Your Brand: The Next Media Company

T H E N E X T M E D I A . C O
Your Brand: The Next
Media Company
By Michael Brito
How Social Business Strategy Enables Better Content,
Smarter Marketing And More Effective Customer Relationships

THE BOOK IN A NUTSHELL …
Team Structure &
Organization!
Planning!
Content Narrative!
& Brand Strategy!
PLANNING
Content Execution
& Delivery of
Planned Content!
Real-Time
Command Center
Operations!
Creative
Newsroom
Deployment!
Converged Media
Models!
SOCIALBRAND"
&CONTENTSTRATEGY
EXECUTION
SOCIALBUSINESS"
STRATEGY
Social Business
Center of
Excellence!
!
Enterprise
Collaboration!
!
Identify Roles &
Responsibilities!
ENABLEMENT
Content Audit!
!
3rd Party
Research!
!
Internal
Stakeholder!
Audits!
!
Enterprise
Collaboration!
Technology
Adoption &
Deployment!
!
Content
Governance
Models!
!
Customer &
Employee
Enablement!
Cross-team
Collaboration!
!
Multiple
Stakeholder
Alignment!
!
Content,
production &
Analytics
Integration!
Workﬂow
Management!
!
Integration With
Paid Media Team!
!
Technology
Partnerships 
(3RD Party
Publishers)!
MEDIA COMPANY
TRANSFORMATION
INFRASTRUCTURE
Employee &
Customer
Advocacy!
Content: Your brand
becomes a content
machine and produces
game changing content
day in and day out.!
!
Relevant: Your brand
produces quality content
that changes customer
behavior. !
!
Recent: Your content is
recent and in many
cases, real-time without
the approval bottlenecks.!
!
Omnipresent: Your
content is everywhere –
search, social, word-or
mouth.!
!
Agile: Your brand
becomes a content
organization and has the
ability to produce
compelling content at a
moments notice. !

There is a content surplus
and attention deficit. What
is your brand doing to
stand out?
In 2012, Google in partnership with market analysts Ipsos and Sterling Brands,
released a study titled, “The New Multi-screen World: Understanding Cross-
Platform Consumer Behavior” which reported that 90% of consumers move
between multiple devices to accomplish a specific task, whether that’s on
smartphones, PCs, tablets or TV. That’s 9 out of 10 people who have more than
one device for content consumption.
The study revealed that while a lot of market attention is being focused on
smartphone usage, this device isn’t used for media consumption as much as
the others - 17 minutes per session, compared to 30 minutes on tablets, 39
minutes on PCs and the 43 minutes watching TV.
However, while smartphones may have the shortest usage times they are the
mostly used as a starting point when consumers begin a specific task. Google
calls it sequential screening or device usage. Simultaneous screening is
multiple device usage at the same time either for an related or unrelated
activity.
More specifically, the study found that 9 out of 10 consumers use multiple
screens sequentially so starting a specific task like searching for a product or
service, booking a flight online or managing personal finances doesn’t just
happen on one device. Actually, 98% of the consumers surveyed move
between devices to finish what they started earlier in the day. With
simultaneous device usage, the study found that TV is no longer front and
center commanding our undivided attention, with 77% watching TV while using
another device to perform random tasks. In many cases consumers use their
smartphones or tablets to search for something they just watched on TV.
Sounds a lot like my daily behavior if you ask me.
What does this mean for your brand?
WE LIVE IN A MULTI-SCREEN
ECONOMY
“
Tweetable Moment
Chap. 1
Understanding The Social Customer And The Chaotic World They We Live In

Consumers want relevance. I want relevance and you want
relevance. We are inundated daily with content and media that
we just don’t care about and it’s the sole reason why we create
relevance filters. It’s the only we can pay attention to anything.

Several years ago when I was planning to refinance my home,
I remember driving down the freeway and seeing billboard
after billboard after billboard of financial institutions advertising
their interest rates. I heard radio advertisements, read status
updates, overheard conversations in the office and even
noticed display ads from Quicken Loans all over the web. You
may have experienced something similar when you were in the
market to buy a new car or digital camera and noticed all the
relevant advertisements that commanded your attention. The
funny thing is, the very minute after I refinanced my home;
each and every one of those brand messages went away. But
the reality is that they didn’t really go away. They just weren’t
relevant to me anymore. My filters went back up and I moved
on to what was relevant to me next.
Relevance is understanding
what your customers are
interested in and deciding
what you want to say that
adds value to that interest.
“
”
Relevance is understanding what your customers are
interested in and deciding what you want to say that adds
value to that interest and conversation.

The difficulty with this is creating a content strategy that
considers what’s important to your customers and at the same
time, stays true to your brand promise. In other words, if you
work for a manufacturing company, I don’t foresee cereal or
jewelry being a part of your content strategy unless of course
you are a cereal or jewelry manufacturer. What you will have to
do is create a set of editorial guidelines that will determine how
flexible you want to be with your content based on what your
brand is comfortable talking about and what it’s not
comfortable talking about. I will get into this in great detail later
in the book.

However, it’s not that difficult identifying what is relevant to your
customers or what interests them when they are not talking with
you directly. You probably already have a demographic profile
that gives you the basics so that’s a start. And I am sure you
have done some research using focus groups or surveys. And
Facebook Insights does give additional information about your
communities' basic interest graph, but there is so much more.
The challenge you will have is capturing the attention of your
customers with highly relevant, game-changing content. This is
no easy task. The fact that there is a content and media surplus
coupled with an attention deficit, your brand must create the
right story and tell it at the right time, in the right channel and to
the right customer.
THERE IS AN ATTENTION
DEFICIT
Chap. 1

How many times have you posted a status update about a negative
experience that you had with a particular brand? Perhaps it was a
situation with your cable company, a restaurant or maybe an airline.
Or better yet, how many times have you read a Facebook status
update from a trusted friend in your community about their negative
experience with a brand? Did they influence you to not use that
product or service or do you just ignore it? I see these
conversations daily on Facebook and Twitter. If someone isn't’
ranting about a certain brand they hate, they are enthusiastically
praising the brands they love. So in this case, you either influence
others or are influenced by others. I have been on both sides of the
field and proud to say that I trust the recommendations of people in
my community and hope they trust me.

Influence a hot topic these days especially with the emergence of
influencer scoring systems like Klout, Kred, Peer Index and Flow
140, (an Edelman product). Andrew Grill, CEO of influencer platform
Kred says that influencers don't necessarily have to be celebrities,
they can be anyone that has a respected opinion about any topic in
a community and people look up to, and trust.

This couldn't’ be more true. And, the reality is that all of your
customers are influential regardless of how many friends, fans or
followers they have. No, they probably don’t obsess over their Klout
score or have meltdowns when their score goes down, but they are
definitely influencing others to buy your products and in some cases
to not buy your products. And, they are doing this through organic
and everyday conversations both online and offline.
of consumers go online and do
additional research about a
product or service after getting a
recommendation about it.
85%
EVERY CUSTOMER IS
INFLUENTIAL
Chap. 1

Every company is a media company. This is what
Tom Foremski, publisher of tech blog Silicon Valley
Watcher has been saying for years now, probably
since 2005 or so. And while I agree in concept, I
also agree that most PR and marketing people still
“meddle and produce corporate marketing speak”
as Tom wrote in a blog post in 2012. They still
don’t get it.

So maybe every company isn’t a media company,
quite yet. Maybe it’s an unforeseen opportunity
that many companies have yet to realize. Perhaps
saying that they need to evolve into a media
company is more accurate.

Richard Edelman, CEO of Edelman Public
Relations has also gone on the record to say this
as well. Most recently in his 6 A.M. blog post, titled
“Our Time To Lead”, he said that PR must take the
lead on this evolution and that every company
“should” be a media company and generate
content that can be shared across the online
ecosystem.
While every company “should” try and make this a
reality, most either don’t realize it, resist it or have
no clue on how to make it happen.

WHY DOES MY BRAND
NEED TO BE A MEDIA
COMPANY?
Red Bull has done what very few other brands have been able to do successfully -
become a media company. If you go to RedBull.com, put your thumb over the logo
and scan the page you’ll see that their site looks similar to CNN.com. It’s ﬁlled with
ﬂashy headlines, visual imagery with both videos and photos of epic sporting
events. That’s what Red Bull is known for.
"
That’s their story.
1Chap. 1

5
Here are ﬁve characteristics of media
companies that you must adopt for your
brand if you expect to make an impact,
breakthrough the noise and clutter, reach
consumers and change their behavior.

THE FIVE
CHARACTERISTICS OF
MEDIA COMPANIES
Content: The most obvious characteristic is that media companies
produce mass amounts of content. They are content machines with
an “always on” mentality. It doesn’t matter what time of day it is or
what the hour, media companies distribute content all the time.
They are content engines!

Relevant: Media companies provide content that is relevant to
those who are seeking information that interests them at a very
speciﬁc moment in time, whether is be a news story, a video,
product reviews, events and even breaking news. Their content
always appeals to an audience regardless of what the topic is.

Recent: Media companies aren’t in the business of providing
content that’s a few days or weeks old. The content is recent and in
many cases, real-time and capitalizes on consumer’s search
behavior and attention span as news breaks.

Omnipresent: Media companies are everywhere. They dominate
the search engine results. Their content is retweeted daily, shared,
liked and commented on in Facebook and every other social
network that disrupts the marketplace. They produce videos,
advertise and even their journalists have started building their own
personal brands which also feeds the content ecosystem day in
and day out.

Agile: Media companies move quickly. They have a staff of subject
matter experts and contributing writers that are prepared to write
about any topic at any time; and creative teams that can produce
visual content at a moments notice. They aren’t held captive by
approvals from a brand team or lawyers.
Chap. 1

PEOPLE

Behavior Change
Cross Silo Collaboration
Executive Participation
Organizational Models
Stakeholder Participation

Social Media Governance
Technology Integration
Content Workflows
Metrics Framework"
Global Expansion
Online Monitoring
Analytics Platform
Internal Collaboration
Content Platforms
Social CRM
PROCESS
PLATFORMS
It could be difficult when you try and wrap your
head around social business. I don’t blame you at
all and it can get even more complicated when
everyone’s definition of social business is different.
I define social business as the following:
“A social business strategy helps evolve the
thinking and preparedness of an organization
bridging internal and external social initiatives
resulting in collaborative connections and shared
value for all stakeholders (customers, partners,
employees).”
At the core of this transformation is the people of
organization. Why? Because in order for true
change to happen in your organization, you need
to change first. Your behaviors, the way you work
and the way you communicate and influence
others all play a crucial role in this transformation
process.

3 ATTRIBUTES OF A SOCIAL
BUSINESS STRATEGY
Change is often imitated and it’s based on actions. It’s like a manager who preaches work/life balance yet sends emails at 1:00 in the morning
and expects responses by 8:00 AM. It’ll never happen unless leadership changes its own behavior. Taking it back to this context, if you want to
drive social business adoption within your organization, you must, in turn become social and begin to build in social behaviors into your everyday
workflow. In addition to behavior change, this pillar also involves team and organizational structure. The easiest way to explain it is that you need
to build your teams in a way that allows you to scale operations internally. This could mean that you create a centralized team to manage all
social media initiatives; or a decentralized team that has more autonomy and freedom to try new things and innovate. It will also involve an
employee strategy that empowers, trains and enables them to engage with customers externally … (continued in the book.)
A social business strategy is needed to
transform your brand into a media company.
Chap. 2
Defining Social Business Strategy & Planning

CUSTOMER
SUPPORT
DIGITAL
MARKETING
ANALYTICS
SOCIAL
MEDIA
Product
Marketing
Research
Employees
Segment
Marketing
Events
REGIONAL
EDITORS
BRAND &
CREATIVE
CONTENT &
EDITORIAL
CENTER OF
EXCELLENCE
The CoE is a centralized program that provides resources,
training, and strategy to a variety of business units that are
deploying social media in order to reduce costs, increase
efficiency, and provide standardization.
Jeremiah Owyang, Principal Analyst at the Altimeter Group
“
”
DEFINING YOUR SOCIAL BUSINESS
CENTER OF EXCELLENCE (COE)
The Center of Excellence is key to help
change traditional organizational behaviors.
Chap. 3
Establishing A Social Business Center Of Excellence
If you are a part of a CoE, thinking about building one or just
curious, you need to understand that it’s not easy. There are
several uphill battles and political issues that you will need to
navigate through in order to make some progress. Change is
difficult and most people reject it unless it’s delivered in doses
or communicated in a non-threatening way, especially when it
can potentially affect others’ job responsibilities.

A CoE cannot just be a committee that meets once per month
or someone’s part time job. In most cases, it starts out that
way but eventually it must evolve into something bigger.
Otherwise, the team will never get anything done and won’t be
able to scale as social becomes more and more important.
The CoE must belong to a reporting organization with the
autonomy to make very specific and calculated business
decisions as it relates to marketing and communications. To
make the successful transformation from brand to media
company will require the brain power and hard work from a
highly specialized team with skill sets ranging from content
strategy to technology integration and deployment.

Defining your brand’s content strategy will undoubtedly be the
most difficult task yet one of your most important
responsibilities. Later in this book … (continued in the book.)

Chap. 4
Using Employees, Customers And Partners To Feed The Content Engine
4
There are four things to consider when creating an
enterprise advocacy program — the program
infrastructure, the content plan, the measurement
framework and lastly, the technology platform. But
you should always remember what it is you are
trying to accomplish. If you are serious about
transforming your brand to a media company, you
will need to ensure that your advocates, whether
employees, customers or partners, are given the
opportunity to help fuel your content marketing
efforts among other things.

FOUR CONSIDERATIONS
TO SCALE AN ENTERPRISE
ADVOCACY PROGRAM
Program Infrastructure: You can think of the infrastructure as the
“terms and conditions” or “plan of record” for your advocacy
program. The infrastructure will document a variety of information
and may even serve as your “pitch” internally for ﬁnancial support
from other business units and include your advocate selection
criteria, longevity of program, customer/employee expectations,
contracts/NDA.

Content Plan: As much as your content strategy must include
curating and distributing content from your advocates to help tell
your brand story, you must also have a content plan for engaging
directly with them. Unfortunately, many teams that manage these
programs often over look a content plan and then struggle to keep
the conversations alive and fresh with advocates; more so with
customers than employees.

Measurement: Measurement cannot be ignored when managing
and scaling your enterprise advocacy programs. Some
companies are measuring reach and impressions of content that’s
shared externally from advocates. Others are simply measuring the
amount of activity and participation from advocates..

Technology: A decision should be made very early on about which
technology platform that you want to use in order to manage,
communicate and enable your advocates. Using email will not be
an option. You can always take the ‘limited budget’ approach and
use private LinkedIn and/or Facebook groups. While using these
platforms is affordable, this approach lacks the ability to customize
the look/feel and functionality of the program. It’s also more difﬁcult
to enable your advocates to create, share and amplify content
using these free platforms.

Chap. 4
Using Employees, Customers And Partners To Feed The Content Engine
GaggleAMP is best described as a social media amplification platform that enables employees to share branded content and also fuel the
content engine with their own thoughts and ideas. They have two core products Amplify and Distribute. Both products are cloud-based
platforms that allow you to invite employees into what the platform calls Gaggles. Each employee of these Gaggles are notified via email
whenever there is a new piece of content to be shared. The employee can then choose to share the content with the click of a button or
click “No Thanks”.
GAGGLEAMP HELPS SCALE
EMPLOYEE ADVOCACY
In the context of this book and while you think about content, Napkin Labs' tools push beyond just the first phase of measuring consumer-
to-brand interaction. Insights into top fans become the stepping-stone to mobilizing advocates to create and share powerful content that
influencers others. You can choose from over fifteen activities to crowd source content from your top advocates. For example, they have a
brainstorm tool to gather ideas around a topic you pose or a storytelling tool to capture relevant stories from customers. The tool then
gives you the ability to reward a fan or easily repurpose content to be posted on your Facebook timeline.
NAPKIN LABS HELPS SCALE
CUSTOMER ADVOCACY
Pure Channel Apps and their SocialOnDemand platform enables channel partners to share and distribute relevant content up and down
the supply chain. Using this platform is a win-win for everyone involved because it gets your message in front of the right audience and
also helps feed your channel partner’s content engine.
PURE CHANNEL APPS HELPS "
SCALE CHANNEL ADVOCACY

Chap. 5
Building Your Social Business Command Center
A Social Business Command Center is a dedicated area (either virtual or in a physical space) where a brand’s social media or customer service
team can monitor real-time conversations about the brand and its products; and engage in conversations with inﬂuencers, customers, prospects
and the media. Whether it’s a Pentagon-like set-up, a few LCDs in a conference room or virtual dashboards manned by community managers and
support agents in various ofﬁces, the Social Business Command Center can bring real-time intelligence and help you make informed business
and marketing decisions.
THE EMERGENCE OF THE SOCIAL
BUSINESS COMMAND CENTER
IMAGE CREDITS: TRACX SOCIAL COMMAND CENTER
Command Centers can be used to respond to brand related conversations or for proactive, real-time content opportunities.

Chap. 5
While most Command Centers today are reactive, one platform is positioned to lead the way for real-
time marketing deployment. Social Flow is a content publishing and ad platform that uses real time
analytics and a predictive algorithm to publish content at the right time when customers are paying
attention. Their real-time command center dashboard surfaces trending topics from your brands set of
followers as well the entire social web, ranking or scoring content against an audience based on real-
time interest and relevance.
THE POWER OF REAL-TIME
Social Flow delivers real-
time monitoring for
trending topics.

THE “CONTENT MARKETING” BUZZWORD

Chap. 6
Understanding The Challenges Of Content Marketing
Content marketing is the real deal. The term itself has been gaining currency over the last several years slowly becoming the new buzzword
for marketers and gurus everywhere and eye candy for brands. But what is it? Well, there are several deﬁnitions ﬂoating around the web so I
will take the one directly from Wikipedia:

Content marketing is “any marketing format that involves the creation and sharing of media and publishing content in order to
acquire customers. This information can be presented in a variety of media, including news, video, white papers, ebooks,
infographics, case studies, how-to guides, Q&A’s, photos, etc.

Using Google Trends, I searched for “content marketing” and the results speak for itself. The below image shows graphically how popular
“content marketing” has become over the years based on total number of Google searches. The hockey stick growth of content marketing
really took off a few years ago in 2011 and continues to rise year over year.
“CONTENT MARKETING” SEARCH SPIKED

WHAT DO THE EXPERTS SAY?

Chap. 6
To dig down a little deeper into some of these content challenges, I thought it would be good to spend some time with several leaders in the
space, do my own qualitative research and get their opinions. I asked them about the challenges with content in organizations today; and
while some mirrored many of the same issues as those above, others were completely new.
The challenges of content marketing range from organizational silos to lack of customer empathy.
Jascha stressed that poor organizational
design is a huge factor that’s causing
brands to miss the mark on creating and
distributing content to the right customer at
the right time. Most community and content
strategies, he said, are splintered amongst
multiple members of a marketing team and
have a lack of ownership other than tactical
execution.
Joe suggests that brands struggle to create
relevant content because they can’t
empathize. They have a hard time seeing
the world through the lens of the buyer.
Instead, they insist on trying to persuade
the buyer to see the world through their own
perspective. Relevant content is the
byproduct of empathy. Everything else is
just selling.
Sandra believes that in order to create
cohesive communities and content, brands
need to look at content as a strategic
infrastructure instead of a tactical
execution. Identifying a brand persona that
represents the authentic culture of the
company – and its people, products and
practices – is important. Then, she said, a
content approach can be crafted that will
create value for your audience,
Sean believes that brands suffer from a lack
of a cohesive strategy, a complete
investment in the right resources and a plan
to achieve the goals of the organization
through content. Workflow and processes
are a huge part of the problem, he said, but
without the strategy, commitment and
resources all the workflows and processes
in the world will not create a winning
content program.
Jascha Kaykas-Wolff, Chief Marketing Officer of Mindjet
Joe Chernov, Vice President of Marketing at Kinvey
Sandra Zoratti, Vice President of Marketing at Ricoh
Sean McGinnis, Founder of 312 Digital Agency

WHAT DOES THE DATA SAY?

Chap. 6
With the exception of budget issues, the top 3 challenges plaguing content marketers today has to do with the inability to produce enough
content, engaging content and a variety of content. What I also found surprising was that 31% of respondents are not integrating with other
communications channels. This to me is a major concern. Lack of integration equals disjointed content and failed community management.
How can you tell a consistent brand story across a variety of channels if you aren’t communicating internally with other teams? While these
are more tactical challenges, they certainly stem from the same root cause mentioned above.
52%
51%
49%
42%
41%
35%
31%
21%
13%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
Lack
of
budget
Producing
enough

content

Producing

engaging
content

Producing
a

variety
of
content

Inabilty
to

measure

Lack
of
knowledge
Lack
of

integra:on

Lack
of
vision
Finding
trained

marketers

The B2B Content Marketing:"
2013 Benchmarks, Budgets, and
Trends–North America

THE INPUTS OF YOUR
CONTENT NARRATIVE
Chap. 7
Defining Your Story and Content Narrative
Your content narrative is not synonymous with your brand
positioning, brand personality or brand attributes. These
are certainly inputs into the content narrative but they are
not the same thing and are certainly not meant to be
replaced. However, in most cases, your brand narrative
will not impact consumer behavior when shared in its
purest form, as today’s consumers ignore marketing
messages with no relevancy. Instead, your content
narrative should translate the core tenets of your brand
narrative into a story that demonstrates how your
business relates to its consumers.
The output will help you mold a content narrative that can
scale and give birth to content that changes customer
behavior – whether it’s selling more products,
repositioning a company or helping customers change
the way they perceive your brand.
It will also give your brand license to talk about issues
that may not necessarily be about your brand specifically
but aligned to it’s core values, vision or value proposition
– i.e. Red Bull’s “giver of wings” illustrates how Red Bull
gives consumers the ability to fly and do other amazing
things! They have the license to talk about that and do it
extremely well.
Content organizations tell good stories, all the
time and in every channel.

BRAND PILLARS
What are the core
tenets of the
brand?
THE CORE ISSUES
What are the non-
business issues
that are important
to your brand?
THE MEDIA
How does the
media talk about
your brand when
they write stories?
THE COMMUNITY
How does the
community talk
about your brand
when they are just
talking?
FAN INTERESTS
What are your fans
talking about when
not about your
brand?
CONTENT
How is your content
performing today?
What’s working?
What’s not?
SEARCH
How do consumers
search for your
brand? Value
proposition?
SUPPORT
What are the
biggest customer
support issues
today? Tomorrow?
Content Narrative

MAPPING YOUR CONTENT
NARRATIVE TO SPECIFIC
SOCIAL CHANNELS

Chap. 8
Building Your Content Channel Strategy
As much as the content narrative is important, it’s equally
important to decide how you want to execute it and in
which channels. A stellar content strategy will help you
determine the different content themes and prioritize the
types, ideal frequency, and most effective distribution
channels for your content.
For example, the template to the right shows five
possible content themes — all with different distribution
frequency percentages — as well as the core channels
this content strategy should be executed through. The
percentages are just examples, but for the most part,
you should plan on talking more about your customers
than yourself. Also, it’s important to note that every brand
is different, so the content themes you choose should be
unique to your brand, its goals, and the industries it
operates within.
Here is one way a content strategy can play out with the
themes. Assume you are an electric car manufacturer
and your content narrative is all about “making electric
cars cool to own,” fighting the negative stereotype that
they aren’t “cool” … (continued in the book.)
Telling a slightly different story in each channel is
imperative to drive relevancy and trust.
+

Campaigns
Events 
Promotions"
Customer
Stories"
Customer
Support"
3rd Party
Curated"
Industry or
Lifestyle"
Real Time
Content"
15%! 40%! 20%! 15%! 10%!
Frequency of distribution"
Content
Pillars"

HOW CONVERGED MEDIA WORKS

Chap. 9
The Role of Converged Media in Your Content Strategy
According to the Altimeter Group, converged media utilizes two or
more channels of paid, earned, and owned media. It is
characterized by a consistent storyline, look, and feel. All channels
work in concert, enabling brands to reach customers exactly where,
how, and when they want, regardless of channel, medium, or device,
online or offline. With the customer journey between devices,
channels, and media becoming increasingly complex, and new
forms of technology only making it more so, this strategy of paid/
owned/earned confluence makes marketers impervious to the
disruption caused by emerging technologies.
What you do on your owned media channels alone cannot scale or
allow you to grow your online following effectively. Of course, it’s
good to optimize your corporate website for search, and provide
compelling content to your existing communities. That’s a given. But
without integrating your owned media initiatives with paid, for
example, you cannot reach the mass market with your content.

And the same thing can be said with paid media. Traditionally, and before social media was even invented, paid media was pretty much the
only channel for brands to communicate with customers outside of public relations. With the rise of social networking and increase in general
content proliferation, it’s difficult to reach your customer with just paid media. Plus, they normally reject, filter out or flat out ignore traditional
advertising alone.

The truth is, if you fail to integrate and align paid, earned, and owned media, you will now be at a disadvantage. You should be less
concerned about what your competitors are doing and the space and more concerned with the billions of Tweets, Status Updates, text
messages; as well as the 3,000 or so marketing messages that interrupt consumers’ lives every day. According to the Altimeter Group,
Marketers who fail to learn to reconcile paid, owned, and earned media today will be at a distinct disadvantage in the future when, in less
than 10 years, most media will encompass elements of paid, earned, and owned. To arrive at this state, you must change the way you think
about marketing and take this transition from brand to media company seriously.
The integration between paid, earned and owned media
is essential to reach busy consumers where there is a
content surplus and attention deficit.
Paid Media
Owned Media
Traditional Ads Corporate Content
Sponsored
Customer
Promoted
Brand
Content
Converged
Media
Brands that
ask for shared
Earned Media
Organic
Press Coverage

WHAT IS CONTENT GOVERANCE?

Chap. 10
How Content Governance Will Facilitate Media Company Transformation
Content governance is a strategic imperative when deploying an enterprise wide content strategy for the purposes of establishing
accountability, auditing content engagements, managing risk and setting permissions. Every person, whether employee or customer, will have
a specific role and/or responsibility when it comes to creating content, approving content, distributing content as well as the internal
collaboration needed to integrate content that touches paid, earned and owned media.

By implementing a content governance framework, layered across the entire organization, teams are enabled to collaborate through an
approval process with distinct workflow and established audit trails, thus ensuring the right content is being utilized within the right channel.
Audit trails through all processes and actions are an overall best practice for all large and small brands; and must be considers a requirement
in all industries. Audit trails should always be referenced for the purposes of displaying content and user action history with corresponding
approvals. Possessing a governance hierarchy will immediately reduce risk during a crisis, and can be used to "lock down" publishing access
across all social accounts if a certain situation arises.
Contributor
Writes Content"
Team
Brainstorms"
Content Ideas"
Sends to Editor"
for Review"
Content Approved"
Content Not
Approved"
Scheduled  
for Publish "
Posted to  
Social Channel"
Content"
Performance "
Analytics"
0" 1" 2" 3" 4" 5" 6"
In Review/ 
In Revision"
In Review/ 
In Revision"
Content governance can be defined as a detailed framework of content delivery and management; ensuring that there
are documented controls in place to ensure that there is consistent brand storytelling across paid, earned and owned
media.

ALIGNING EDITORIAL ROLES "
& RESPONSIBLITIES

Chap. 11
Structuring Your Teams to Become a Content Driven Organization
It requires a change in attitude, behavior, cultural norms and thinking
coupled with processes and governance models; as well as
technology that can facilitate the transformation. In this chapter, we
discuss organizational structure and roles and responsibilities. There
isn’t a right way or wrong way to structure your content teams. Every
company is different. Culture, leadership and business objectives vary
and are often times dynamic. This usually results in you having to shift
roles and responsibilities, general team structure in order to adapt to
the current business climate.

The holistic view of this book is that you have to change the way
think, communicate and operate in order to transform your brand
into a media company. And while this is easy to say or write in a
book, it’s much more difﬁcult to make it happen. A shift like this
requires radical thinking. It requires a change in behavior and
organizational dynamics. Why? Because most organizations, still
today, operation in very narrow silos when it comes to job function.
So, as you create your Center of Excellence, build your content
strategy and assign editorial roles and responsibility, you will have
to prepare for an uphill battle.
Unfortunately, you cannot turn on the “media company”
button and change operations and behavior overnight.
FACEBOOK
EDITOR
TWITTER
EDITOR
TUMBLR
EDITOR
BLOG
EDITOR
BLOG
EDITOR
CONTENT CONTRIBUTORS
If you work for a large organization, chances are that you have several Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and blogs. Perhaps you have
consolidated many of these channels to a size that’s much more manageable. It’s important to note that this model only takes into
consideration the creation of owned media content. There will still have to be collaboration with paid media teams and others in the
organization to ensure consistent brand storytelling. Additionally, these models are meant to document structure for branded accounts, not
employee owned and managed accounts. In this model, you will see that there are several hundred content contributors. This could be
employees, customers or a combination of both. At the top, there is a speciﬁc editor for Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and a few blogs. This is
probably the most basic model for a company with one Facebook page, one Twitter account … … (continued in the book.)

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 1:

•  We Live In A Multi-Screen Economy
•  CADD (Content Attention Deficit Order) is Among Us
•  Relevance Is the Key To Content Consumption
•  The Customer Journey Is Dynamic And They Are Unpredictable
•  Customers Are Influential
•  Business Objectives Stay The Same Despite The Changes Externally
•  Vendor Spotlight - Social Flow

Chapter 2: "
Defining Social Business Strategy & Planning

•  The Social Media “Bright & Shiny” Object
•  Social Media Has Caused Internal Business Challenges
•  The Three Pillars of Social Business - People, Process Platforms
•  The Social Business Value Creation Model
•  The Differences Between A Social Brand And A Social Business
•  Vendor Spotlight - Sprinklr
Section 1: Understanding The External & Internal Landscape

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 3: "
Establishing A Social Business Center Of Excellence

•  A Lesson From Tesla Motors
•  The Establishment Of A Social Business Center of Excellence (CoE)
•  The Responsibilities of a Center Of Excellence
•  Considerations For Building A Social Business Center of Excellence
•  The Organizational DNA And Team Dynamics
•  How The Center of Excellence Integrates Within Your Organization
•  Vendor Spotlight - Jive

Chapter 4:  
Using Employees, Customers And Partners To Feed
The Content Engine

•  How To Scale And Plan An Enterprise Advocacy Program
•  GaggleAMP Helps Scale Employee Advocacy
•  Napkin Labs Helps Scale Customer Advocacy
•  Pure Channel Apps And The Channel Partner Content Opportunity
•  Vendor Spotlight - Expion
Chapter 5: "

•  The Strategic Importance Of A Social Business Command Center
•  Social Business Command Centers In Action
•  The New Form of Command Center Operations: Real-time Marketing
•  How To Build A Social Business Command Center
•  The Social Business Command Center Framework
•  Vendor(s) Spotlight: Hootsuite, Tracx, Mutual Mind, PeopleBrowsr, Tickr,
Social Flow

Chapter 6:"

•  Examples of Brands Taking Content Marketing To The Next Level
•  Content Marketing Challenges: What Do The Experts Say?
•  Content Marketing Challenges From The Data
•  Moving Past The Content Marketing Buzzword
•  Vendor Spotlight - Kapost
Section 2: Setting The Stage For Social Business Transformation

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 7: "
Defining Your Story & Content Narrative

•  The Inputs Needed To Build Your Content Narrative
•  The Outputs Should Equal Your “Hero” Content Narrative
•  Simplifying Your Content Narrative
•  Vendor Spotlight - Compendium

Chapter 8: "
Building Your Content Channel Strategy

•  Finding And Preventing Gaps With Your Social Media Channel Strategy
•  Mapping Your Content Narrative To Social Channels
•  Building Your Content Tiers By Channel
•  Using One Channel For One Purpose
•  Diversifying Your Content Types Per Channel
•  Best Practices For Writing Blog Content - It All Starts With The Title
•  The Importance of Visual Storytelling
•  Vendor Spotlight – Contently
Chapter 9:
The Role of Converged Media in Your Content Strategy
•  Defining Converged Media
•  Why Converged Media Is Important To Your Content Strategy
•  Converged Media Modeling
•  The Promise of Real-time Marketing
•  Real-time Marketing Is More Than Just Being Real-time
•  Edelman’s Creative Newsroom
•  Creative Newsroom 5-Step Activation
•  Creative Newsroom Models
•  Vendor Spotlight - Newscred
Chapter 10: "
How Content Governance Will Facilitate Media
Company Transformation

•  Defining Content Governance
•  Building An Internal Collaboration Model
•  Proactive Content Workflows (Planned & Unplanned Content)
•  Reactive Escalation Workflows & Risk Assessment
•  Managing New ‘Brand’ Account Creation
•  Managing The Security of Social Media Passwords
•  Vendor Spotlight - Spredfast

Chapter 11:
Structuring Your Teams to Become a Content Driven
Organization

•  The Quick Lesson In Change Management
•  Tearing Down The Organizational Silos
•  Identifying Roles & Responsibilities
•  Structuring Your Content Organization By Channel
•  Structuring Your Content Organization By Brand/Product
•  Structuring Your Content Organization By Region
•  Structuring For Converged Media & Real-time Marketing
•  Vendor Spotlight - Skyword
Section 3: Developing Your Content Strategy

VENDORS
Vendor Platforms Discussed In This Book

BRANDS
Brands Discussed In This Book

THE AUTHOR
Michael Brito is a Senior Vice President of Social
Business Strategy at Edelman Digital. He provides
strategic counsel to several of Edelman’s top
accounts and is responsible for delivering content
and social strategy, community management
operations and helping his clients scale their social
programs globally. Previously, Michael worked for
major brands in Silicon Valley to include Hewlett
Packard, Yahoo! and Intel Corporation working in
various marketing, social media and community
management roles.

He is a frequent speaker at industry conferences as
well as a guest lecturer at various universities
including UC Berkeley, the University of San
Francisco, Stanford University, Syracuse University,
Golden Gate University and Saint Mary’s College of
California. He is also an Adjunct Professor at San
Jose State University and UC Berkeley teaching
social business and strategic social media.

Michael has a Bachelor of Arts in Business from
Saint Mary’s College of California and a Master of
Science, Integrated Marketing Communications from
Golden Gate University. He proudly served eight
years in the United States Marine Corps. Michael’s
previous book, Smart Business, Social Business: A
Playbook for Social Media in Your Organizations,
was released in July 2011 and is available in
bookstores and Amazon.
Michael Brito"
SVP, Social Strategy
Edelman Digital
@Britopian
Now available for pre-order!

EARLY REVIEWS
Jascha Kaykas-Wolff, "
CMO, Mindjet
@kaykas
There’s a difference between being a thought-leader and a do-
leader. Thought leaders can tell you what you should be doing,
but often have no practical, real-world experience translating
thought into action. Do-leaders, on the other hand, are seasoned
professionals who base their advice on what they’ve
accomplished and failed at -- a huge value add for any
organization. Michael Brito, Senior Vice President of Social
Business Strategy at Edelman Digital, is the epitome of a do-
leader.
In his book, Your Brand: The Next Media Company, he concisely
breaks down one of the biggest challenges brands face today:
developing, and more importantly living, their content strategy. By
deftly tying team roles and responsibilities to the management of
converged media programs, he takes a three-dimensional view of
content strategy that’s usually missed out on by leaders who push
for ideals over ideas. And unlike some tell-all handbooks with little
to offer besides tired to-do lists and recycled suggestions, he
does it through intelligently-structured narrative that’s peppered
with applicable, pragmatic advice. Your Brand belongs on the
bookshelf of every CMO.

EARLY REVIEWS
A must read if you are serious about
using social business strategy to
transform your brand into a media
company!
Mei Lee "
Vice President, "
Digital Marketing"
Conde Nast
Michael Brito brilliantly dissects how to
achieve social media success through
techniques of the Mad Men era manipulated
in to the age of Twitter and Facebook.
Discover your audience and the power of
virtual brand ambassadors, while learning
how to successfully manage your online
presence and maximize your exposure with
quality content.
Kinsey Schoﬁeld
TV Personality, Journalist"
@KinseySchoﬁeld

Brito has written a practical and thoroughly
engaging book for brands looking to
effectively launch a sustainable social
business strategy. Whether early in the
process or evolving your current approach,
Brito's holistic view provides actionable
insights to help you navigate both the
internal and external challenges we all face.
I recommend this book to anyone who wants
their brand to remain relevant in a world
where meaningful and authentic connections
with social customers are now tables stakes!
Amy Kavanaugh "
Vice President "
Public Affairs"
Taco Bell / YUM Brands
In the social world, content rules. Michael's
book makes the case that in order for brands to
thrive in this brave new world, brands must
become content creators
Pete Cashmore
CEO, Mashable
@Mashable

Social media is causing a fundamental shift in
the structure of business - both internally and
externally. At this tumultuous time, Your Brand:
The Next Media Company provides a clear
road map to guide your organization through
the decisions you need to make NOW to
ensure you stay relevant and evolve into a
media company.
EARLY REVIEWS
This is a great read for anyone who wants to
understand and learn how to overcome the
challenges of content marketing. And isn’t
that all of us today?
Elisa Steele, "
CMO Skype Division"
Microsoft
@elisasteele
An incredibly accurate assessment of the
social customer and the challenges we face
today in garnering their attention. Brito
captures the very essence of what it takes for
brands to cultivate awareness and loyalty in
today's saturated content marketplace. Packed
with ﬁrst-hand knowledge from tenured
marketing and agency executives, this text is a
must-read for anyone invested in tackling the
content marketing space and making a true
impact on the industry and, most importantly,
the consumer.
Shafqat Islam
CEO NewsCred
@shafqatislam
Joshua March"
CEO, ConverSocial"
@joshuamarch
Every company is a media company, no
matter your business model. I’ve been
preaching this for over 7 years, and Michael
Brito offers one of the most lucid and useful
resources on the topic yet. Buy this book,
you won’t regret it.
Brian Clark"
CEO Copyblogger Media
@Copyblogger

Content Marketing is no longer just a concept,
it’s a way of business. Whether you are small
business, nonproﬁt or a large corporation you
need to read this book to learn the why and the
how to setup your organization to become a
media company. Michael Brito’s experience
and his collection of experts are second to
none and provide expansive and details
approaches that are applicable to everyone.
EARLY REVIEWS
The future of digital media is alive and
well and it's you. In Your Brand: The
Next Media Company, Michael Brito
provides a clear roadmap for
transforming your business into a more
relevant, social and meaningful media
company. He has followed up a fantastic
book on social business with a roadmap
for transforming your company into an
agile, ubiquitous and relevant content
machine; and he covers all bases from
social business to content marketing to
structuring your organization for
success.
Lee Odden, "
Author of Optimize"
CEO TopRank
@LeeOdden
Adam Hirsch
Senior Vice President
Edelman Digital"
Prior COO of Mashable
@AdamHirsch
In Your Brand: The Next Media Company,
Michael Brito puts the content marketing
conversation into a necessary, needed
context. He explains how some fundamental
shifts in the way consumers make
purchasing decisions changes everything
for brands, and why the smartest brands
should listen up!
Ann Handley
Chief Content Ofﬁcer,
MarketingProfs
@MarketingProfs
Yes, we are all media companies now...but
so many brands don't know how to make
this important transition. Take this book, read
it and put it under your pillow. This book will
transform your marketing from "also ran" to
dominating your informational niche. Now is
the time!
Joe Pulizzi"
Founder, Content Marketing Institute "
Author, Epic Content Marketing
@juntajoe

Your Brand: The Next Media Company

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