Foreword

The diet for media consumption by your customers is ferocious.

Are you properly feeding them before your competitor does?

Newsfeeds, inboxes, streams, and apps mean that people take in lots of information in a rapid pace. Unfortunately, most corporations have yet to catch up with this trend, as they slowly move forward with static websites, lengthy white papers, and tiring press releases.

Consumption preferences aren’t the only thing that’s changed, as people themselves are media engines, creating content to connect to their trusted peers and confidants. Together, the market is talking to itself, but many companies are unable to keep up.

Companies must change. They must become like media brands, and become publishers, content creators, and newsrooms themselves. To do this isn’t easy, you need a purpose, a plan, a process, and the right people.

This is why this book, Your Brand, The Next Media Company matters.

Because you must develop the right content, improve your marketing, engage your customer relationships in a deeper way, in their terms. Michael’s book answers why and how by illustrating the changes in the space, provides pragmatic advice by advising on change management, process/workflow creation, and technology.

What makes Michael credible? I’ve worked with Michael when he was my client at Intel. Together, we partnered on a study to measure the social behaviors of its customers, when I was an industry analyst at Forrester research.

Not only was Michael a practice leader from one of the top media brands in the world, he was an educator, as I’ve seen him speak at Stanford, address audiences at events, and be a community leader in the Silicon Valley space.

Today, Michael brings together market thought leadership, but tightly winds it with pragmatic insights from working with his own clients at Edelman, and shares his viewpoints on his own website, the Social Business Blog, Britopian. I consider Michael a friend, a respected peer, and an industry leader.

So get out there, read this book, earmark important pages, highlight key sections, and activate Your Brand to become a media company.

Let’s feed our customers with the media they desire.

Jeremiah Owyang
Industry Analyst