How to ask your community what they want from you
This season, we're talking about the issues that founders in the School of Splice mentorship program have faced. Let's hear from Nabilah Said, who, until recently, was editor of ArtsEquator in Singapore. She wanted to find out what her community wanted from their media organisation so they could serve them better.
Nabilah's coach Jane Mahoney had some great advice around thinking about what products to build next. Most importantly, does it meet an audience need? (Hint: what your audience needs from you is very rarely content.)
Hosted by Rishad Patel and Alan Soon. Produced by the fine folks at Lawson Media.
Notes
Connect with Nabilah Said on LinkedIn
Connect with Jane Mahoney on LinkedIn
School of Splice
Or listen wherever you get your podcasts
The transcript
RISHAD: Welcome to the School of Splice. I’m Rishad,
ALAN: And I’m Alan.
RISHAD: And in this series we’re going to help you build a viable business by exploring the problems faced by other media entrepreneurs.
ALAN: There are so many areas of journalism, it’s business, news, politics, technology, or maybe sport. Some media companies cover everything - if it’s happening - it’s news. But for others, focusing on a vertical is the key to unlocking success.
RISHAD: Today’s entrepreneur works in one of those more niche publications - one which focuses on the arts.
[MUSIC CHANGE]
Nabilah (Jane IV - 00:29): I work as the editor of Arts equator. And that's, I mean, we're an Arts media organisation, we cover the arts in Southeast Asia. But we are kind of headquartered in Singapore. And I always find that important to say, because, you know, we say that we cover the arts in Southeast Asia, but often it's quite Singapore centric.
ALAN: This is Nabilah Said - formerly from Arts Equator - a publication covering the arts across Southeast Asia. She’s currently at Kontinentalist.
Nabilah (Jane IV - 00:29): So the thing is, I usually call myself a playwright and an editor. Oh, wow. Yeah, so So I work in the Singapore theatre scene, as a playwright. And I make theatre. And I often do a lot of like different kinds of art projects.
Nabilah (Jane IV - 29): So, I mean, my job, my job role is like editor, but really, I mean, we're a very small team of three people. And so I support like, any kind of projects that require like content creation. So that could be kind of creating, like video content for sometimes we have clients who want us to create content that doesn't fit on our website and sits more on like, you know, their kind of platforms. We also do like mentorship for writers in Southeast Asia. So I'm currently mentoring like six writers from around the region. And yeah, that means I do other things like training. Also kind of host podcasts with different people as well. Yeah, so so a lot of things.
RISHAD: Arts Equator produces a bunch of great content, like articles, reviews, and podcasts, all on the art scene in SouthEast Asia. It has a clear mission and direction, but Nabilah was hoping to find out more about what the audience wanted from the publication. Going into the School of Splice - Nabilah had a couple of assumptions about what the audience wanted.
Nabilah (Rishad - 05:19): So certain initial assumptions or curiosities that I had going into school of splice has been, there were three. One is that I felt that users want less content. When is that they want to feel engaged as a community, just based on how other media organisations are run, like, including splice, for example. And the third one is that the content should be targeted or maximised for different things besides the website.
RISHAD: In our previous episode we talked about how you can identify who your audience is, and use that information to work out what role your publication plays in their lives. Once you know that - you can figure out a product that fits into your audience’s lifestyle. However to do this successfully it’s important to reframe how you think about these problems.
ALAN: Yes, does the audience really want less content, or do they need a specific problem solved? Maybe the problem is that your publication is providing content that strays from what your users actually want.
Nabilah (Rishad - 06:50): So instead of users one less content, it became like, what problems do users need solving. Instead of users want to feel engaged as a community, it's what constitutes meaningful engagement for the users. And then the last one, you know, content being not just for the website, it became more of how to use this one to engage with our products. So I just put the user at the start of things and then went from there.
RISHAD: Nabilah worked with our friend and coach Jane Mahoney - who was previously head of reader revenue at Private Media - to refine the questions that Arts Equator would ask its audience in an audience survey. And one of the interesting questions that came up was around products vs content. If you’re running a media company - what is your product?
Nabilah (Jane IV - 20:36): and I'm still trying to wrap my head around the idea of products as opposed to content, because. Yeah, because, because I think, especially, you know, even when I was at the newsroom industry at times, it was always about the story, right. The content. And, um, and then when I, and then when I went, uh, to add, to create the, it felt like we are on a digital space. So there was like more room to tell the story, but it was still very much like content, um, like content first. And, and so like, I'm really trying to train myself to be like, okay, well, think of it as products in. Cause, cause I did feel that it's very useful, but it requires my mind to kind of reconfigure it. Yeah.
Jane: Yeah, I think that's such a good place to be in though that you're like open to that. Um, cause that's, I really feel like that's key in the sort of digital space, um, because like, you know, journos are so intelligent, you'd never have any short shortage of like great content, but you have, a lot of competition around how that content is packaged up and put out there.
I mean, in the digital space where competing with Spotify and Netflix, so, you know, like everyone that's there is, it's like an open field, so yeah. It's easy to get lost.
ALAN: For many media businesses - our product is often not just our content. Our product could be your newsletter, or website, your video series on YouTube, or a subscription podcast. These are all content products, but what’s different is how you package that content for the audience. If you need some more tips on how to create a product strategy - head back to episode 2 of our foundation series.
RISHAD: I also really wanted to highlight this point that Jane just made. Media companies are no longer just competing against each other. We’re competing for attention from consumers who are probably spending their free time watching youtube or Netflix. Your product has to fit into that ecosystem. It’s a constant battle for the attention of your customers.
ALAN: That on-demand lifestyle is why traditional newspapers have been struggling. If your audience loves watching creators on tikitok, then focusing on a media product that involves a print publication is probably not the right move. Media brands need to be adaptable to make sure we’re reaching audiences wherever they are.
RISHAD: One of the other areas that Nabilah was curious about was whether the audience might be willing to pay for a subscription. This can be a difficult thing to figure out from a survey - but it’s important to remember that while some publications have moved to a full subscription model - you don’t have to go to that extreme. There are plenty of publications that offer bonus content and still keep the core of the product free for most users. Jane had some great tips for how Arts Equator could approach this question.
Nabilah (Jane IV 30:15): I think the kind of like media landscape in Singapore is such that like, it would be really hard. I mean, I thought this is my initial impression, it'd be really hard to ask, like all our readers to pay something to read, like some of the content, but I do feel there is a scope for like, more, you know, like more premium kind of, like, membership or, or even or even, like, instead of, like, more premium thinking about it as like, Would you like, if you could afford it, would you pay the support independent, you know, like that kind of like
Jane: 100%. And it doesn't need to be all your readers, it could just be like this very small core group that, you know, provide an additional revenue stream for you that it's maybe it's like, 30% of your revenue or something like that, but it just grows it out. And it's a small core group. And like, it's just how you package it up, like the messaging and marketing around, it might be like, you are paying for this so that other people have the benefit. You know, there's some people that that messaging really resonates. Or maybe you might offer sort of, you know, like membership perks, like, once a month, these special members get to have a call with you or something, you know, or they get like free tickets to things if you sort of have connection, you know, there's, there's things like that, that you can do. Where you don't, you don't necessarily need to think of it as all or nothing like everyone pays or no one pays, it could just be a core group that can't afford to pay and you can much the same way you did with your crowdfunding, or that you might do if you are trying to get a grant or something like you can just, it's just how you market it and how you sort of package up that. Yeah, that like revenue thing. It's okay. Yeah.
RISHAD: So how do you figure out what your audience wants from your product? Running audience surveys can be incredibly valuable. But understanding what your users want broadly comes down to asking the right questions. Jane has some great tips on how you can figure out what your users actually want from your publication.
Jane Mahoney (Jane on PM - 02:52): When we're trying to figure out what our readers want and what kind of products we should be producing with that in mind, the most important thing for us to, to answer that question is basically just having a test and learn mindset. So that might mean asking the audience directly, what are their needs?
How can we meet those needs? Or it might be a case of digging into the data, but approaching that data with a genuine curiosity and not trying to sort of You know, affirm beliefs that we already have coming to that data with a genuine hypothesis that we're willing to have proved wrong. So when it comes to figuring out what people want, test and learn, ask, or look at the data, but just be genuinely curious about that data.
When we're thinking about what products to build next really it comes down to two questions. One, does it meet an audience need? You know, so does anyone want this product? Is there an appetite for it? How do we know that there's an appetite for it? Have we done a prototype in the past or something similar that really resonated?
Is there something in the data that we're looking at? And then the other question we need to answer is. Does it align with our mission statement and our needs?
RISHAD: Often in the media we fall into the trap of trying to solve our problems by producing more content - usually in the same form that we’ve always done. We see a problem, and we start writing articles to fill that void. We make executive decisions as editors, and often we’ll inform those decisions with analytics. However just because we get some traction on a story through our analytics dashboard, doesn’t mean that we’re actually solving the problems our audience has. Maybe we’re missing out on the real opportunity because we’re only paying attention to our analytics dashboard. The only way to figure out the problems we need to solve for the audience, is to ask them directly. One more Tip? Don’t ask your audience what they want from media — ask them what problems they have in their lives.
ALAN: Through School of Splice, Nabilah and Arts Equator were able to go to their audience - to the true fans - and find out what they actually needed. They ran an audience survey and the results were surprising.
Nabilah (Rishad - 07:39): you know, we solve them in a very, I feel content driven way, as opposed to like really wanting to solve the problems, you know, it's more like, first fitting our content, rather than really thinking about the problem. So that was the initial phase. And then I went to speak to five readers, I think it was like five of your most insightful readers or something like that. So I spoke to five of them, they were kind of across the different capacities in the arts, you know, whether you're an artist or just an audience, or a researcher, and three of them are from Singapore, one was from Cambodia, or one Thailand, so trying to kind of covered a region so called. And certain problems that I kind of recognised just from like those five people, is that like, number one, there's not enough coverage of non SG, like, non Singapore stuff. So you know, being a kind of Southeast Asian Focus website, that's already kind of mismatch thing. And then our users don't know what to expect from us, because we do so many things that it could be, you know, it could be like a podcast this week. And then next week is an article and then tomorrow is a sponsored feature and stuff. So they don't know what to expect. And hence, even someone who is kind of like a loyal follower is like, I'm not gonna go to see your stuff, because I don't know what is there. And I feel like what is there may not even be for me, you know? So I feel like even our loyal readers are kind of confused. And people who are new or more transient readers are not loyal. So there's a kind of, I don't know, I feel like in a sense, like you're not hitting either one. And then for our desert, there was a general need for just better quality content or comment theories, which we do, but we don't do enough of so. So those are already things that I got from the chats
RISHAD: Arts Equator discovered from its audience survey that its users were very intersectional. Artists were often consumers of art, and people that read arts content either consume art or work in the field to produce or display it. So there’s a lot of crossover in this community. Nabilah was also able to gain much deeper insights into some of the problems this audience was facing - especially in a post-pandemic world - and this sparked a lot of ideas.
Nabilah (Rishad - 15:09): So certain problems that users said they would, you know, need help solving, that I actually identified six. So one is kind of, I think, general issues facing the arts, so issues of not enough funding, you know, the arts is not valued by, you know, most practical people. And then kind of inequalities within the arts. So, you know, like, kind of younger independent practitioners, so those are kind of issues just generally facing the arts. And then in terms of like, maybe content and our inadequate specifically, it's, there's a lack of informative, critical, insightful content about Southeast Asia, that is not Singapore. So you know, so that's already, maybe the space that we should immediately occupy, rather than trying to do all the other things as well. There is also a lack of jobs, opportunities and networking. So people really want like, you know, so as equator, we do something called Low bang, where we talk about jobs and opportunities, and that's really, really popular. But we only do that like once a month. And actually, if that's like really value, then maybe we should think about what are other things we can do? Because people, some people are willing to kind of pay even to be part of like, you know, I don't know, exclusive networking events, perhaps.
ALAN: The other interesting insight for Arts Equator was that some of the audience would be willing to pay for particular products, without much change to the core offering.
Nabilah (Rishad - 19:45):But then I also have like, some overall takeaways from the survey. And this is kind of like me, yeah, me reflecting on those results a bit more. So there are three. One is like we have a community of invested like audiences who are hungry for meaningful engagement in hive. quality content. And some of them are willing to pay for this content already. And some of them feel that we already have that content. But we are also doing other stuff that's kind of crowding the picture. So I feel that we should go to them, we should engage them, we should maybe already explore kind of like membership or getting people to pay some people to pay for content. And then also, I feel that we should explore more, like in person events, or maybe even, you know, working with companies to get ticket discounts or certain other exclusive things.
RISHAD: As a small team - Arts Equator needs to work smarter to find ways to grow and scale the business. And throughout School of Splice Nabilah and the team have been able to learn a lot about what the audience wants, and come up with solutions.
ALAN: Ultimately ideas are easy, but choosing which idea to pursue, that’s where it gets hard. Here’s Jane Mahoney again.
Jane Mahoney (Jane on PM 04:14): So that's the question that we ask, is it meeting an audience need? Is it going to drive growth? If it's a yes in both of those areas, then that's the kind of product that we'll build. If one of those areas doesn't quite stack up, then I might interrogate that idea a little bit more before we go ahead with it. In terms of coming up with what ideas around what to build, I think in a newsroom, in my experience, at least there's never a shortage of ideas. It's just about getting disciplined around which ideas to execute on.
RISHAD: Thanks for listening to the School of Splice. This episode was hosted by me - Rishad Patel, and Alan Soon. Production by the team at Lawson Media.
You can find all our other episodes, and meet the rest of this amazing media startup community at our website schoolofsplicedotcom
We’ll speak to you again soon.