Categories: Articles

Your Company Is A Media Company

One of the big ideas that comes out when we discuss Social Media is that any company can now publish content to the world. Most companies aren’t set-up to be content producers. But, what we forget to really talk about is that it’s not all about the content. It’s about the fact that every company is now a media company (and media companies are driven – partially – by the content they publish).

Your company used to need permission to tell its story to the masses. You needed to secure a Public Relations company to pitch your press releases and weave those new products and features bits into pieces of human content bites that would be appetizing for the world (or your customer base at large). When Blogging came along, we suddenly began to realize that companies could use this platform to tell their own story in a very different and unique way. From there, we discovered tools like flickr for sharing photos, Delicious for sharing bookmarks, audio and video Podcasting and many more platforms.

Suddenly, companies were building communities, developing and sharing content (text, audio, images and video) and even getting people to follow them (on places Twitter and Facebook).

Whether you’re in the B2B or B2C sales side and whether or not your product is a cheap impulse buy or a multi-million dollar long term sales cycle, your business is now – without a doubt – a media company as well. It’s not like the traditional mass media companies. This is different. It’s about the ever-increasingly reality that you are what you are along with being a new media company as well. Customers (and potential customers) have an expectation that you are connected, listening and reacting. On top of that, they are expecting real content from you (in a real human voice) as well. And, if you’re not willing to accept your new status as a media company as well as everything you were before, rest assured that your competitors or someone with a keen interest in your industry will embrace the idea of creating a media company for themselves or even on your behalf (with or without your permission).

It is a different way to think about business.

For the most part businesses were always publishers (creators of content) to some degree (white papers, press releases, catalogues, etc…), but now as we venture into the world where all communications take on some form of community and conversation – one that is public and published in a global platform of distribution and chatter – it makes perfect sense that companies must now embrace the reality that they are all media companies as well?

Check out the latest issue of Fast Company (September 2009). The cover story is called, Nokia’s Plan To Rule The World. The subtitle reads: "Tero Ojanpera’s bold bid to trounce Apple, BlackBerry & the rest – and transform Nokia into a media company."

Maybe it’s about time that all businesses realize that they too are media companies?

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.