LMA’s 2019 National Innovation Mission toured San Francisco and Silicon Valley June 9-13. Here are highlights from the IM tour of Salesforce, Yelp, KQED, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google and YouTube. See attendees’ social media comments using #LMAIM.
Sunday, June 9
Attendees and LMA staff arrived in San Francisco starting Sunday afternoon.
Excited to spend the week with these local media rock stars @ImPossters @JasonJedlinski @frankwords @mfeweb @ALDIACEO @stephanieslagle @jaysmall #LMAIM pic.twitter.com/GQo0FYR9NI
— Nancy Lane (@localmediarocks) June 9, 2019
Excited to share the innovative work being done by @Cronkite_ASU students and faculty, tonight at the #LMAIM with @localmediarocks! https://t.co/OTcpHdBtvz
— Frank Mungeam (@frankwords) June 9, 2019
3:30 p.m.-5:30 p.m.: Introductions, Goals and Kickoff with Frank Mungeam, Professor of Practice, TV News Innovation, ASU Cronkite School of Journalism. Mungeam will share details about the work he is doing at ASU, including the Tablestakes project.
Here are a few takeaway tweets from the kickoff event.
@frankwords says “process innovation not just product innovation.” Do we listen to and delight our internal teams as much as we do our customers? #lmaim pic.twitter.com/sXYFc5Zno1
— Chad Taylor (@chadtaylorutah) June 10, 2019
🙌💖💯 @frankwords talking about how having reporters submit pitches in Slack *before* the morning editorial meeting makes the meetings faster, with more meaningful conversations around ideas and leads to reporters helping each other on their stories. #lmaim pic.twitter.com/JXSnyk9RiF
— Rachel Schwartz (@therachel) June 10, 2019
Love how Univision uses WhatsApp to explicitly help its viewers & earn true loyalty. I’ve long argued that local newsrooms have every right to beat platforms (and their “2.3M results in 0.2 secs”) as the concierge & reincarnated reference librarian. #LMAIM https://t.co/z7m2m6rNtv
— Jason Jedlinski (@JasonJedlinski) June 10, 2019
Mungeam shared resources from his discussion and presentation.
- Swiss Army Knives for News: Content Experiments from Cronkite News
- Tools and Workflow experiments: Change Your Tools to Change Your News
- ‘Show Your Work’ to Create Trust in News (Full Circle)
- Choose Your News – True Audience Engagement
- How to Add a Zodiac Strategy to Your Cruise Ship Innovation
- How to Create STOP Lists
Monday, June 10
8:30 a.m.-1:00 p.m.: Salesforce. This visit will focus on three key areas:
- What do the best sales-driven companies have in common? No one has more data on this subject than Salesforce. They’ll share key insights and learnings from across all industries.
- How media companies are driving revenue using Salesforce and their many tools
- Creating and maintaining a culture of innovation
We’ll also hear from executive sponsor Lineup, who will share how companies are using their Salesforce integration tools.
Nancy Lane, LMA president, shared nine takeaways from Salesforce, and here are some tweeted highlights from the in-depth presentations.
Opportunity for media companies to think about how they do (or don’t) communicate top-level goals through their organizations. Having employees document how they map to the goals tells you how effective that communication is. Beats most performance review modes I know. #lmaim https://t.co/JJ7Jud4TPV
— jaysmall (@jaysmall) June 10, 2019
.@salesforce‘s @micostigan walks #LMAIM through @wef‘s notion of the “Fourth Industrial Revolution,” https://t.co/Vd21EQC5Wn, explaining big opportunities for disruptive innovation. (And yes, the big consultants are already asking “Are you and your company #4IReady?” 🙄) pic.twitter.com/V3raC6FJ6F
— Jason Jedlinski (@JasonJedlinski) June 10, 2019
On a core difference between high-performing, adaptive tech companies vs traditional media companies: “It’s not that media companies don’t have customer data; it’s that 98% of it is ‘hitting the floor'” – not being used strategically to better serve customers. @salesforce #LMAIM
— Frank Mungeam (@frankwords) June 10, 2019
Automating the onboarding process to set employees up for success: @salesforce uses scheduled messages to help onboard new hires, as well as newly promoted managers. Then uses the data to refine messaging. Smart. #LMAIM pic.twitter.com/yYGstisij9
— Frank Mungeam (@frankwords) June 10, 2019
1:45 p.m.-3:00 p.m.: Yelp. We’ll learn more about their SMB insights, especially in key verticals such as restaurants and home improvement, during this fascinating visit.
3:30 p.m.-5:00 p.m.: KQED, Public TV and radio in San Francisco. KQED is a locally owned station with revenue of over $90M and 220K members. They reach nearly half the Bay Area each week.
Here are a few tweets from the visit.
Love that @KQED has their strategic plan posted on their walls. Check it out. #LMAIM pic.twitter.com/sW02tqFg7l
— Nancy Lane (@localmediarocks) June 10, 2019
Agility replaced #innovation in @KQED‘s 2018 plan, versus 2015. @TimOlsonSF says it was to intentionally telegraph that everyone (even Accounting) should be challenging themselves to adapt and evolve. #LMAIM pic.twitter.com/umqej5nJWU
— Jason Jedlinski (@JasonJedlinski) June 10, 2019
Tuesday, June 11
9:30 a.m.-11:30 p.m.: LinkedIn. We will cover:
- What it could mean for local news organizations to engage more fully with LinkedIn
- Learn from LinkedIn expertise in the careers space to help local media recruitment and retention efforts
- Learn about LinkedIn’s own internal innovation and “intrapreneurial” processes
Journalists who use @LinkedIn well: share their latest stories (NYT does a great job); comment on a trend; direct people to company page (WSJ does this); share latest video interviews; be included in ‘what people are talking about’ feature. #LMAIM
— Nancy Lane (@localmediarocks) June 11, 2019
.@bethkutscher explains the mission for @LinkedIn‘s 60 content editors, who report into Product—not Marketing or Sales—
“To give professionals the power to discover and discuss news, perspectives & ideas to make them more productive and successful every day.” #LMAIM
— Jason Jedlinski (@JasonJedlinski) June 11, 2019
LinkedIn views itself as being part of a 360 social strategy for publishers with the differentiators being that the people who engage in their platform care about the content because it’s relevant to them. Aka “we don’t have the Facebook trolls.” #lmaim
— Rachel Schwartz (@therachel) June 11, 2019
1:00 p.m.-3:30 p.m.: Facebook. We will cover:
- News download with Anne Kornblut and Josh Mabry
- Latest updates on news from the Facebook team, time for Q&A
- Updates from the Branded Content project
- Portal – Presentation and live demo from the respective teams
Also observed at Facebook: a banner over a team’s work space, “Integrity Management Platform: we can only manage what’s measured.” With volume indicators for criminal behavior, pornography, hate speech, spam, misrepresentation, etc. no doubt tracked in the Philippines. #LMAIM
— Jason Jedlinski (@JasonJedlinski) June 12, 2019
Wednesday, June 12
9:00 a.m.-noon: Google Mountain View (Partnerplex). This will be a red carpet visit that you won’t want to miss. A diverse mix of key Google stakeholders will participate in small group and roundtable discussions that will focus on product improvements/enhancements, wish list items and more. It’s a priceless opportunity to have access to the people who can impact change. We’ll also learn about some early test results and what is working at other media companies.
Early takeaway for Google from #GNI: ‘Subscriptions’ is neither a cure-all solution, nor a one-size-fits all. Publishers need to explore the full spectrum from subscription to membership to “freemium” models. #LMAIM pic.twitter.com/2Lwbk5TjqG
— Frank Mungeam (@frankwords) June 12, 2019
.@anntaodiaz shows #LMAIM how Google’s News Consumer Insights uses the funnel to visualize different @GoogleAnalytics reader segments and how they engage with publishers’ websites. Goal is to help move users from casual to loyal & ultimately subscribers. https://t.co/W8bq0L87Ef pic.twitter.com/xq4MhlRSKT
— Jason Jedlinski (@JasonJedlinski) June 12, 2019
2:00 p.m.-4:30 p.m.: YouTube session in San Bruno. Focus will be on media company success stories and new products.
Evolution of @YouTube‘s key performance metrics… clicks/views > watch time > satisfaction > responsibility. (To measure satisfaction, @gsamek explains, the team sends “tens of thousands of surveys daily.” But users can often be highly-satisfied with inaccurate info.) #LMAIM
— Jason Jedlinski (@JasonJedlinski) June 12, 2019
~65% of viewers watching authoritative news channels’ content on @youtube are under age 35, meaning very little overlap with publishers’ owned-and-operated websites, says @gsamek. One national brand found only 10,000 users overlapping between its subscribers & YT audience. #LMAIM
— Jason Jedlinski (@JasonJedlinski) June 12, 2019
We just left @YouTube headquarters in San Bruno, CA.
The building is no the same without us, let me tell you.
I m impressed by the storm of ideas the #LMAIM delegation tackled in a 2-hour session with Udo and Jeff. pic.twitter.com/eOxA5TeCyT
— Hernán Guaracao (@ALDIACEO) June 12, 2019
5:00 p.m.-7:00 p.m.: Ending session/debriefing
.@LocalMediaAssoc president @localmediarocks guides the post-#LMAIM takeaway session. Proud to be affiliated with this organization. We’re truly fortunate to have such a smart, strategic, confident, dedicated & passionate leader. pic.twitter.com/aE3ZBli6tg
— Jason Jedlinski (@JasonJedlinski) June 13, 2019
Jay Small, LMA’s chief innovation officer, posted his takeaways as a first-time Innovation Mission attendee.