Media management

Entrepreneurs make for easy targets. Whatever your business is doing, it’s guaranteed to ruffle some feathers. But don’t be quick to blame the public. Most times, being sceptical of change is only logical.

Even those who buy into your product will probably expect it to fail. 20% of businesses shut their doors during their first year, and less then half survive for more than five. We may not know these numbers, but we know it from experience — most of them overpromise, underdeliver and ultimately disappoint.

As such, it’s no surprise that the internet is full of passive-aggressive tech coverage. No matter what you do, your business is going to be attacked and demeaned. No one is immune.

Look no further than the original iPhone’s early reviews. It generated a lot of negative coverage for the sake of negative coverage. CNET’s main complaints revolved over a lack of physical buttons, completely missing the entire point of having a touchscreen. A Techcrunch columnist went even further and outright damned it to failure. Sounds funny now, but 14 years ago these people were dead serious.

Of course, these days everyone is an expert and the comment sections matter more than the articles they follow. Unlike traditionally restrained media professionals, the overconfident amateurs on popular UGC platforms openly take pleasure in attacking whatever they come across. It might be their way of letting off steam from being bullied at work or having financial difficulties, but no matter the reason, you still have to deal with a bunch of people trying to paint you in a negative light. And that’s not easy.

Many of us grew up reading a classic, that was a staple of many home libraries. However, it doesn’t seem to be as prominent as it once was. To understand the ongoing shift in tech coverage, we need to explore its roots.

The Web is a blessing and a curse. It’s the greatest publishing platform ever devised, it offers accessibility and allows for the free flow of information. On the other hand, it has made getting actual exposure even harder. Yet, some brands still mistake the former for the latter and continue to pursue traditional marketing strategies.

Every new business needs an online platform, some turf to call your own. So, you invest time and money to build it. Finally, after months of negotiations and revisions, you deploy it. At first, you’re happy, but weeks go by and your shiny new website is still not attracting customers. In an effort to protect your investment, you start spending more money on PR trying to get people to notice you. But it doesn’t work the same way it did before.

Bad news is — press release is dead. Good news — there are ways around that. Once you understand how we got here and why the old tricks don’t work anymore, you’ll be able to adjust and rise to the top.

The internet is a global high-density slum. The Kowloon Walled City of our times, it is packed to brim with useless promotional content. Trying to sell a product in this environment is no easy feat.

No matter how original and well thought-out it is, it has to provide cultural value to succeed. Otherwise you become the knockoff brand. Below are three ways to quickly integrate brand’s culture into your content-marketing strategy, and what’s even more important — scale it with little to no additional resources.

At Microsoft, our mission is to empower every person and organization on the planet to achieve more. The media industry exemplifies this mission. We live in an age where more content is being created and consumed in more ways and on more devices than ever. At IBC 2019, we were delighted to share the latest innovations we’ve been working on and how they can help transform your media workflows. Read on to learn more.

Dmitry learned the language of business but I think about the world as an engineer. He works with tech brands to create content and promote corporate culture at scale. Apart from it, he is one of the veterans at Techstars Startup Digest, and he is acting as an advisor for the SXSW tech festival.

Here is his interview with the LAMA app platform.

How’s your work week going? I took some time off publishing new articles and consulting clients to look at «The Hero and the Outlaw» by Carol Pearson and Margaret Mark. It’s a guide to leveraging the power of archetypes for your brand, and I think there’s much to learn from it.

Archetypes are properly defined as «universal constructs of the human psyche». In layman’s terms, these are images we all recognise because they’re built into our subconscious mind. One such example is the archetype of the hero  —  a good guy who triumphs over evil and saves the day.