Every company is a media company.
Tom Foremski, ex Financial Times Silicon Valley bureau head before starting Silicon Valley Watcher, made this statement years ago.
Intel has hired journalists to man the Intel Free Press.
Cisco has gone down a similar path with an owned media platform called “The Network.”
Observing from afar, one might conclude that you need to be a huge company with deep pockets to tap the power of owned media.
Not true.
Given the low cost of tools for digital publishing, any company can jump into this game.
Unfortunately, most companies limit the possibilities by thinking like a [fill in the blank with your industry] company.
Instead, you need to bring the mentality of a magazine managing editor to the table.
Here’s a perfect example from one of our clients. Tomorrow Coupa is orchestrating a Q&A with its CEO in a webinar event dubbed “Bernshteyn Unplugged.”
Like the traditional journalist + CEO on stage with audience participation, Coupa will be striving for a similar dynamic. Signups have provided questions to jump-start the dialogue.
This is not going to be scripted speech. As the title implies, Rob will be addressing questions on-the-fly from the audience and moderator.
Yes, it helps to have a CEO who’s a natural storyteller and speaks like a real human being.
But the ultimate benefit comes from offering yet another way for the outside world to get to know Coupa.
The company believes that the better a person knows them, the more likely the person becomes a customer.
Which explains why storytelling techniques underpin the company’s communications regardless of the platform (owned, earned or paid media).