How to build a media product for your community
Welcome to Season 2 of School of Splice.
This season, we're talking about the issues that founders in the program have faced. We hear from Jason Hendriks, who's trying to grow the Meld Community into a thriving non-profit media around international students in Melbourne. Jason and his coach Jane Mahoney discuss how to take a community-first approach to product development.
Also starring Janie Octia, ex-Crowd Tangle, Meta.
Notes
Meld Community
Connect with Jason Hendriks
Connect with Jane Mahoney
School of Splice
Or listen wherever you get your podcasts
The transcript
ALAN: Welcome to the School of Splice. I’m Alan,
RISHAD: And I’m Rishad.
ALAN: And in this episode we’re going to help you build a viable business by exploring one of the challenges that many media entrepreneurs face - stuff like understanding your community, that is the people who read, listen or watch your content.
RISHAD: Your community can make or break your business. Literally. So understanding who your audience is, and what they are motivated by, is key to unlocking growth - no matter whether you’re a for-profit company, or, like today’s entrepreneur, a non-profit.
Jason 3:29: I started in 2018 because I want, because I was studying media and communication and I. Uh, found my passion for storytelling or, um, journalism and photography there. And then, um, I wanted to find work experience. So I joined Meld Magazine and I've been, um, been with Meld since 2018. And now I'm currently the current editor,
RISHAD: This is Jason Hendricks - an editor and writer at Meld Magazine, a non-profit
media outlet run by volunteer students that produces news for international students in Melbourne.
RISHAD: While many media companies experienced a surge in the early days of the pandemic - for student publications like Meld - the pandemic slowed things down. With international students unable to enter Australia - and the publication being run by volunteers - it made difficult for the team to keep the pace they had prior to covid.
Jason 10:15: And I, um, and you know, we are, cause we're all students. I mean, we can't be highly effective of like creating consistent content and everything. And I think, um, we just want to, and I think like an over the past few years, we've kind of slowed down a little bit.
So I just re, re we really wanted to pick that pace back up and try to. Um, uh, just try to like, bring that magazine back on it's like footing.
ALAN: While Meld Magazine is a non-profit organisation, there’s still a lot of similarities when compared to any other media startup. Most startups don’t begin with large budgets - they start small and try to build. There is still a need to find the resources needed to keep the lights on, and to connect with new students.
Jason 11:02: You know, our resources are limited, limited, and an N the number of people who are available to create content are limited. So I really want to try to narrow down on what we, what kind of audience that I want to connect with and how, what kind of content that we can, that we can use to connect to our audience that way.
And I think, um, towards that, the end goal definitely is to try to see. Because we are all volunteers and I want to try to in the future to step away from that and to create an income so I can properly, um, uh, compensate for the writers, which are all international students.
RISHAD: Unlike for-profit organisations which rely on income made through advertising or subscriptions - Meld Magazine is non-profit. All the contributors are volunteers, and the work is funded through grants, donations, and collaborations.
Jason 13:16: in terms of income, um, the most recent one that we are currently doing now is we are actually. Um, collaborating with Study Melbourne. Um, so study Melbourne commissioned us to do a couple of a couple of pieces in the future where we talk about international students. So that's, uh, so that those are, those are sometimes our source of like, um, Hmm, but this is one of the first one that actually that directly pays for, um, the writers and videographers, the photographer. Usually if we collaborate with organisations, we get funding to do the project and like the, for the costs of creating the project, but not really compensated for the writers because we all understand that we were volunteers.
ALAN: Coming into the School of Splice - Jason had identified a problem that many media entrepreneurs are currently struggling with - Figuring out how to build a successful content strategy in this post-pandemic world. And it’s at this point we want to bring in Jane Mahoney - who was previously the head of reader revenue at Private Media - an independent media business based in Melbourne which runs publications like Crikey - and SmartCompany.
RISHAD: Jane worked with Jason on some strategies that Meld could use to understand its audience, and use that knowledge to create content more aligned to the needs of the Meld community. And the key to these conversations centred around a theory called ‘Jobs To Be Done’.
Jane 18:00 - it's kind of a. Product management theory. Um, and the idea is that when someone buys a product or subscribes to some service or something like that, they're hiring you to do a job. So, um, the example that I would give when it comes to like, Um, news publications is, you know, So we have a morning email that goes out with the sort of headlines, you know, there's a lot of news that send out their sort of morning briefing email. Um,
And we might decide that, okay, we've had this going for a year, a year or so now let's give it a bit of a facelift. Let's find out how we can improve it. So you'd go to the audience and maybe you'd give them a couple of versions or you'd get them to rate how they feel about different sections and that sort of thing. And then you take that information. Put it out in the world. So that's how people normally approach product improvements or new products, um, and jobs to be done.
The idea is we sort of ask ourselves, like, what job are we being hired for? Like, what problem are we solving? And we sat out audience research with that. So it's quite open-ended you want to understand very broadly what, you know, if we're talking about international students, like, what are the issues they face, whether the problem areas, what is their day-to-day life
RISHAD: Jobs To be Done is a framework for understanding customer actions and it dates back to the 60s… however it was largely forgotten about until the early 2000s. The framework can help you visualise the actions taken by a customer. So that might be signing up to your website, reading an article, or making a subscription payment. We’ll put a link to more details on how the framework works in the episode description (https://hbr.org/2016/09/know-your-customers-jobs-to-be-done). However Jane has a great way of explaining it.
Jane 19:40 - Going back to that newsletter example, you might do this research and find out that actually the job that your morning newsletter is doing for most of your readers is entertaining them on their commute. So then you go like, well, okay, we're not just competing with every other morning news email when our competing with like the podcasts they could be listening to or scrolling through Facebook or looking out the window or reading an actual book.
So you start designing based on that, like, okay. We're here to sort of give someone something they want during their commute. And it might be the case that you then go like, well, actually a newsletter is not the best way of doing that. It's a podcast or it's an Instagram Reel, or it's a TikTok video. So you become quite agnostic about what product you end up with as long as it's meeting that need.
So that's essentially what we're trying to do in this survey is like, okay, who do we we'll start with? Who we think the audience is and what we think their needs are. But we sort of, that's what we want to find out. And that kind of, then, you know, you go through that information, you start finding trends of like, I mean, you've been an international student, so obviously you've got a really great insight, but things have changed, you know, COVID com.
So there might be, it might be that the needs of like the current kind of cohort of international students has changed quite a lot. So then you can start building your content strategy around. What people actually need is like a guide on how to navigate housing when you coming back into the country off to COVID or something like that.
Jason: but I definitely, but I definitely kind of, I kind of understand what you mean. It's not about, it's not about like the form of it. It's more about like, um, how, like the, um, so like the form of it, it's more like, you know, what are you trying to help them like with.
Jane: Yeah, A hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah. So it's, I mean, I think we often do this as sort of journalists and people in any business. We think here's this great product. Like this is what people want instead of sort of understanding their needs. Okay. You know, sometimes people will be like, well, people don't know what they want. And there is a bit of that, but you can sort of meet in the middle, you know?
ALAN: As journalists, it’s easy to focus on the story. After all, that’s the bread and butter of what we do. However being an entrepreneur means thinking about the business as a whole. Your product might be a newsletter, it could be news articles posted on a website, perhaps a podcast, or even videos on YouTube. Unless you understand who your audience is, and how your product fits into their life, you can’t develop a successful strategy.
RISHAD: One of the best ways to understand your audience, is to ask them directly. Run a survey. Find out as much about your audience and their habits as possible. Ask them questions like: What do you do for work? How many people are in your family? Where do you live? How much do you earn? And when do you read, listen, or watch our content? A successful survey needs to be fairly quick for people to complete - but you can glean a large amount of detail from your community in just a few minutes.
ALAN: Don’t be afraid to ask personal questions, because that’s how you will understand your audience and what their motivations are. Jane had some great tips for Jason on how to go about creating and collecting an audience survey.
Jane 22:20: So like the kind of questions that I put in to find out from people, what their needs are. Um, have you, have you ever built a survey before?
Jason: Um, it wasn't me. It was made from someone, um, previously like in the organization and she made a Google form. I think, let us like a quick survey of like what the reader's content was, but I think, um, it didn't really reach as many people as we hope that it was.
Jane: Um, well, Google phloem foam, um, SurveyMonkey, they all like pretty sure type phone does a free product. Anyway, Google forms. Pretty good. So it's pretty self-explanatory um, yeah, but we can, if you set that up, I can help you with it, obviously. Um, and then Yeah, the next step will be working out who you are sending the survey to, whether you're putting it out on social media, whether you have an email list that you can send to, um, we can put together a bit of a like comms strategy around that. Um, cause obviously. You know, I mean, when you just put these things out into the world, once they tend not to go anyway, you need to
Jason: you'd need to give you a prompt.
Jane: yes. Yes. You do over and over and over. Um, cool. And then Yeah. once that's out in the world, we can dig through the responses, have a think. And then, um, what kind of plan of what's what's kind of next, or whether that's content plan, whether we. might sort of put that survey together and think like, Oh, we should start a new social media channel talking about this particular issue. Or maybe you'll set up an email list or something like that, but we can use the survey responses to really guide, like, what are the next steps? Um, yeah, it might be really interesting that you've come into this sort of thinking like, okay, I want to know our content strategy, but it may be more like, The content strategy is fine.
We're just not on this particular platform where our audiences or something like that. So we can kind of use it to, um, yeah. Get a sense of not only who the audience is and what they need, but like where they want those needs to be met. Um, does that sound good?
ALAN: Using the survey data, you should try and identify some power users. These are the people who always read or engage with your content. Look for what’s different about these fans. How are their consumption habits different from others? You might even want to follow up with a phone call to get a more in-depth perspective.
RISHAD: Back in our foundation lessons we spoke about the concept of having 1000 true fans. It's the idea that you don’t need large audiences to be successful, you just need a thousand passionate fans. If you can figure out what motivates your true fans, you can double down on what’s motivating them. If you want to learn more about identifying your true fans, then go back and listen to episode 3 of our School of Splice foundation series.
RISHAD: For Meld Magazine - the audience is largely made up of international students living in Melbourne. But amongst that community there are subsets. There are students who are thinking about moving to Australia to study, there are active students, and there are those who have now finished studying but are still job hunting. Understanding the motivation of the audience can enable you to develop a holistic content strategy that is led by the needs of your community rather than simply guessing what will work.
ALAN: Over the past year, Jason noticed the Meld community was growing, despite the challenges they had early on with covid. This is surprising given it was a difficult time for the publication due to the lack of international students in Australia. As part of their mentoring - Jane and Jason tried to figure out what was driving this growth, and how Meld could tap into this demand to deliver new forms of content.
Jason 32:16: Over the past, like two for the past year, I've seen a growing community. Um, surprisingly,
Jane: Why, why do you think that is.
Jason: um, I think. There are two reasons. First of all, um, migration, um, one of cause, um, you know, cause recently, I mean over the past two years, uh, one of the main goals of students who come here is to retain permanent residency and one of the immigration requirements, um, recently for international students to get a working visa and extended working visa is for them to. Or to study in regional areas.
Jane: Um, for that kind of, we can maybe stop moving into like what problems do each of the segments want me to solve? Um, you've kind of identified one. There is like permanent visas, um, is potentially like that's, that's something that people are interested in. Um, yeah. Do you have any other, like what, what would you say you're kind of solving for people?
Jason: Definitely. I think what we see from a lot of the international community is about work opportunities. So finding jobs, um, uh, networking with people, um, in the industry,
Jane: um, sorry. Networking was the other one you said?
um, I think there's another one as well, as definitely about, um, social life, like finding friends
Um, mental health. Um, I, I guess like in general, when we went a lot of, um, I, the way that I usually approach, um, the articles, especially the news, there are five categories that international student life that's really important to them. I think, um, that, uh, for first of all, is, uh, migration, um, work, um, tenancy. financial, sexual health and mental health.
Jane: Okay, perfect. There's a lot of, Um,
Jane: opportunities and like, oh, do you have, like, you know, like there's a lot of sort of revenue opportunities around like job listings, networking, like in social life, like obviously, you know, events and stuff, obviously. International students on any student students don't have a lot of money, like disposable income.
ALAN: Using your survey data, and knowledge gleaned from your internal analytics, you can learn quite a lot about your community. Your goal, as a media entrepreneur is to use all of this information to create a better product for your audience. You need to understand the problems they have, so you can create a solution.
RISHAD: Going back to the idea of the ‘jobs to be done’ framework. Your audience wants to hire you to fill a void in their life - and it’s your job to provide them with the information they need. And don’t just look at what’s working well. You also need to analyse the stuff that isn’t working. This can be the key to figuring out what your audience needs. As Janie Octia from Meta’s Facebook’s News Partnerships team says:
Janie Octia 0:58: “It's common for newsrooms to track and reward stories that do well. But it's rare to find newsrooms who pay a lot of attention to underperforming stories. Understanding why some stories are not getting a lot of attention will raise questions, like how can we make this important story relatable? Or should we rethink timing when there's a lot of breaking news? Why are audiences not paying attention to this topic when they have in the past?”
ALAN: A media organisation that doesn’t pay attention to trends both within its business, and in the broader market, will likely fail. If you can understand your audience, and use that knowledge to build a strong community, and to give them more of what they need, you’ll be well on your way to building a sustainable business.
Janie Octia 02:00: What's the most useful advice for someone starting up in media today. First, always pay attention to other content creators outside of media or news and how they engage with their audience. Gaming for example. There's a lot we can learn from them that could work for news as well, but we just, haven't tried. Second, ask younger people around you, where they get and how they consume information. I at the age where it's hard to form new habits and even more difficult to break old ones. So speaking with people younger than me is my way of keeping up with trends.
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.
If you want to learn more about your audience and your community raising money - we’ve put some useful resources in the episode show notes.
You can find all our other episodes, and meet the rest of this amazing media startup community at our website schoolofsplice.com
We’ll speak to you again soon.