Media companies need to think more vertically than horizontally. As the world continues to splinter into specialization, the ability to serve a large audience with a single source of content has become low hanging fruit, and therefore is left fighting over low hanging revenues. Serve up general content and you will have to serve up general advertising alongside that content. Yes, you can (or could) identify specific people in your audience but not only is that going away, that was always the domain of larger publishers anyway. And it never really panned out, did it?
Think niche. Become an expert in a field. Become someone who could work in that field. Or be someone who does/did work in that field and learn to write. Go a mile deep on your niche audience and then think about what aspects of that audiences very specific needs you can provide: content; events; technology tools and resources; classes/education; memberships; and so on. What do they want and need to better do their job that you know and can provide them?
Yes, media companies have struggled with technology in the past but that’s mostly because they’ve picked the wrong races to run in. when you go niche you have the opportunity to own a space. Go out there and own it.
