Building A Business Information Brand in 2013, the Skift story

Building a business information brand in 2013
travel intelligence. global smartness.
skift.com T: @skift F: /skiftnews

With a $6.5 trillion contribution to GDP & 260 million jobs,
travel -- made up of tourism, hospitality, transport & leisure --
is the world's largest industry.
While digital has disrupted distribution & information systems,
no information and intelligence brand has emerged that
matches the industry's size with its digital potential.
Skift is that brand.

Skift is now among the largest travel news and
information sites in the travel industry, 9
months after launch.
The brand is well on its way to becoming the
lingo in the travel industry.

On the way to becoming the most pervasive
travel information brand
We're creating a next-generation data & info-heavy
crossover media company that's built to break out of the
vertical media ghetto and scale to its true potential.

This is our story so far, of scaling so quickly
with a very small team of 5 people.
And our vision for growing up.

Business media and information: least sexy
sectors in the larger tech economy, and among
the least innovative in digital.

But in the era where business media & enterprise
software have merged, where Salesforce & LinkedIn are
becoming gold standards in business information:
B2B media & information sector needs wholesale
redefining.

Source: CEO.com & Domo Survey 2013, Decade of media consumption
pattern changes among CEOs.
What a difference a decade makes

paidContent.org,
exactly a decade
ago.
April 25, 2003.
›› The template for
all blog media
companies to come
after.

Skift, today.
April 25, 2013
›› Visual
›› Social
›› Brand-led

What a difference a decade makes: paidContent
vs Skift
›› blogs vs platform agnostic
›› content-centric vs data-led
›› post-thinking vs product thinking
›› freshness vs immediacy
›› linking vs sharing
›› using content vs using design to punch above your
weight

What hasn't changed
›› B2B doesn't have to be boring
›› The nativeness
›› Connecting the dots across silos collapsing
›› Being smart, sharp, surgical & strategic with all
content, the 4S's of content
›› User centric: Vendor vs the User

Your expansive worldview defines
how big your vision is.

Size matters
›› Travel, world's largest industry
Definition matters
›› Travel begins when you leave home
Ambition matters
›› We're defining the future of travel

Hybrid business-consumer, crossover
information and data brand is the way to:
›› scale on users+revenues
›› break out of vertical ghettos
›› scale to the full potential of the brand

Are you aware of macro-trends you're riding?
›› travel silos collapsing, like other industries
›› blurring of business & leisure travel
›› locus of travel is moving eastward
›› tech & design is eating the world

Figure out the whitespace, or create it
B2B: Backwards. Boxed-In. Boring.
Consumer: Cluttered. Confusing. Casual.

You don't need to own the content, you need to
own the voice
›› three legged stool of content: curation + licensed+original
›› expertise, not just exclusivity
›› licensed content from lot of sources globally that don't typically slot
them in travel, but under our filter they are; helps build the brand
›› Skift Take: Our tweet-length take on every story has become our
signature voice & brand

Role of original content: Build franchises that
can be productized down the line
›› SkiftSeedlings
›› SkiftAds
›› SkiftDesign
›› SkiftStats

Don't underestimate building the consumer
hooks
›› accessible writing
›› attractive design
›› wide syndication
›› ubiquity matters

Building users in concentric circles
›› Lowest hanging fruit you'll quickly get
›› Early adopters in tech and enthusiast community
›› Be cognizant of which user-pockets will spend money

Think prosumer, not consumer
›› One concentric circle outside the business users
›› From professionals in travel to professional travelers
›› From news to news-you-can-use
›› Curating and integrating best-of- breed tools & services for
business travelers.

Think pervasive, not exclusive
›› Syndicate as widely as you can, be wherever your users could
be, even outside of business environments.
›› Example: Our deals with CNN, NBC News, Flipboard, Quartz,
AdAge, BusinessInsider and others to come

Creating a social business brand
›› B2B doesn't have to be boring
›› The daily blocking and tackling happens here
›› Worry about your Klout score
›› Analytics-driven social
›› Twitter vs Facebook vs LinkedIn
›› Become a media influencer through social

Mobile means ubiquity
›› Are you near industry-norms in userbase?
›› Ubiquitous sharing in mobile
›› Mobile web vs apps and why focus

Data-based, data-led, data-focused
›› Focus on competitive intelligence
›› Build and manage a suite of meta-services
›› Layers on top of existing publicly-available and open-
web data
›› Delivered any way the users want it: online, apps, alerts

SkiftSocial dashboard: to
discover the latest patterns
and trends, and gain
insight into how
companies work and
compete in the new social-
driven world.

Building data tools
If you had
Visualization of Google Analytics + Real Time charting of
Chartbeat + Activity feed addictiveness of Facebook
What would you build?

Can media and data coexist?
›› Data informs media strategy; Media is an insight layer
on top of data.
›› Competitive intelligence as streams
›› News & media is just another stream

Thanks, keep on Skifting.
Rafat Ali
@rafat

Building A Business Information Brand in 2013, the Skift story

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Building A Business Information Brand in 2013, the Skift story