The WordPress Media Ecosystem

BobWP:
Last thing you want to do is deal with taxes. So check out avalara.com tell you more about them later in the show. But now follow me into the conversation I have with Rae. We are here with the official first Content Spark show because, well, I’ve been just rambling on the last two or three and I think it’s more important that actually have the new host in. And I meant to start it last week, but we’re going to do it this week and we’re kicking it off with Rae Morey. Rae Media. Hello, media expert.

Rae Morey:
Thanks, Bob. Hello. Hello. I’m really excited to be here. Oh my God, I’m on. Do the woo. It’s. It’s an honor. Yeah, yeah.

BobWP:
This was one podcast that I just, I thought it was missing content. It’s been my world forever in some way or other. And so I thought getting the different pieces together and focusing on it and I thought, wow, media, you know, this is an interesting one because it doesn’t really get talked a lot about in the WordPress space. People know it’s there and they use it, but nobody really talks about what it is. You know, how to use it the right way, all that good stuff. So why don’t you first kick it off with a little bit of your background or how you got into this whole thing.

Rae Morey:
This whole thing. My name is Rae Morey. I write and publish a news website called the Repository. A news website, a newsletter. And the Repository focuses on reporting news across the WordPress ecosystem. So whatever’s happening, keep an eye on everything, write stories during the week and also publish a newsletter that goes out on Fridays, depending on your time zone. Yeah, that’s kind of the repository in a nutshell. My background. I’m a former newspaper journalist. That’s kind of where I’m coming at this all from. And I’ve also worked in public relations and marketing and comms. Kind of a mix of everything over the past 20 plus years. Yeah, that’s me all right.

BobWP:
Did you carry around an OPAD when you were a kid?

Rae Morey:
Sort of. I have this memory of going to a party as a kid and wanting to take along a hairbrush as a microphone and walking around. It was one of my parents parties with one of their friends and walking around interviewing people with a hairbrush it must have been six or seven. God can imagine what people would have thought of me. But no, I guess my kind of start in wanting to work in the media was I went to a careers fair in high school and there were stalls there for the defense force for all these different businesses in the community. And the one that grabbed my attention was the local newspaper. And I walked over and got talking to the journalist from the paper who was running the stall there and talk to them about what they do day to day and what it was like being a reporter. And I just walked away thinking, wow, why didn’t I ever think of doing this before? This is really cool. Because I was always a massive book nerd. I loved writing, I loved chatting to people. It just really made sense for me. So that’s where it all started.

BobWP:
Yeah. Well, I remember I had a printing press when I was like, maybe I was, I don’t know, around 13 years old or so.

Rae Morey:
A printing press.

BobWP:
It was this little, it was you know, really kind of a toy. But it was like the old days of, you know, building your little newspaper that way. And so I would create this newspaper by building it up and then you’d press it down. It was like an old printing press and then I’d have my little piece of paper. I don’t even know if I gave it to anybody, but it was just so fun to do.

Rae Morey:
Oh, wow. Wow. That was because I did newsletters as a teenager on my mum’s computer using Microsoft Publisher. And it’s just interesting to hear that evolution of printing.

BobWP:
Yeah, yeah, it’s amazing. So I know that you had suggested breaking the ice with the media. Some people know how to do it, some people don’t know how to do it. So why don’t you lead off a little bit with some of the things around that and we can kind of have a conversation.

Rae Morey:
Absolutely. I guess I thought about this topic because I used to work in marketing, but my background also includes working in comms. And comms is an important part of, you know, building relationships with the media and just general stakeholder holder relations that a lot of people don’t really think about too much. If you don’t run a really big business, you have comms departments in larger businesses, but not so much in small. There’s such a big focus on marketing so, you know, developing relationships with the press, with the media. And I guess in the WordPress space we have such a small, if you can call it like, you know, media ecosystem. I still think it’s important to consider Building relationships with the media that’s in the WordPress space. And yeah, true, like what you say some people are very good at approaching us and putting themselves out there, you know, sending us information, press releases, asking us to promote their, whatever they’re working on, their brand, their product, their service. But for a lot of people, they don’t understand how all that works. So I thought it would be great to demystify that and, you know, walk people through how it all works.

BobWP:
Yeah, I wonder if for some it’s intimidating and you do want to do it in a certain kind of format to actually give the media enough information, but if they don’t have the energy or write on their site, let alone now having to sit down and write something to make sure they’re doing it correct, how do you break that ice?

Rae Morey:
Yeah, I thought it would be great to talk through some of those things that business owners could do to not just engage with WordPress media, but also learn how to reach out to other media in the tech space that could potentially help them with promoting their business.

BobWP:
So I think there’s a few things they’re almost too deep to dive into, but a few things to maybe get people thinking about this whole process. Could you just go through a few of the ideas I know that you shared with me?

Rae Morey:
Yeah, absolutely. So some of the things that I’d really like to go over in this episode is why the media matters, particularly in the WordPress ecosystem. Press releases, as you just touched on, you know, why people should write them, why they shouldn’t write them, and what people shouldn’t, should include how to approach journalists and media outlets, you know, how to make a pitch, you know, what is that all about? How to build trust. But also, I guess the most important thing that underpins all of this is how to build long term relationships with people in the media.

BobWP:
I think there’s kind of a mishmash of news sites in the WordPress space. Why does it even matter? Why should we even have the repository in WordPress? I’m lying on the big question for you.

Rae Morey:
No, absolutely. I think I can’t remember what the saying is. I’m going to totally mash it up, but you know, like shining light on darkness. I can’t remember the full quote, but you know, when you’ve got quality journalism, and not necessarily even just quality journalism, but some journalism, somebody watching what’s going on and being able to interpret it for the wider community, that’s when people can discover more about something that might be going wrong or just, you know, to educate people about how something works. For example, here in Melbourne, where I live, I used to cover community news and I used to go to a lot of local council meetings, local government meetings, and then with cutbacks here in the media, a lot of journalists who were covering local government weren’t able to anymore because they were pulled and they were redirected to work on other things. So that meant that a lot of people working, a lot of councillors in local governments suddenly didn’t have anybody watching and reporting on what they were doing. So then the community doesn’t understand what decision makers are doing on their behalf. You know, politicking at that level goes unreported, so people don’t understand how decisions are coming about and what might be, you know, the relationships between different counselors. Anyway, to apply that into the WordPress space. For more than 10 years, we had Sarah Gooding reporting in the WordPress space and she was excellent, really good at reporting, pretty objectively unpicking what was happening in the community. And then a couple of years ago, she decided to leave. Fair enough. She’s been in there, she’s been reporting for 10 plus years. And then we didn’t have anything. And so I decided to step into that space with the repository. I’d been writing it for four years by that stage last year. And yeah, with my background in journalism and also having written the repository for a long time and being part of the WordPress community, it just felt like a natural step turn to expand the repository and report in this space. And I know there are lots of different, like you said, there are lots of. There’s a bit of a mishmash of different kind of media and reporting and writing in this space. And that’s what I think is really unique and beautiful about it all, that we’re not all competing against each other, we’re all doing different things, looking at WordPress in different ways. And I think it’s all very complimentary entry. We all get along really well, we chat, we all keep in touch, it’s great. But I think there’s space for all of us and I really believe that you can’t have too much communication. It’s really great that we have all of these different types of media in this space.

BobWP:
Well, with podcasting too, you know, there’s so many podcasts and when somebody comes up with another podcast, I’ll hear somebody say, oh, do we need another one? Yeah, you know, it’s. We aren’t competing. Podcasts have their own styles, their own voices. I mean, I’ve created something that I feel is a little bit unique and it’s also what I wanted to do. And everybody has a different approach they will have for whatever they’re talking about. Everybody has their own style and everybody has their own audience. And I think that’s what a lot of these sites that maybe do, you know, just a little bit of the news, they throw it into their blog with some other stuff is because they have their own audience already. So they figure they might as well share some information that’s going out and during the entire time. I’ve done this podcast and other podcasts for so many years. A few times I tried the news or I tried to, okay, I’m going to do a piece that’s more around the news and I would look at others doing that. I thought why can’t I just step back and support them instead of adding other things into my mix and stuff. So I think it is important to have a lot of voices though.

Rae Morey:
Yeah. And I think that’s the beauty of, you know, do the woo and other podcasts like Nathan’s WP Builds and Jukebox. As far as being able to amplify what product developers and businesses are doing in this space, you know, it’s not just about product launches. It’s about talking about different companies and what they bring to the space. I think that’s really important. Being able to talk about the community, the culture of the community, contributions. It’s not always just about us amplifying, oh, this person’s launched, this person’s had a partnership. But also being able to connect how different businesses work together, make the connections in the community. I think that’s really important.

BobWP:
And I don’t think a lot of people understand what goes behind really running, I want to say an effective news site. You’re not just sitting back and making a list on Twitter or X or whatever and said, oh, that sounds good, I’ll just share that. And I’ve done my own sharing of stuff and I do one every Friday, but I don’t dive into it. It’s not necessarily always the news either. It’s things people are building and stuff, but they think it can’t be that hard, just kind of gather up some news, watch the social media, listen to other people talking about stuff. But I know that especially your stories that you get more in depth on on your blog, that actually, you know, I imagine that takes an incredible amount of time and I know how it is to herd the cats and you’re looking for people to actually give you some factual information and that can be a very time consuming part of the job.

Rae Morey:
I was talking to Jeff Chandler about this recently, actually. We were both lamenting how frustrating it is waiting for people to get back to you when you’re trying to write a story, publish something. And there’s something that I Learned in Journalism 101 class when I was at university around, you know, what makes a news story. One of the most important things is I can’t remember all the list. Oh God, that was a long time ago. But timeliness is really important for a story to be effective. It has to be timely. So if I reach out to someone and I ask for a comment, if they don’t get back to me within 24 to 48 hours, I basically have to let it go because that’s too late. I need to publish a story already, otherwise it’s not going to happen because it’s too late. And in this space, I think one of the things that I find it really hard, especially with the repository, is that I’m really trying to publish quality news and not just run with the first thing I see. I like to get comments. I like to explore the issue really in depth and actually find out what’s going on and not just run with a sensationalist headline for clickbait. Some places like to do that. So often I’ll write a story and it might be a couple of days late, but it’s because I’ve gone to usually lots of people trying to get comments. And I always ask people, you know, feel free to get back to me. I let people know, you know, if you want to talk to me off the record or on background. But yeah, it’s all timeliness and it does get pretty frustrating when you see other new sites have already published a story because I know that they’re going to get all the clicks and mine’s probably not going to get as many clicks. But my story is going to be better because I’ve actually gone and done some proper research. So, yeah, getting people to get back to you, that’s often a challenge. Might look easy on the surface, but it’s because what’s happening behind the scenes is I’m spending a lot of my days nurturing relationships, talking to people. Not necessarily just interviewing people for a particular story, but I might just be chatting to people throughout the day. I’m trying to, you know, build long term relationships with people. And I think the best journalists are the ones who not necessarily build friendships with people, but build really respectful relationships with people. When I, when I reach out to people, I don’t want them to feel like I’m using them for a quote. Because I genuinely respect everybody that I talk to. I respect everybody in the space and especially respect their view. And when I approach someone I know it’s because that they bring something really valuable and important to the WordPress community. Yeah, there are certain people in the community that I’ll often go to as I know that they’re, you know, an expert in a particular topic or they know that they feel really strongly about a particular, you know, issue that might be happening. So, yeah, I was thinking, and so I’ve been clearing out a lot of junk in my, my old childhood bedroom and, and I came across my, I came across my, I think as journalists call them, like your little black book. It’s, it’s what I used to have when I was a journalist in my 20s with all the names and phone numbers of all my contacts that I developed while I was a young journalist. So I was going through it, going, wow, I don’t remember half these people. Like there’s so many people that I talk to. But it felt like a lifetime ago when I was reporting in that space. It’s funny because working in the WordPress space, I don’t really need to have a black book so much because we’ve got slack. You just kind of just know Everybody in the WordPress space as well. It’s hard to operate in this space and not know who’s who. Yeah, it’s definitely a very interconnected ecosystem.

BobWP:
Yeah. You know, one of the things I found, and some people, I don’t know if they think about this too is it can be very helpful at least I hope it’s helpful. I get a lot of people approaching me that want a quote or something, answer a question and they’ll ask me about development or something more core and WooCommerce or stuff that we talk about on our shows but I don’t talk about. And I’ll go right back to them and say, hey, you know, I appreciate you reaching out to me but I absolutely have no idea what to say to you because this is not my expertise. But I have, you know, two, three posts or I might know some people in the space that would be perfect for this. Do you want a couple names? And I usually I don’t just drop it out. I’ll tell somebody that somebody approached me and wanted this. Would you want me to share your name? I want to put anybody in a spot. But you know, we also, what’s great about this community, the relationships you talked about, is we are able to know other people that may have a lot better or more knowledgeable perspective on something. And I do this a lot, especially on LinkedIn. I get a lot of could you talk about this or. And I’m like, well, you’re talking to the wrong person. I’m just, I’m the person that again, herds accounts and I’ve got all my hosts and I know who knows what and stuff. So it just seems like a good thing for people to think about because you can still be helpful even if you kind of freeze and think, oh, I don’t have nothing to say. If you do know somebody that might be able to add something to it.

Rae Morey:
You know, everybody Bob in the word resonates. I think that’s a really good point. I found myself connecting people as well because we talk, talk to so many different people for the work that we do. We are natural connectors, I guess. And I think that yeah, it comes back to building long term relationships. We, we’re not just, we can help people with launches and products and talking about, you know, helping with brand awareness, but we have all this really useful context in our heads because we talk to so many people and so if somebody says something, my brain will go, oh, you know, somebody, you know, such and such said a similar thing, you know, I really should link them or you know, I think it’s really important to get to know us when people get to know us and reach out even just I’d really encourage that. I don’t want people to be afraid to approach us and to. I don’t know how you feel, but I don’t mind about People sending me an email or just dropping something into my contact form on the website and introducing themselves and letting you know about a product might not necessarily be something that I’m able to promote because there’s nothing. Often people send me things and it’s not really quite right for my newsletter, but it’s on my radar. And I don’t mind if people follow up and just let me know what they’re working on, because at some point I will go, oh, you know, that person is doing that, you know, and it might come into a story that I’m working on later on where I’m talking about, like, particular product space. It’s really handy to have that information on hand.

BobWP:
Yeah, it is. That’s even been on LinkedIn. I know a lot of people don’t like LinkedIn and I tend to like it better. And I don’t really call it a social platform. You know, it’s a professional networking platform. Can’t compare it against X and the others and stuff. But people complain about all the garbage they get. And sure, a lot of people don’t even pay attention. They obviously must have went to your profile and they’re asking you about something you don’t even do or need. But at the same time, I’ve replied to a lot of those people and sometimes I’ll just say, no, I have this all in place, I’m good, thanks. Or I’ll actually tell them, you know, usually I like to know somebody before I hire them. I mean, I’ll do this with everyone, but I’ve actually had some really good conversations when I’ve taken just a little bit of time to respond to some of those and they end up being a listener or we connect in some other way or something. Or maybe I can help them with something because, you know, a lot of it is spam. But there’s a lot of people that also are just looking for work. They’re looking for information and resources. And sometimes I like to give them the benefit of the doubt that, hey, you know, I might have a little something to share with you here.

Rae Morey:
Yeah, it doesn’t hurt to reach out and to get to know people. And it’s really nice that you actually, you know, spend the time really getting to know people.

BobWP:
Yeah, it’s interesting because some of the conversations have really gone in a different direction, I think. Wow. You know, we’ve gone back and forth a few times and they’ll ask me something and I’ll send them maybe, oh, yeah, you should check out this site, this is the kind of site you’re looking for and maybe they have the information you need. But, but, and another thing I’m thinking about, and we’re probably going off, like I said, kind of random tangents here, but how much people really understand the benefit of not just giving you information, that’s for sure. If it’s information that you want to use, hey, they’re getting something put out there basically for free, but also as somebody that might just need to contribute a quote or a little bit of something, you know, I don’t know if they understand that can really be an impression of your brand. I mean, that’s just another way of branding yourself because you’re not necessarily selling, but you’re branding yourself that, hey, I know what I’m talking about when it comes to this topic.

Rae Morey:
Yeah. When I am on LinkedIn, I’m on all the social media and so when I see people who are posting regularly about particular topics like I pay attention to, and they’re probably going to be the go to that I’ll approach for a comment on a particular thing, like I’m writing it, I’m working on a story this week and I know exactly who I want to approach as the experts on a particular topic because they are regularly posting about it on social media and putting themselves out there as experts in that topic. And I think that’s like you say, it’s a really good way to brand yourself because you’re putting aside, you’re putting yourself up there as a thought leader in your space and that really helps with brand awareness because you’re going to be amplified in a news story, invited to speak on a podcast, you know, and all of that snowballs to help build your brand and your personal brand.

BobWP:
Right, right. Yeah. I think that’s one of those things that people don’t always think about much, you know, or all they think is I need some huge footprint somewhere to get people to pay attention to me or to get people to say, hey, they know what they’re talking about.

Rae Morey:
Yeah, I mean, I guess that’s the thing with marketing, right? You have to have multiple touch points before somebody is going to actually feel ready to buy your product or service. And so being featured in stories, businesses that are in my new stories are going to have that extra SEO, you know, and businesses that are featured on your podcasts and as well, it’s all brand awareness and I think that’s definitely a good thing.

BobWP:
Yeah, yeah. Well, I know there’s some of the things we’ve talked about and that we’ll be able to maybe get into deeper. But I often wonder if some people ever have gotten something that’s embargoed. Wait, embargoed? What does that mean? And how important it is for those people to get something to you in time for you to actually do something well with it, depending what you want to do with it.

Rae Morey:
One thing I’d really love people in the WordPress world to understand is embargoed information. I guess it’s pretty common in the new space, I guess also particularly in politics and a lot of large businesses as well do this where they’ll send out an advance copy of something, whether it be a press release or a report or a book or something that allows reporters and journalists, media to read the report or read a press release and to know that something’s coming so you can plan ahead to write a story. An embargo basically means that journalist can’t publish something before a set date and time and so that’ll be printed in big bold writing at the top of the press release. What’s really helpful for the media with embargoed information, embargoed press releases is that it gives us a heads up that something’s coming. When we’re planning, you know, doing our weekly planning or, or just prepping our editorial calendars, we can figure out, okay, well this is coming up. I can make sure there’s space for that in my publication. I can make time in my week to make sure I can write something properly about that and that’s really helpful. Any self respecting person who works in the media isn’t going to break an embargo because that means that company is never going to trust you again. So I think most people wouldn’t break an embargo. That’ just, it’s very disrespectful. I’d love it if businesses would do that in the WordPress space and send us embargoed information. I don’t know about you Bob, I would find it really helpful.

BobWP:
Yeah, I, and I’ve even made the mistake where I felt like I should have done. I thought well, you know what, we expect them to see our latest post on X and say oh Bob, what’s that about? You know, yeah, you’re going to jump on it and have to then hustle or whatever or start reaching out to people. But if I even have to get better at it, you know, and I don’t have a lot of stuff that needs that. But at the same time I think, yeah, WordPress I mean, it’d be great to somehow educate more people, especially people that have businesses and are involved with a lot of the different things going on and stuff that. Yeah. That they know that it’s even there, that something like that exists. And it’ll certainly make for a better informational piece.

Rae Morey:
Yeah, definitely. When people announce something and then they’re not available for a comment, like, what, what are you doing? You don’t want people to write about it. I think, you know, if businesses were able to send embargoed information to us and we could prepare, it means we’re able to more meaningfully write about. Right. Or do a podcast or plan something in advance about their product. They’re going to get better promotion from us if it’s. If they can provide us information in advance. Because like you say, if we see an announcement on Twitter, we suddenly have to try and hustle when we might have other things we’re already working on to do something and what we might end up doing might not be as good. Or like I mentioned earlier around timeliness, if I have to hustle and try and get something done, it means I’m not going to get it done in a timely matter. I’m not going to be able to write something as good. And yeah, don’t publish something or don’t announce something and then disappear and not be available to talk about it because you’re making our job harder. It makes our job much easier if we don’t have to go hunting around for the information and if it can just be provided to us. And that sounds a bit selfish, but if, if businesses, if people running events, all kinds of things, if they can get information to us, I have no problems helping to promote things in the WordPress space. And yeah, I want to cover things that are happening in the ecosystem, but if I don’t know about something, I can’t cover it. I’m only as good as information that I’m provided or I can get, I can see. Or, you know, I’m just one person and there are thousands of businesses and thousands of events on. Yes. Something I could rant about all day.

BobWP:
Yeah, right. Well, this has been great. I know we’ve kind of bopped around a lot and stuff, but I think again, this is kind of how conversations go on here is you never know where it leads. You start with the topic and we always wrap back around it, but kind of gives people an idea, at least some of the stuff that will be.

Rae Morey:
Coming and we’ll get stuck into some meaty topics in the coming months, there’s lots we could cover.

BobWP:
Yeah, well you may occasionally have one of the other hosts join us and stuff or I may prod one of them if the topic is particularly interesting to them. And yeah, you never know what will come of that. So it’s always a surprise.

Rae Morey:
Sounds fun.

BobWP:
All right. Okay. Well thanks Rae. And yeah, everyone do check out repository. In fact, if you go to our Friday shares every week, I just find articles out there and posts from people I know that I think it’s worth sharing. I have a link in there to the repository so you can make sure. But yeah, it just seems like to me it’s good to get it in your inbox because there’s no easier way than to just peruse through all that and Maybe you know 80% of the things that happen but you might learn a little bit something about it or one of the things is I like it because I actually find something every once in a while that I haven’t heard about and I think, oh well good. This was easy. Easier than going out and looking at X or any of those.

Rae Morey:
I’m glad it’s helpful. Thanks Bob. It’s been so good chatting and I’m looking forward to recording more of these episodes.

BobWP:
Okay, excellent. Thank you.

Rae Morey:
Thank you.