Page 11 - Engage -- Summer 2018 -- no. 13

recognizable and interesting sounds. He makes no pitch about his company, Defacto Sound. He only says the name of it at the end. He’s made these great stories of sound into a well- crafted showpiece. It’s clearly produced by professionals who know sound and whom you would want to use if you needed to create a sound-oriented piece.
Q: As an editor, do you need to have a strategy to move people from offline to online content and vice versa?
JF: It would be nice if we could take people on a route, but we are reaching different audiences with different mediums. I was at Fast Company
years ago, and the editor-in-chief had this idea that if a story was produced for online only (and
it did exceptionally well), we would run it in print later. I was opposed to it because I thought it would be old news three months later and our print readers would have read it online. To my surprise, not a single person ever complained, because they are different readers. We reach a different reader with a different expectation on every platform, and you have to think about what reader you are reaching with each piece you produce. It would be wonderful if people were to follow us on Instagram, read us in print, read us online, and listen to the podcast, but they have to live their lives. I think about how each thing serves entrepreneurs where they need it.
Q: Why still produce a printed magazine?
JF: There are many reasons to stay in print, even in an increasingly digital world. One of them,
to be totally frank, is that it’s the absolute best advertisement for the brand. It’s on newsstands and it gives us a weight of legitimacy and trustworthiness. It’s also why lots of big-name people will engage with us. Celebrities want to be in the print magazine, even if it has a smaller readership than online. And we ask people to pay for the print magazines, so we put more resources into it so that it will be of a higher ambition level. It’s good to have a premium product and serve a premium customer there. Every monthly magazine is printing evergreen
but brands need to understand that
the content is not a sales pitch. It’s a relationship builder. Just provide value, then trust that it pays off. If you are going to build content and you want it to find an audience, use it to prove your value, not to sell your stuff.
6. Make sure you are speaking to an actual audience and not one you imagine. Too many brands start by asking, Who is the audience I want
to pay attention to my brand? My wife, who is a writer, was asked to write for a hard drive company that started a site about delivering creativity, but there was no audience for the concept. No one wanted creativity advice from a hard drive company. Talk to a real audience and identify what they really want.
7. Understand that media costs real money. It’s not something you can do on the cheap. It requires investment over the long term. Media is a long, slow game, and developing an audience is also a long, slow game.
1. In a good story, the character changes. I don’t like success stories; I like problem-solving stories. In a success story, the person is already successful,
so the character never changes. In a problem-solving story, the characters arrive in one place and exit in another.
2. People want to spend time with people. It’s more interesting to talk about a company’s founder or interview someone at the company than to talk only about the company. And the story should go on for as long as that person is interesting. Sometimes what will make or break a story is how engaging or colorful a person is and how open they are. If they aren’t so interesting, it may only be 500 words. If the person is fascinating, their story could be 3,000 words.
3. Voice matters. If a story is written by a writer who doesn’t have control over their own writer’s voice, that story is dead on the page. You need a writer whose writing voice communicates what the story is about and who can
immerse a reader in the experience
of that story. A writer’s voice is like an ingredient in a recipe, and you need to play the moment. If you expect readers to go long with you, the person telling that story must be well equipped to guide them through it.
4. Invest in quality storytellers.
I don’t look at a ton of branded content, but I see a lot of blog posts published by companies and written by people who don’t come from a writing background. If you are not going to put out something that shines in quality and shows
you have invested in it, don’t put out anything at all. There’s a reason media companies pay talented writers and put their content through a rigorous editorial process: so we know it’s top-notch.
5. Cool it on the sales pitch. If you pick up Entrepreneur, you will see that there is not one story telling you how great Entrepreneur is. People don’t like to be sold to. Luckily, we aren’t in the position to have to sell a product,
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