. So, I mean, that was kind of a creative way that I found a way to publish my book and get revenue in a new way. And in some ways, it's on us. You know, we've got to we've got to find new ways because I don't see the economic systems evolving to solve this problem. I hope that there is. But why hasn't it happened? There's a lot of smart people out there. They've tried micro payments. Remember, what was Facebook's thing? Facebook credits or Facebook? They try to make you remember that about four years ago, they had Facebook money. That's what they were trying to do. You could go to the store and got by Facebook gift cards. You know, I guess you could buy things for, you know, Farmville or something. I don't know. You buy presents for grumpy cat. I don't know. Can I just follow up on that gentleman's question? I mean, the key question here is to how to leverage the business potential of an audience. Could I just ask you to relate again? Earlier today, you told an interesting story about you yourself. You're trying to stepping out into dangerous territory and raising money for a charity on your block. And I mean, related to this question about how do you leverage the economic power of an audience? Can you always do that? And what does it take to do that? There's a lot of really great points in your question. The one thing that the story that he was asking me about was two years ago, for the first time, I asked people to donate money to a charity that I was involved in. And that is perilous to do. Ask people to open up their wallets. So it was a really good story and it's a really good cause. So all these big bloggers said, we're going to get behind you and we believe in what you're doing. And we're going to promote your content. So I estimated that these bloggers, their reach was three million people. They promoted my cause and my story to three million people. Here's how many donations I got. One for ten dollars. Now, the people on my blog donated six thousand dollars in one day and the average donation was sixty five dollars. What's the difference? It's what we were talking about. It's this emotional connection in the brand. These other people, they had no emotional connection to me. So the size of the audience doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is that small group of people. I would bet these people, it's an elite group. Facebook tells us that the people that are following your brand or your company, it's likely that one half of one percent share content. So it's not like it's this huge number that you've got to go find, you know, like you've got to have an Excel spreadsheet or something. And so really, these are the people that are donating money. These are the people that, you know, they may sign up and they may pay, go through a paywall to get exclusive content or something like that. So so what I try I'm trying to emphasize now is to focus not on traffic, but on trust. If there are two percent of the people sharing our content, here's the goal. In 2016, make it three percent. That's what's going to drive your business. That's going to that's what's going to help you stand out. If you're working on that advocacy and rewarding and nurturing these people who are sharing your content and your competitors aren't, you will win. That's going to be my next book. And the short answer to that is, is I'm working on this. There's a one of the chapters in the book, the new books called The Content Code is called the Alpha audience. That's what I call the special group of people. And I'm going to be talking about the content code. The content code is called the Alpha audience. That's what I call the special group of people. And there's we have problems. So if you are working in social media, maybe you're working with a dashboard. All right. So my dashboard shows us mentions. Right. It shows us sentiment. Now, let me give you an example of how we're not prepared for this. So I was at South by Southwest last year and someone took a picture of me with my friend and they posted it on social media. And a lady tweeted, those are my two favorite bloggers. Now, here is a person I had never heard of before. She had never tweeted me. She had never commented on my blog. I had no idea who she was. And she's telling me, you're the best. You're my favorite. I have to find those people. I need to know who those people are. And if I was looking at a dashboard, she'd be a mention. If I was just looking at a dashboard, that would be positive sentiment. And I'd never see this strong, small signal from some person out there saying, I love you. You're important to me. That's who we need to nurture. So we right now, it's pretty we can be lazy and still be in marketing. Because we're looking at averages and we're looking at Pareto charts and we're looking at sentiment. And we're going to have to start digging down and we're going to have to see individuals and we're going to have to connect and reward them. I'm exploring this. This is the book. This is the chapter in the book that's getting all the attention. People think, yes, you're right. This is the right way to go. So I've been experimenting. So a lady posted a picture again, never heard of this lady before. She I have five books. She bought all five books and she she stacked them up on her couch and took a picture of it. She said, I'm so excited about all of Mark Schaeffer's books. I thought, that is really that's really nice. I never heard of her before. So I looked up her website and I called her up. I said, I just think this is so nice. Thank you for this picture and thank you for buying my books. It was the shortest conversation in history because she was stunned. And now I learned that she works for a university and she's so passionate about my books. She is she has recommended and it's been accepted. They're using my books for her for textbooks at the university. There she's buying one hundred and fifty books a semester. That's the alpha audience. This is someone who's doing something. She she said, I love you. And I sent her a little love back. And that's all that's what people are hungry for. I mean, people, if you think about this is how we've bought and sold from each other since the medieval times, since the earliest marketplaces, we knew the people we were buying from. We trusted the people we were buying from. And now we're in this broadcast area, the era. And people are out there. And people are out there and they're sending us these messages and we need to listen again and we need to pay attention and find out who are these people. They want to know us. I was at TV2 today and I said no one ever created an emotional connection with a logo. Never. It's a person. It's a story. It's heart. It's passion. And we need to show ourselves. We need to show our voices, show our faces and get out there and create that bond. So I don't have a short answer to your question, but I think that's the way we need to think. I met a young man. He's a student and he was at my talk and he said, I just decided I'm going to do my university research paper on this idea. I said, well, then give me that research because that'll help you with my new book because I need a place to start. But that's where we need to look. Yeah. Thanks. Are we doing the time? Okay. So if there's one final question before we'll. And the best question of the night is. That's a question. No pressure. No worries. That one yet? Here's the best question of the night. I don't know about that. What you were saying reminded me of Jeff Jarvis's private parts. And I was thinking. Is that really the name of the book? Is this this Ashley Madison thing I've been hearing about? The book named private parts. He talks about journalism, content, media, all that kind of stuff. And he's a suspect in cancer. And he has a mission and he thinks nobody's going to care about that. But the thing is he gets feedback and he doesn't believe. And what I was thinking of, he was scared to do that. Yes. And maybe that's a lot of the problem. We're scared to do that. It is. Here's the word. Courage. It really is. And I'm a private person. And it's hard for me to to be vulnerable. I just kind of see it. Well, look, I'm going to do my job. That's really nobody's business. And so one of the I saw this statistic that has haunted me. And it's this that one third of the people when they read their Facebook news stream, one third of the people, their overwhelming emotion is jealousy. That's haunting to me because I mean, I get to go to cool places. Hopefully somebody's taking a picture of me tonight so I can retweet it. So people will say, look, look at Mark. He's doing this cool stuff at Copenhagen. And here I am changing diapers. So I spent it because I don't what someone's changing diapers. Oh, dear. Take it this way. Take it this way. Give me give me give me my best side. And so once in a while, about every other month or so, I write a post and I just disclose something about something I'm struggling with or something I'm suffering with. Last week, last week, I wrote a blog post called What is the Meaning of Life? It was kind of different for me. But someone had asked me that in an interview and I had to think about it a long time. Well, you know, I really should have an answer for that. And so I disclose some things. But but I had the same experience as Jeff is that every time you have that courage just to expose a little bit, you get rewarded a hundred fold. And so it gives me the courage to do a little bit more to to to have that human face. I'm convinced that well, I wrote a book a few years ago about influence marketing. And I got to interview this guy, Dr. Robert Chaldini. He's the foremost authority on influence in the world. And I asked him, Dr. Chaldini, how do you stand out? How do you stand out today? And he said something so profound. And every day since then, I just think how right he was. And this is what he said. Be more human. Be that's the killer app. I don't think we should be afraid. I think the most human journalists, the most human companies will win. We have to keep thinking in everything we do and every strategy that we have. How do we connect more in a human way? Because that human connection leads to trust and trust leads to loyalty. And if you can achieve loyalty, that trumps everything. Doesn't matter what's going to happen if you have loyalty. And that's where the focus needs to be. So thank you very, very much. Thank you so much for having me tonight.