Tina Brown candidly described her first two months in online publishing as bewildering and challenging. She learned the new vocabulary and terminology of social media "on-the-fly." To her credit, she invested the time and commitment to "figure it out.". In addition, she continues learning about social media from her talented employees (particularly the twenty-something employees).
If someone with Tina Brown's experience, savvy, and past achievements is willing to reinvent her thinking to successfully compete online, shouldn't we embrace that solution-oriented attitude also ...
In the Online World, We Are All in the Business of Sharing
The New Media model of freely sharing content took Brown a relatively long time to understand. According to her, "it took her awhile to get it." Keep in mind, her previous frame of reference originates from the Old Media print world of dog-eat-dog competition. The rules of engagement required you to "scoop your competition" and ensure that no one got a piece of your story.
Contrast that attitude with the social media principles of "being in the business of sharing." Brown finds this concept of freely sharing content as "fascinating science," and it's this trait of online publishing that she finds enormously interesting.
Social Media is How You Invite the Audience to Join the Conversation
Old Media strategy relies on a "push model" or as Brown refers to it "the old binary way of traditional media." In this model, the news agency writes the story and announces it to complete the communication transaction. Today, publishers and their organizations must engage with their audience in conversation about topics in news and culture.
Executing inbound marketing and social media is how The Daily Beast invites its audience to interact (e.g., a pull model). When Brown and the team acquire a story, they immediately decide how to socially market it. These marketing tactics include:
* Identifying and contacting the Top 25 websites obsessed with the news story
* Tweeting the story on Twitter
* Commenting on influential blogs that are also covering the same story
* Encouraging Facebook Fans of The Daily Beast to post the article on The Daily Beast Fan Page.
* Feeding the Beast: This tactic represents a smart way of inviting audience participation
Participation is the Currency of an Audience-Driven Marketing World
As mentioned earlier, the social media world is about sharing content. According to Brown, you need to:
* Identify "where your audience lives"
* Pitch them "where they care" and
* Pitch them what interests them
Engaged audiences actively participate in the conversation and publish her/his won content. Brown emphasized how you have to be inventive, enterprising, and open to the people and places you market to because "the old ways just don't work anymore." She summarized this observation by saying: "People don't want to participate in passive marketing."
Brown is absolutely correct. I'm a good example of her insight regarding active versus passive marketing because I:
* Wrote this blog post series about what I learned from Tina Brown and The Daily Beast
* Chose to follow the Daily Beast on Twitter (@thedailybeast)
* Posted a story on The Daily Beast's Facebook Fan Page (the article describing how Paul Shaffer got his job with David Letterman)
* Bookmarked the mobile URL for The Daily Cheat Sheet on my iPhone
* Embedded The Daily Beast Widget in my iGoogle Homepage
* Subscribed to The Daily Beast Email Newsletter
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