A Book Review: Your Brand: The Next Media Company

Like an old oak tree, Grubarazzi has grown very slowly and with intention over the years. I sway back and forth in the wind. Sometimes, I want to use this blog as a personal space to share recipes and nurture my hobbies, but the communication practitioner side of me wants to use the blogging platform to grow my brand. Grubarazzi could very well be that kind of blog. It already encapsulates me, my unique brand, and provides content that people share across social media. But I have so many questions. Can I utilize what I am learning in grad school to turn Grubarazzi in to the next food media company, like Food52 or theKitchn? Can my content be more rich and provide my readers with relevant conversation? And, do I want to? These are the questions organizations ask themselves every day, and it’s becoming increasingly important in this oversaturated marketplace.

Your Brand: The Next Media Company, by Michael Brito, reviews how social business strategy can enable better content, smarter marketing and more effective relationships. As a grad student studying digital communication, Your Brand: The Next Media Company is required reading for my Social and Digital Media course. The book explores the idea that “content is king”, and if we want to make a name for ourselves in this inundated market, brands need to transform into successful media companies. Brito provides a practical approach for changing a brand in to a media company by laying out strategic insights, operational frameworks, and taking a heavily applied step-by-step approach.

Check out this cool video about the book:



Although Brito’s book is geared towards larger established organizations, his ideas are relevant across many platforms. For example, Brito clarifies that by focusing on the right content, brands need to build relevant content to make audiences pay attention. A brand can accomplish this by making unique content that is easily consumable on multiple platforms. Brito believes content rules, and being proactive with social media efforts as well as following trends can provide a never ending audience flow. Brito drives these points home by reminding the reader that “consumer’s lives are dynamic and unpredictable, making it impossible for any brand to reach them consistently.” To this point, Brito argues that the new social media landscape makes all consumers more influential. In his opinion, anyone looking to grab an audience’s attention needs to have a clear content marketing strategy.

If I were to take my brand, Grubarazzi, and turn it in to a media company, I would strategically adopt the five characteristics of any successful media company: storytelling, content, relevance, ubiquity, and agility. These five characteristics are explained in further detail Lee Odden in his article “Your Brand: The Next Media Company”. Micheal Brito does a brilliant job at guiding large organizations to grow social media strategy and expand overall presence in our digital world, but he misses an important opportunity to direct smaller organizations to build a media company with less resources. Brito is so focused on deploying social media strategies in a large way with content organization and real-time command centers operated by multiple employees, that he loses his engagement with smaller organizations that want to transition to a highly relevant content narrative.

I did take away a few key learnings from the book that I will utilize for my brand:

1. The importance of visual storytelling.
2. Creating content that people want to share can increase engagement.
3. Everything must change to stay relevant and competitive. 

I’d like to hear from you! Have you read Michel Brito’s book? Do you think “content is king” and every company should be the next media company?