Latest / The Action Catalyst / REMASTERED: Mastering the New Media Landscape, with Rusty Shelton and Barbara Henricks (Marketing, Public Relations / PR, Social Media, Communications)

Transcript

REMASTERED: Mastering the New Media Landscape, with Rusty Shelton and Barbara Henricks (Marketing, Public Relations / PR, Social Media, Communications) · The Action Catalyst

• 0:01
  Host: I'm proud to introduce you to two people who made a big
• 0:35
  impact on my life. Barbara Henricks is the president of
• 0:40
  Cave Henricks Communications, which is a firm that has
• 0:42
  spearheaded campaigns for Jack Welch, Marcus Buckingham, Tom
• 0:47
  Rath, and then one of her business partners, Rusty Shelton
• 0:51
  has worked on more than 25 New York Times and Wall Street
• 0:54
  Journal's best sellers, and they have lifted roles. And they have
• 0:58
  a book called Mastering the new media landscape. And so thanks
• 1:02
  for being here.
• 1:03
  Barbara Henricks: Thanks for having us.
• 1:04
  Host: Well, let's dive in. You use this phrase micro media. So
• 1:08
  can you just introduce what is micro media? And how how has the
• 1:12
  media landscape changed in the last, you know, 5 or 10 years?
• 1:16
  Rusty Shelton: Sure. So what Barbara and I talk a lot about
• 1:19
  in the book is this idea of embracing the micro media
• 1:22
  mindset. And the way that we think of that is, we've really
• 1:25
  entered the age of micro media, where every individual and brand
• 1:30
  is a media outlet, whether they know it or not. So everybody
• 1:33
  listening to this podcast, right now, companies, nonprofits, etc,
• 1:37
  or all media outlet today, again, whether they recognize
• 1:41
  that or not. And so what they had the power to do now is to go
• 1:45
  around gatekeepers that used to guard access to, to ink in
• 1:50
  newspapers, or the airwaves on a on a radio program or a TV show.
• 1:56
  And now they can go right around those traditional gatekeepers in
• 1:59
  and get directly to their audience. And the way that we
• 2:03
  think about that is some people that are that are listening,
• 2:05
  this podcast may just influence a few 100 people via a Facebook
• 2:09
  profile, or a Twitter account, other people like you, through
• 2:13
  the podcast are influencing 10s of 1000s of people each month.
• 2:17
  And so it's this idea that individuals and brands have an
• 2:22
  opportunity that they've never had before, to build out a
• 2:25
  subscriber base and an audience that they own the connection to.
• 2:29
  And those micro media outlets matter tremendously to anyone
• 2:33
  looking to get the word out and today's media landscape.
• 2:35
  Host: What are the real implications of this to business
• 2:38
  owners, to customers?
• 2:40
  Barbara Henricks: Oh, what's happened is, you know, the
• 2:42
  media, the traditional media, the Oprah, the CNN, the Fox, and
• 2:45
  friends, you know, all of those have been challenged. This was
• 2:49
  largely caused by the internet. So that real estate, those
• 2:52
  national media hits in traditional urban space are
• 2:54
  probably more valuable than ever, if you believe in the
• 2:57
  economic principles, things that are scarce being more valuable.
• 3:00
  The big change here is there are no gatekeepers. So the upside of
• 3:04
  that is you can build this personal connection to your
• 3:07
  audience. The downside of this is that it's made the world go
• 3:10
  from noisy to what I call deafening, it also makes the
• 3:13
  news cycle itself very odd. So this is what's changed. The
• 3:17
  gatekeepers aren't there. And things now have this opportunity
• 3:20
  to become news. It's not just going viral, it's just that the
• 3:23
  gatekeepers gone. And everybody has a direct, you know, access.
• 3:27
  Practically speaking, this means there's an opportunity before
• 3:30
  you to use this democratic access to this space to engage
• 3:33
  to offer valuable information to engage in dialogue. The
• 3:38
  challenge is that not everyone has the skills to do this
• 3:41
  tremendously well. So we have layman journalists, you know,
• 3:44
  something very insignificant, or minor or trivial can push real
• 3:48
  news out of the spotlight or out of the headline. The upside of
• 3:51
  that is think about some of the good uses. Do you know, the ALS
• 3:54
  Ice Bucket Challenge millions of people Sure $20 million was
• 3:58
  generated by that campaign for people. You know, it was
• 4:00
  outrageous, it was silly, it was a visual, it also raised a lot
• 4:03
  of awareness and a lot of money. So the environment is really you
• 4:07
  know, it is a two edged sword. There are also new creations
• 4:09
  like Reddit AMA asked me anything, we now have access to
• 4:13
  people like Bill Gates, President Obama, who will take
• 4:16
  advantage of this and we have more direct access. So it's
• 4:19
  definitely an up and downside to this new environment. But the
• 4:22
  fact of the matter is, the environment is different. And we
• 4:25
  all need to change.
• 4:26
  Rusty Shelton: So you guys in the book, you talk about the
• 4:28
  three different categories of media. Can you touch on those?
• 4:33
  Most people that we talked to, when they're thinking about a
• 4:37
  marketing plan, or a launch strategy for a book or a
• 4:39
  product, it typically is grouped into one of two areas. It's
• 4:43
  either social, or its traditional. And Barbara and I
• 4:46
  feel like that's a really dated way to look at the media
• 4:49
  environment. It really doesn't apply anymore. In this media
• 4:52
  environment. We think what is most important for your
• 4:54
  listeners and others to think about is this idea of whether or
• 4:59
  not they I own the media. So in other words, whether or not they
• 5:03
  own the real estate online. And so in the book, we separate
• 5:07
  media into three categories, owned, earned and rented media.
• 5:11
  So owned media is every piece of real estate, online in every
• 5:17
  media that you own. So your website, if it's hosted on, on
• 5:22
  your name, your blog, because it lives on that same website, your
• 5:25
  email list, because you own the connection to your audience
• 5:29
  through that email list. If you have a physical mailing list, as
• 5:33
  many companies do, that's owned media, the idea around owned
• 5:36
  media in as Barbara and I really look at the overall media
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  landscape owned media equals leverage in this media
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  landscape, it's an audience that you can get to anytime you want
• 5:47
  to. And so you don't have to hope that NPR says yes to an
• 5:52
  interview request, you don't have to hope that that company
• 5:54
  agrees to run your article, you own the connection with a large
• 5:58
  audience, you can reach them anytime you want. Second
• 6:01
  category is rented media. So a lot of people that we hear talk
• 6:05
  about, you know, their audience, they say, Okay, well, my
• 6:08
  Facebook page, my Twitter account, my LinkedIn profile it
• 6:12
  and in some ways, that's true, of course, you've got a lot of
• 6:14
  control over what your LinkedIn profile looks like, you've got a
• 6:17
  lot of control over what goes out on your Twitter feed. But in
• 6:21
  actuality, you actually own that real estate, you're in many ways
• 6:25
  renting that real estate. And so a lot of brands found this out
• 6:28
  the hard way in 2013, when Facebook, tweaked their
• 6:32
  algorithm and limited access to the audience that brands had
• 6:36
  spent years building on brand pages, and once in one fell
• 6:41
  swoop limited access to that audience to about 10% of what
• 6:45
  brands had previously. And so what Barbara and I talk a lot
• 6:49
  about in the book is this idea that yes, we absolutely will
• 6:52
  absolutely think that individuals and brands should
• 6:56
  have a smart rented media strategy. But you always have to
• 7:00
  keep in the back of your mind that the audience that you leave
• 7:04
  on Facebook or the audience that you leave on LinkedIn, as
• 7:07
  opposed to consistently focusing on trying to convert them to
• 7:11
  your email list, or owned media is an audience that's always at
• 7:15
  risk. The last category for us is earned media. In earned media
• 7:20
  includes what we might think of as traditional media. So it's
• 7:23
  getting an opportunity to be featured in The New York Times,
• 7:26
  or Fox Business, or NPR or others earned media for us also
• 7:31
  includes this podcast, because this podcast is not something
• 7:34
  that you're letting just anybody on TV, we've got to earn our way
• 7:38
  on to this podcast. So it's this idea that there's a lot of
• 7:41
  perceived credibility that goes along with earned media. And
• 7:45
  there's a good reason for that, because it's not easy to get on.
• 7:48
  And so the way that we think about earns media and you've
• 7:51
  done this so well, with your podcast is this idea that when
• 7:55
  you get out in front of an audience, what you're trying to
• 7:57
  do is not just provide extreme value and give them entertaining
• 8:01
  and informative content. But we always want to have that call to
• 8:04
  action, whether it's a free quiz or a download on a website, or a
• 8:08
  reason for those people to hit on their smartphone in the
• 8:12
  audience and head over the website and grab a free ebook or
• 8:15
  whatever it may be. And so those are the three categories that we
• 8:18
  think are important for people to be thinking about. And this
• 8:21
  idea that you always want to have a bit of a magnet,
• 8:25
  directing people towards owned media.
• 8:27
  Host: You mentioned idea early on that everybody is a
• 8:30
  journalist now because of really because of social at least. And
• 8:35
  so at the salesperson level, if we go all the way down there,
• 8:38
  the why should we care about micro media? Or should we care?
• 8:42
  And if we care, how much should we care? Like, how much time
• 8:46
  should we be spending on it?
• 8:47
  Barbara Henricks: I'm going to make the argument, the audacious
• 8:49
  argument that you should care more than any other sector of
• 8:52
  business, because your job is not just to be transactional,
• 8:56
  right? The best sales people are what their relationship base,
• 9:00
  they're trying to do more than close the sale, they're trying
• 9:03
  to create a relationship. So what media does at the own
• 9:06
  level, is it gives you direct access to your customer base. So
• 9:10
  all your clients now you can be servicing them basically all the
• 9:14
  time, not just when you go in for the sales call. But you can
• 9:17
  be providing valuable content all the time. So these tools
• 9:21
  should really be looked at as okay, I'm not going to just grow
• 9:24
  a subscriber base, as Rusty said that sits on Facebook, or
• 9:27
  LinkedIn or wherever I keep it. I'm going to challenge myself to
• 9:31
  create my own customer base on some piece of real estate that I
• 9:35
  own so that I can constantly be giving them something that's
• 9:38
  valuable. We need to be pushing the media we reach out to them
• 9:41
  with pitches we follow up. We're trying to build a relationship
• 9:44
  so that the next time a book crosses their desk, what goes
• 9:47
  through their mind not to my interested in this book, but do
• 9:50
  those guys bring me good stuff? Or do they crawl my desk with 58
• 9:54
  books every day that I don't have anything to do with what I
• 9:57
  write about or what I do on my show? So if We build the right
• 10:00
  kind of relationship with our contacts. And we use media to do
• 10:05
  it. So, you know, what are your customers needs? Besides your
• 10:08
  product? What can you provide them that a distinguishes
• 10:11
  yourself and be delivered something that makes you
• 10:13
  memorable and different in their minds? And I think micro media
• 10:17
  is a good way to do that. What do they need? What are they
• 10:19
  looking for? answer those questions kind of, well, you
• 10:21
  know, it's what we try to do on our blog. You know, I might
• 10:25
  interview a literary agent, what does anybody need a literary
• 10:27
  agent today? Who reads my blog author, authors who are trying
• 10:31
  to get attention, I'm trying to serve my audience, between the
• 10:34
  times that they need my service. And I think that salespeople
• 10:38
  have the potential to do that. It's what you're doing right now
• 10:41
  you're doing a podcast, you know, you're making touchpoints.
• 10:44
  Beyond just, you know, one initial impression, Macromedia
• 10:48
  really allows you to make constant impressions, or to
• 10:52
  manage the relationships so that you are there was something
• 10:54
  valuable when you crossed their, you know, their desk in this
• 10:57
  very noisy, distracted world in which we lead?
• 11:00
  Host: What's the right amount of time to spend doing this?
• 11:04
  Rusty Shelton: Yeah. So you know, it's a good question, as
• 11:06
  you think it varies by person, but we see as a pretty
• 11:10
  consistent time commitment. You know, people can do this well,
• 11:15
  with 15 to 30 minutes a day, focused on it. And what we
• 11:19
  recommend a lot of times is breaking that up into a couple
• 11:22
  of times a day where where you hop on to Twitter or LinkedIn, I
• 11:25
  think are the two platforms that are most appropriate, at least
• 11:28
  in the rented media space for for salespeople. And, you know,
• 11:32
  you had asked earlier, why should we care as a as a sales
• 11:36
  industry about micro media. And just to expand on on something
• 11:40
  that Barbara talked about there, the power of perception is is
• 11:44
  hugely important for salespeople, salespeople should
• 11:46
  be seen as the authority in their industry. And it's very
• 11:50
  hard to be an authority unless you have a personal brand in
• 11:54
  place. And we believe in today's media landscape, the best route
• 11:58
  to a personal brand. That positions you as an authority
• 12:01
  where you can prescribe and not sell is to become a micro media
• 12:06
  outlet yourself and associate yourself through good content
• 12:11
  through interviews through you know, influencer connections
• 12:15
  with the current tastemakers in your industry.
• 12:18
  Host: One last little question. And I'd love to hear from both
• 12:20
  of you on this. The world is changing so ridiculously fast.
• 12:25
  How can companies and also individuals sort of future proof
• 12:30
  themselves to survive the changing media landscape, if you
• 12:33
  will.
• 12:33
  Barbara Henricks: So there are a couple of things I would throw
• 12:35
  out first before I toss it over rusty, so one is just being what
• 12:38
  we call discoverable. So before you open up anything new or
• 12:42
  decide you have to engage in you know, 20 new activities, start
• 12:46
  with where you are, look at yourself, Google search, you
• 12:49
  know, do a search engine shot on yourself, and see how easy you
• 12:53
  are to find, you should be on page one of Google. So the first
• 12:58
  thing you do is find out how discoverable you are. So that
• 13:00
  when people want you need you, they can't find you to do that.
• 13:04
  Rusty, I know would give the advice go out right now today,
• 13:07
  stop everything and buy the URL that's associated with your
• 13:11
  name. So www dot Barbara henrichs.com. If you can do that
• 13:15
  locked down that real estate, it will get more valuable over
• 13:18
  time. The second thing I would do is just make sure that all
• 13:21
  the bios that people can see actually reflect what you do
• 13:24
  today. Over and again, authors come to us with bios that don't
• 13:28
  talk about their latest book, you know, they say or they just
• 13:31
  mentioned the book, they don't embed certain keywords that the
• 13:34
  media might be looking for. So you know, we worked with a woman
• 13:38
  who had written a book about terrorism essentially. And one
• 13:41
  little tweak of her social media by bio when ISIS erupted, drove
• 13:46
  all sorts of traffic to her door, she was an expert on ISIS,
• 13:50
  she was so all we needed to do was embed that's a look at your
• 13:53
  own the existing bios that you have, make sure they're up to
• 13:56
  date, make sure they're accurate so that you're discoverable and
• 13:59
  by your URL. Second is a really easy one in a softer principle,
• 14:03
  which is never sacrifice credibility. When you start
• 14:06
  representing yourself online. Always be accurate, always be
• 14:09
  authentic. I just don't think that there's any replacements
• 14:14
  don't start creating an image that you are not comfortable
• 14:18
  with that is false. Just be who you are perhaps be a little
• 14:22
  larger or dramatic so that you know it is seen maybe not
• 14:26
  dramatic, so better but be more of who you are in larger doses,
• 14:31
  but always be authentic and always be accurate.
• 14:34
  Rusty Shelton: Yeah, what I would add to that I think you
• 14:36
  know, Barbara hit the nail on the head there around clarity
• 14:40
  and I think in this noisy media environment, the the individuals
• 14:44
  and brands that provide real clarity for what their brand is,
• 14:48
  have a huge advantage. You see a lot of people that are that are
• 14:52
  building out a micro media outlet where there's it's not
• 14:56
  real clear kind of what value they're providing. You know,
• 14:59
  there are people that own, you know, certain certain phrases or
• 15:02
  certain certain areas of focus. And I think branding and clarity
• 15:05
  around branding is hugely important. The other thing I
• 15:08
  would say in terms of future proofing is, again, not to put
• 15:12
  all of your eggs in any one basket, I see a lot of people
• 15:16
  that are incredibly heavy on their Facebook page or the
• 15:20
  entirety of their platform is wrapped up with the fact that
• 15:23
  they have a Forbes column. And in a moment's notice, if you
• 15:26
  don't own the real estate, you've got to be really clear
• 15:29
  that that can be taken away from you or Facebook can make a
• 15:32
  change and limit access to your audience. So future proofing, we
• 15:36
  believe the more of the connection to the audience that
• 15:39
  you own, through an email list through subscribers on your
• 15:43
  site, etc, the more leverage you have over the long term, so I
• 15:47
  would say owning a connection with your audience is another
• 15:49
  thing I would say is a really important future proofing
• 15:52
  strategy.
• 15:53
  Host: Yeah, where do you want people to go to connect with you
• 15:55
  and get the book?
• 15:57
  Rusty Shelton: Sure. So the best place to go is
• 15:58
  masteringthenewmedialandscape.com there's lots of good information
• 16:03
  about the book there. They can also go to cavehenricks.com To
• 16:06
  learn more about cave henricks communications, Rustyshelton.com
• 16:11
  to learn a little bit more about what we're up to, but we're
• 16:13
  really excited about the book and you know, sure appreciate
• 16:16
  you having us on.
• 16:17
  Host: Thank you guys so much. We wish you the very best.