What Content Marketers Can Learn From Publishers

Neal Schaffer: 0:02

Welcome to maximize your social actionable advice on how your business can maximize your social media presence. Now, the host of maximize your social, social media author, speaker, consultant, founder of maximize social business, the Social Media Center of Excellence, and the social tools Summit, Neal Schaffer. Hey, everybody, this is Neal Schaffer, welcome to another episode of maximize your social. I am here in well, I won't say New York City. I'm actually in Brooklyn, which I guess is part of New York City. But I'm here at the Corporate Social Media Summit, which is being held, I guess they do this annually, a few cities across the United States being held by useful social media, which is just rebranded as the Insight group. And it's been great I moderated two panels yesterday, I'll be moderating two panels again today, yesterday was social data global social. Today, it's about content creation and storytelling through social and moderating panels wonderful because you get to meet these amazing professionals that are doing amazing things in social media. One of the panelists at my content panel is actually someone I'd like to introduce you that I'm gonna interview for this podcast. His name is Sal Liao. And he is from the family share network. So welcome to maximize your social.

Sal Liao: 1:19

Thank you, thank you, I'm very, very thankful for the for the opportunity to do

Neal Schaffer: 1:24

so. So family share network. In all honesty, when I first met you, I had no clue what that was. There's, you know, some of you listening may already actually be a member of one of your communities and social media. So please give us an introduction to to the network in your company.

Sal Liao: 1:41

Absolutely. And in No, honestly I didn't know about the CompTIA network two years ago, good. I'm not alone. You're not alone. And but it's interesting. Over 100 million people know about their family share network, either directly or indirectly. And that is because we have over 100 million followers in social media, most of them are on Facebook. And they're attached to our brand, through what we call passion pages. And those passion pages, our Facebook pages, Twitter pages, Pinterest pages, based on a passion is specifically on families. Like I love my family, I love my wife, I love my children, I love my grandchildren, I love my, my sister loves my brother love my cat, I love my dog. And we also have other pages. Like I love the United States of Mexico or Brazil, the family shirt network is a network in the sense of having a cohort of social pages. And now also a group of web pages, like family show.com. Families are calm for music on the VR, and we own family.com in over 80 languages. Those pages are the repository of the content we promote in social media.

Neal Schaffer: 2:54

So obviously, you know you are a publisher, you are the media for lack of a better a better category. And you've created this purely from social, you don't just obviously publish and post on social for the fun of it and build communities for the fun of it. Tell us about your business model that you have. You've created these, you know, amazingly passionate communities and social, how are you monetizing that as a business, that's a

Sal Liao: 3:17

very good point B hasn't been easy to monetize these model. But the first thing is understanding the passion, the passion of our team, the passion and the vision of the organization, and ultimately, the passion of the consumer. And once we understand that passion, it's we provide engagement, and that engagement needs a purpose. And in our case, the purpose for social is driving traffic to our website. And in our website, we create monetization opportunities. Specifically, we're going after the concept of native advertising. So sponsored content.

Neal Schaffer: 3:53

And so a lot of you listening, hopefully, you're nodding because we always say that with content marketing, and with social media, every every brand is a publisher now. And right here sold is saying his objective is really clear. Its website traffic generation. So in terms of a social media strategy, it can't be any clearer. A lot of you're trying to do the same. But perhaps you're approaching it the other way around, where you're trying to bring people back to your website, but you haven't focused on the passion and aligning and install. I know you have something to say about that alignment. And I think that might be what's missing with a lot of brands is that alignment with the passion of the consumer, and being able to activate that in social work. What would you say about that?

Sal Liao: 4:33

Well, I'll talk about alignment. I love the concept of alignment and I think it's part of our of our success, but there's a lot of space for disruption. today. As we see technology has enabled access to audiences so you know, ripple one of the top YouTube channels, it's accessing in a daily basis, millions of people that's my modeling, and and it's a brand So there's a lot of space for disruption in the publishing. But I think that in the ecosystem of industries and the relationship of those industries, one actually succeeds on the internet one is really good at one thing. And brands that, I believe I mean, they can always expand, but they need to be really good at their product, any and making sure that there's engagement between the audience and their product. And publishers, as we look at the basic concept of publishing is opening, understanding and owning the loyalty of an audience and selling the access to the audience to advertising. That's sort of the very simplistic basis for publishers. But it's all about that loyalty. And the challenge has been publishers, they, they still think that publishing is a monologue. And what social media has brought it here was not it's not a monologue anymore, it's a dialogue. Think for a minute on the newspaper industry, and how long will it take for an author to get feedback on his article, two days, three days a week, a month, maybe never you, you will never get figured she will never get feedback for that specific article in order to take it to the next level. When you go to social media, it takes around 30 to 40 seconds, to know if that piece of Article resonates with your audience. And then the author can can make a decision, either leave it that way, or pivot and create a better article based on the type of audience. I think that social has brought a dialogue to an industry that always thought that communication was a monologue.

Neal Schaffer: 6:39

So I'm going to take a guess here, maybe I'm wrong. And I want you to correct correct me, a lot of companies take the editorial calendar approach to publishing and Social, I'm taking it that in order to build that loyalty that you need as a publisher and social, that you're allowing the the engagement to guide you to what you should be publishing, you know, what is your take on that I know you're laughing here. So that's,

Sal Liao: 7:01

that's fascinating that you mentioned that because it is a constant conversation within our team. And we actually call our editorial calendar, a special moment in our audience lifetime. And those special moments may be Fourth of July, will be tense, given maybe Mother's Day, who also may be having a child for the first time also may be when people are getting married, or maybe having their third child, he may be a relationship, a moment of fighting actually with their spouse. And those are special moments, in a way and we will look at social media, we're not necessarily talking about a day in a year, we're talking about special moments in the audience times is that that's that's how we approach it.

Neal Schaffer: 7:45

So how to create content that feeds all those different special moments. Exactly. Yeah, in essence, great. So what is the net net of all this? So you had mentioned, I wanted you to share with the audience, that old metric report that you're talking about how, and this is what what I found really compelling. A lot of this sounds you know, to some of you, it may sound, it's not applicable to your business, I think it's extremely applicable. And there's a lot we can learn from publishers like yourself, tell us about, you know, the success of family share, you know, on Facebook, compared to the BuzzFeed to the world?

Sal Liao: 8:13

Well, that's a very good point, I, I do think that the concept of passion pages is a very interesting concept. And anyone can can can do this passion pages is basically understanding what is the competitive advantage, what is the aggregated value that your brand brings, brings your users in our case, we will provide content for families, so anyone that loves their families should be green or content. And that's what we call pages. I love my family, I love my wife, I love my children. And, and as people like those pages, they will start receiving the news feed on their account in their newsfeed. Now, that's I will say that's only 10 to 15% of the strategy, because at the end of the day is about creating that loyalty. And it's really all about being from the computer in front of the analytics tool. And understanding why is the content that resonates with the audience, of course, and also taking consideration your own POV your own point of view in your strategy. So I'll say that that's that's part of it. And the other one, it says I mentioned before, it's alignment. And no, everybody talks about content being king. And in my mind, we never talk about the Queen and the queen of of the content, it's alignment, it's aligning that content with your audience, you can you may have an incredible piece of content. But if the right influencers are not seeing their content, or not seeing that content relatable, they're not going to share it. And ultimately, you want shares you want time spent on the site. You want people to share that content, to feel proud of that content and to feel that that content is so good in such a great way that a little bit of that content, it's part of them or they're part of that content in that way they share it. And for us. That's our objective. And I think that publishers are brands can confine the passion. If they sit down and really internalize and look at themselves they can find, okay, what is the passion that they provide to their audiences, and then through that grow their exposure exponentially?

Neal Schaffer: 10:14

Great? Well, it comes down to the passion doesn't it? Easily said, but really hard to execute on. So you know, congratulations for what you built. I look forward to seeing you at future conferences, any other advice you'd like to offer? You know, all the brands and businesses that are listening and in terms of content, passion pages,

Sal Liao: 10:30

check it out, go to facebook.com forward slash family share, or just dive, I love my family in the search about a Facebook and you'll find our pages that are like it and starts looking at the content or visit family show.com

Neal Schaffer: 10:45

Great stuff. So when you're thinking about, you know, influencer marketing and reaching out to new communities, this is another type of, you know, passion page networks, for lack of a better word. This is another sort of community that you should also look into. And I hope that you'll reach out to family share if you sell a product that you're trying to sell to families, and which consumer brand isn't right. Awesome. Well, thank you very much for being on the show. I look forward to our panel, which is coming up in I don't know about an hour from now. And hey, Neal Schaffer signing off from New York City. Hope you enjoyed this episode. As I like to say, wherever you are in the world, make it a great social day. Bye, everybody. Thanks for listening to maximize your social. We appreciate all of your iTunes subscriptions, ratings and comments. If you would like to appear on this show or recommend content, please contact Neal Schaffer at Neal at maximize your social.com Please also make sure to check out Neil's new community, the Social Media Center of Excellence at social media ce o e.com. As well as Neil's first social media event, the social tools Summit, which will be in Boston on May 12. And in the Bay Area this fall. Thanks again and make it a social day.