As a supplement Chapter Three of “The Story So Far: What we know about the business of journalism,” released this week, assistant editor Lauren Kirchner spoke with Andrea Miller, founder and CEO of love and relationships magazine Tango, launched in 2005, about how local and niche sites can build loyal audiences. Miller’s time at the helm—which went online-only in 2007 and has been renamed YourTango—has taught Miller much about growing and holding on to an audience. This is an edited transcript of that conversation.
Why did you want to start YourTango?
Innocently enough, as a consumer, I happened to read a chapter of a book with my then-boyfriend, now husband, a book called Soul Mates, about love and relationships. It was so thoughtful and inspiring, I felt that if this was something that was resonating with us then it would resonate with others as well. I took stock in terms of where something like that might fit in an incredibly crowded women’s media landscape. I had the proverbial epiphany that there really wasn’t an appropriate outlet for that. And, of course, it was realizing we’re not talking about “fifty-nine ways to please your man” or “how to get the guy.” Not to knock that stuff, because it succeeds—and there’s a big market for it. But I also felt like there was a gap in the market that we could really exploit.
The vision has been to be the ESPN of love and relationships, to build the brand using content as a way to do it, to be the brand for love and relationships. In terms of voice, the goal has been to create something like Sex and the City meets Oprah. So we hit the range of notes from the real, relatable, inspirational notes, as well as the fun and sassier notes.
So when you were looking to build the website for YourTango, did you take cues from at other places like ESPN.com to figure out the format?
Definitely. And we’ve continued to. We’ve looked at all the successful sites to figure out what they’re doing that we can emulate. As an entrepreneur, that’s a given. If other people have figured out what’s working and they’re successful, you just feel like you can borrow from that pretty unapologetically.
Are there things that you’ve learned about advertising in general and what a website’s relationship with an advertiser should be since you’ve started? Is there anything that has surprised you about that?
I feel like the big one for us has been realizing that we can do branded content in a way that is beneficial to the advertiser, as well as being high-quality content that is every bit as good as non-branded content. It’s not just repurposing some company’s marketing material but, instead, really being thoughtful about it, whether it’s a movie or a product. We ask, how that movie or product can be part of the conversation and have content that’s relevant or related to it that people will actually want to read. I think our team has done a good job of figuring out how to do that.
I guess what’s a little surprising is that, in the last year or two, there even more of a demand from advertisers. That’s what they want—it’s not just us—that’s where the entire market is going. Banners are there as well, but the integrated content is really an important aspect of the media landscape that, thankfully, we do really well.
Are there any downsides to that? Do you ever get any negative feedback from readers about branded content?
We haven’t. I can say categorically that nothing has surfaced to my level and I think the reason is at least a couple-fold. One is that our content isn’t dominated by branded content. We’re posting hundreds of posts of month—if a handful of those are branded then no one feels like, “Oh my gosh, you guys have sold out.”
Yes, sites like YourTango are becoming more common on the internet, and as a reader, I do not feel obliged to "get used to it". Of course they will not get complaints, because most people won’t waste their time and will move on to other sources. A few curmudgeons like myself will post a comment like this: complaining, but on a different site entirely.
High-quality branded content? I just finished reading some articles on YourTango, and "high-quality" was not what I'd use to describe them. Miller's statement about "...a gap in the market that we could really exploit" says it all -- YourTango is just another advertising site that puts quasi-journalism to work as marketing's whore.
It's obvious from the material I read on YourTango and the statements by Miller in this article that the readership are regarded as little more than stupid sheep to keep corralled for fleecing. Seriously, earning points to win badges? And the sad part is, Miller is right. There are people who get sucked into winning some sort of electronic status, as if it were something with a valuable and tangible existence offline. However, the down side is that quantity is routinely rewarded over quality in those schemes, and quality goes down as users post garbage to raise their numbers and status. Actually, the badge scheme could explain the lousy articles I just read at YourTango, roughly six months now since this article was written. I’ve seen ratings systems put in place on some sites along with similar status schemes, but high ratings invariably go to articles, posts and comments the user agrees with, not those that are informative, well-written, and take care to minimize bias.
If we’re lucky, advertising sites like YourTango will continue to the downward slide into low quality and evolve themselves out of existence. I’m afraid the more likely scenario is that users will live down to advertisers’ low expectations of their audience, and instead of a once venerable institution in its own right, journalism will become just another technique in marketing’s bag of tricks.
#1 Posted by TR, CJR on Fri 25 Nov 2011 at 09:19 PM