INTRODUCTION

BE HONEST: What was the first thing you did when you woke up this morning? Before your feet hit the floor, did you roll over and check your smartphone? If you are like most of us, you did a quick scan within the first minutes of waking. And the habit didn’t stop there. In fact, there is a fire hose of information that follows you into your day, with media hitting you from all directions. From the TV you click on at breakfast to the Periscope feed you watched as you polished off your coffee, from the radio button you hit in the car to the pod-cast you switched to when the commercials started, from the newspaper you scanned when you arrived at the office to the blogs you read when you opened your email, you are living in a brand-new media landscape. Although the specific media each of us consume will be different, the universal truth is we are more connected to information, and each other, than ever before.

As we sit down to write this book, we are acutely aware of just how fast the world is changing. We know that content will always exist, but how it will be consumed is anyone’s guess. You may be reading this from a physical book, on an e-reader, or via an app on your smartphone. Certainly more devices and apps are just ahead. Even less clear is where you will hear about the content you consume in a media landscape that has been completely transformed in the span of two decades. This book is our attempt to examine the sweeping changes in the media, explain their impact, offer insight, and suggest a strategy for you to not only tackle the change but conquer the new, expansive environment before us.

To many of us, the new media environment feels like the Wild West. On television, many of today’s highest-rated programs are reality based and feature families who do things like procreate excessively or leap to fame when their patriarch pops into view as part of the legal team for O. J. Simpson. Even talent shows, popular since Ed Sullivan introduced the world to the Beatles, have given way to celebrity-judged singing duels where tone-deaf contestants appear to try out but, in fact, are merely being mocked. Twitter helped Paris Hilton, a descendant of the famed hotelier, become well known. After a sex tape brought her to public notice, she became a devoted user of the clever communication tool, employing it to do nothing but advance her own fame.

And let’s not leave out the whole concept of going viral, such as the frenzy that erupted in 2015 over whether a particular dress was blue and black or white and gold. That gem of a story seized so much attention that real news was pushed, at least briefly, from the headlines. It’s easy to be cynical. We get it.

But, let’s flip the tables for a moment. Today’s media environment has given us access we wouldn’t otherwise have to many of the world’s most influential minds. Seth Godin was a very successful book packager more than two decades ago, turning out superior books and running his startup from a tiny Manhattan apartment. After selling that company to employees and launching two technology companies, he began a career as an author, gave birth to the concept of permission marketing, and has arguably become the most iconic marketing expert of his time. With dozens of books to his credit and perennial bestsellers like Tribes, Linchpin, and Purple Cow, what does Godin use to remain in the public eye? Largely, a blog that he began in 2002 and uses to dispense advice as well as road-test ideas for new books.

A blog may or may not be the right tool for you, but the lesson here is that in the new media landscape, anyone now has the ability to build an audience if they approach it in the right way.

But it wasn’t always like this.

Before the enormous disruption largely created by technology, the media landscape was dominated by what we now think of as traditional or legacy media. These large national media companies were the gatekeepers who determined which stories received coverage, with an eye toward the material most relevant to their readers, listeners, or viewers. The decisions about what was newsworthy were made in newsrooms, editorial meetings, and under the watchful eye of an editor or producer who had ultimate veto power. Traditional media relied on the expertise of a large group of trained communicators.

Then, between 2000 and 2008, one in four media jobs disappeared. While that statistic came from a Forrester Research study conducted even before the financial crash of 2008, those of us who work with the media every day already knew it. Local media shrunk dramatically, while the big national outlets became understaffed and under pressure to create content not only for their regular beats or programs, but for their online presence as well. Meantime, we began to witness the birth of a new kind of media—digital outlets hosted by individuals and brands that feature blogs, podcasts, webinars, and other content tailored to a very specific group of readers. We call these micromedia, and collectively they are creating a new way to get attention for your platform, your message, your mission, your story, or your business.

You may be wondering: what is micromedia?

Everyone. Literally every individual, business, and organization is a micromedia outlet, whether they know it or not. Everyone with a smartphone can be one part camera operator, one part humor columnist, one part radio host, or whatever kind of media outlet they would like to be.

This isn’t anything new.

We have always had the human impulse to gather and share information, making us micromedia outlets, in a sense, even before the Internet or social media came along and gave us an amplifier. Before technology gave us new tools for sharing, most of us influenced two groups of people: those in our direct physical space and the friends and family members we kept in our circle with letters, phone calls, and visits. Those who wrote for a church newsletter or sent out a yearly holiday update to their “list” might have influenced more people in that environment, but for the most part, we had to go to a lot of dinner parties to be a true influencer.

Fast-forward to today—there are still some micromedia who primarily influence in “pre-Internet” ways (physical environment/friends and family), but the vast majority of micromedia are now influencing exponentially more people than ever via the Internet. Some micromedia have grown their audience so large that they rival traditional media in terms of reach while others influence several hundred via Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter.

Both matter tremendously to anyone looking to get a message out.

Part of the reason many micromedia outlets are doing so well is that they are challenging the status quo and removing the traditional gatekeepers. They are amassing their own sizeable audiences and beginning to play a much larger role in influencing public opinion. As the power and reach of traditional media continue to erode, many of the big players are looking to these new, smaller outlets as the best option for future growth. Others are re-forming and forging alliances with one-time competitors in an effort to strengthen their diminishing brands. The twenty-first century has already seen the creation of Bloomberg Businessweek, Newsweek/The Daily Beast (2010–2013), and Disney/ABC Television (purchased by Disney in 1996). Furthermore, AT&T acquired DirecTV; Altice, a French company, acquired Suddenlink; and Comcast made a prolonged but ultimately failed effort to acquire Time Warner Cable—all further evidence that mergers among the traditional giants, which are struggling to survive, will continue as the millennium moves on.

Consumers began to really feel the shift in the mid-1990s when online-only, general interest publications such as Salon.com (1995) and Slate.com (1996) became among the first to dip their toes into the fast-moving water. They were swiftly joined by dozens and then hundreds of other online-only publications whose combined cachet and clout now arguably comes close to commanding the attention once reserved for the evening network news or the newspapers plucked daily from the porch or newsstand. In an op-ed in the New York Times, author and NPR host Kurt Andersen aptly describes the 1990s as the era in which the digital age got fully underway. “At the beginning of the decade, almost none of us had heard of the web, and we didn’t have browsers, search engines, digital cellphone networks, fully 3-D games, or affordable and powerful laptops. By the end of the decade, we had them all.”

Although the changes in media started almost two decades ago, many marketers, branding experts, authors, small business owners, entrepreneurs, nonprofit organizations, and activists are still operating as if they remain in a media environment where top-down messaging is the only way to grow support for ideas, products, and services. As a result:

Major companies around the world are spending billions of dollars on PR and marketing processes that are not suited for this new environment.

Individuals looking to grow their own platform focus far too much attention and resources strictly on traditional methods, missing huge opportunities to grow their own micromedia channels or use coverage in these channels to open the doors of the large, traditional outlets that remain.

Small businesses, authors, and speakers are increasingly aware of social media options and tools, but few can grasp how to create the right strategy to grow their own micromedia audience.

Marketers fail to recognize that often the best way to get major media attention is to first capture the attention of micromedia.

The power of micromedia has been and continues to be vastly underestimated by nearly everyone who desperately wants to use it for forwarding their message.

Millions are missing the opportunities that micromedia provides as both a forum for content and also a momentum generator.

Our theory is that the fallout will continue, that the millions of micromedia outlets not only will survive but will multiply, and the very noisy world in which we live will become flat-out deafening.

The seismic shift in how content is created, where it is housed, and who can create it has resulted in both an enormous challenge and a huge opportunity. Millions can now get their messages heard by micromedia, starting small, gaining traction, and then growing loud and large enough to command the attention of the traditional outlets whose impact remains important. The challenge of using micromedia for this purpose demands a dedicated willingness to participate. These new outlets possess a raging appetite for highly credible, quickly produced, quality content that will appeal to the audience they were designed to serve. This appetite means there are more outlets to run your content. This shift is enormous, given that even a decade ago being asked to contribute to an esteemed publication was a rare occurrence at best.

Micromedia offers another kind of opportunity for those eager to embrace its potential to become a thriving media outlet in their own right, growing an audience that they own the connection to. This set of brave and fledging digital journalists are aware that platforms like Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and Facebook, to name just a few, give them the power to reach their audience in a new way. However, too many who want to become micromedia outlets lack the communication skills and editorial savvy needed to create a following. They are, by and large, not professional journalists and too often create a “me-first” platform. This is a treacherous and uphill battle—something we will explain in greater depth later in this book.

The rise of micromedia is stirring questions from two camps: those deeply willing and interested in using them as levers to gain coverage in traditional media, and those eager to become their own outlets. While they might not yet have the skill set to effectively use the tools that now exist, they are highly motivated to learn. Here’s what we are hearing from this group:

How do I create an audience for my message?

What is the one media hit—online or traditional—that will be the tipping point for me in terms of mass exposure?

What is the best way to integrate traditional and social media for a campaign with broad depth and reach?

How do I build my own email list?

How should I approach social media, and is it worth my time?

Why should I focus on online results? Isn’t national media attention the only way to move the needle?

How do I coordinate my social media efforts and outreach with my traditional media?

How does working on one impact the other?

What is the relationship between traditional and micromedia?

How do I build a platform?

The answers to many of these questions are changing daily, as the New York Times is no longer the single hit that matters. The media environment that brought you Sesame Street as a child, MTV as a teen, and Saturday Night Live when you arrived at college is changed forever; and the influence and growing power of micromedia are rewriting the rules on how to get noticed. The message is clear: learn the new rules or be left behind.

Micromedia is further fueled by the generation that is currently coming of age. Described interchangeably as “digital natives” (a term coined by researcher Marc Prensky) or Gen Y, this new demographic brings with it new demands. Thomas Koulopoulos and Dan Keldsen, in their book The Gen Z Effect, say, “These kids are not just digital natives, they are hyper-connected junkies whose expectations will radically change business forever.”

While the new generation may lead the charge, everyone who consumes media will continue to demand more, regardless of age. We all want more, better, faster content that is customized to our interests and needs. We’re not married to a specific medium; instead we consume media via a multitude of devices, in a myriad of ways, and all at our own convenience. We devise our own menu of media, picking and choosing among the options and diminishing the editorial control once wielded by traditional media.

Consider the scenario in your own home. Does anyone rush to catch the 6 p.m. news? Do your teenagers fight to control the family television? No. Because that 6 p.m. news is available 24/7 on any one of a dozen channels, and kids stream their favorite shows on their computers or smart-phones, perhaps in the family den if a family binge-watching session has been scheduled, but nearly as often, alone in a personal window of free time. Just as it is time to recognize those changes, it’s time to accept the fact that things have changed in how the media gets and covers stories and begin making strategic decisions about how to capitalize on the new, exciting world before us.

The game is not only afoot—it is here. Who, at the end of the day, will curate the content that we consume? And if we are trying to crack into that content, how do we figure out which social media tools make sense, what strategy can be deployed to create media momentum once generated by local media that was severely decimated in the crash of 2008, and who among those trying to gain notice and grow a personal audience have the power, skill, and capacity to become a micromedia outlet in their own right? This book will examine these questions, offering a primer of the current media landscape and a guidebook of how to navigate it for marketers, branding experts, authors, small business owners, nonprofits, and entrepreneurs. Furthermore, it is our fondest hope that we can help you understand how to leverage the three categories that matter most today—rented, earned, and owned media—and that collectively position you to master the new media landscape.