Episode
16
March 18, 2021

Community Driven Media

Adam Barrell

SoPerth

So Media Group is raising capital to expand their community driven media. So, we thought it would be a great time to bring Co-Founder Adam Barrell.

What started with a tweet, quickly become a voice for social media users of Perth. So Perth shares stories, questions and local conversations. It is Australia’s fastest growing new media publishers with over 270,000 followers, average 5,300,000 impressions on Facebook per month and 1,400,000 website views per month.

Company

Trending news in Perth

https://soperth.com.au/

Problem

Accessing timely local media

Customers

25–39-year-olds in Perth

Two big pieces of advice

Focus on audience and community.

Be prepared to undergo trial and error and figure things out for yourself.

Bullets

(0:00) – Introduction

(1:20) – The business Adam would start today if he was starting again

(3:08) – How a broken-down train allowed Adam to experience the power of social media: Tweet Perth’s origins

(7:27) – Adam’s dual-experience working at a media agency and building a side-project

(10:30) – The evolution of Tweet Perth to So Perth, and the benefit of owning your own media platform

(13:59) – So Perth’s core demographic: Providing the local news fix

(15:39) – The value proposition for brands wanting to reach customers through So Perth

(16:53) – Using chatbots (Autopilot) to grow an email list

(19:05) So Media’s perfect customer

(20:33) – Crowdfunding with Birchal and near-term roadmap

(26:39) – The pillars to building a strong community: Be close to your customers and make sure your content is highly relevant

Show & Tell

https://buzzsumo.com/ - Find the content that works best for your website

https://superhuman.com/ - Email client for efficiency