3 Media Lessons from Ian Kar, Founder of FinTech Today
On this week's podcast, I spoke with Ian Kar. Ian is the founder of FinTech Today. FinTech Today is a subscription research firm focused on fintech. In this episode, we discuss Ian's media experience, why he started FinTech Today and building and scaling a community.
Why You Should Listen to this Episode?
Ian has a very fascinating background. He attended college at Franklin and Marshall before taking a leave of absence and working at a hedge fund. He ended up realizing that finance and college weren’t for him and went into writing. He ended up at a small trade publication before working his way up to Quartz. He spent a few years working in product roles before starting FinTech Today. Ian's experience working in both product and media was instrumental in helping him launch FinTech Today. If you are looking to write content and build a community for a niche audience, I highly recommend you listening.
Ari's Three Actionable Takeaways for Communication Professionals:
1) Shareable Content > SEO Content
This seems like such obvious advice. Create content that people want to read and share vs. SEO optimized content. However, this wasn't the case early on in Ian's career. When Ian started his career, his publishers would require up to 5 articles a day. Everyone was following the Buzzfeed Model — the more content, the higher the chance it would be shared on social. In theory, this sounds great, but as we know now, that model hasn't succeeded and Buzzfeed has languished in mediocrity.
Today, Ian focuses on writing a couple of times of week but focusing on creating the best quality. In addition, to create high-quality content, he also ensures the quality is differentiated. FinTech Today doesn't focus on breaking news, because once it's out there anyone can copy it. The big mistake he sees a lot of niche publications doing is "copying and pasting" breaking news content. This doesn't work because a more brand-name publication will beat you. Focus on high quality, differentiated content that is evergreen. This formula helps you find a dedicated base that you can figure out how to scale as you grow.
2) Think of Content as a Product
Ian spent part of his career as a reporter and part of his career as a product manager. This helped him realize that content was only half the product. The other half was engagement. Content only mattered if people were reading it.
What does this mean?
You need to think about your audience. Who are they? What type of content do they want to consume? Will this content impact them?
If you are writing great content, but the content isn't for your audience? Then does it really help them? If the content doesn't have an impact on them, is it quality content?
For example, Ian's publication talks about Fintech, but readers aren't paying them for breaking news. They can get that from TechCrunch or another technology publication. Ian's readers want analysis and why this news matters. That's something the reader can only get from FinTech Today.
So even if your content is serving the right audience, is it the content they really want? I write about communication and branding. I'm sure my readers might also be interested in paid marketing, but that isn't my expertise. It's not what they read me for. They can get it in other publications. And the content will be better.
Be a product manager when you write. Don't just think about the quality of your content, but how your readers (aka users) will engage with the content (aka product).
3) Paid Content from Day 1
Some of my readers look at content as an acquisition tool and not as a product or feature so I'll try to make this advice applies to them as well. Ian made a mistake in that content was free from Day 1. Later on, he added a paywall. This is problematic for two reasons:
They could've generated meaningful income DAY 1
They had to change the habit of their readers
The first point is pretty self-explanatory, but the second point is what I want to hone in on. For years, you had to pay to read a newspaper. It was just expected. No one disputed it. Then the newspaper went online. Newspapers didn't look at online media as a product but as a feature.
This trained the reader to expect free content and then the paywall went up and no one wanted to pay.
Think about the user's expectations. When you create content, do they expect it all to be free? If you expect it to become paid, make sure the reader knows. It's easier to ask for money straight away than ask to pay for it later on.