Recipes for trade publishers and their social media use

Werbewoche.ch: Sunnie J. Groeneveld, Trade publishers transform and become digitaler. As a member of the board of directors at the Galledia Group, you are in close contact with the pulse. What can visitors to the Trend Conference look forward to, and what will you focus on in your presentation?

Sunnie Groeneveld: After a brief tour d'horizon of social media and its influence on the publishing industry, my presentation will focus on the specific recipes that trade publishers can use successfully to better reach their readership, strengthen their communities, and increase their reach. So much in advance: most of the recipes deal intensively with the triumvirate of social-media-mobile-movement-picture.

What are the opportunities and challenges facing trade publishers?

More and more readers are finding their way to specialist publishers via social media. I doubt whether the traditional publishing model of developing a media product for a specialist audience and then - provided enough advertisers are found - throwing it on the market will continue to work well in the future. Increasingly, value creation lies in combining individual offers of content and services and serving equally diverse, predominantly digital media channels. Communities and social media are becoming a driver of product development for publishers and a valuable marketing tool, which is both an opportunity and a challenge for numerous trade publishers, because many have so far treated these channels stepmotherly and have often only selectively mastered digital dialog with their communities.

How do you rate the importance of social media in relation to trade and specialty media?

I rate it as high. Content is being consumed more and more via social media, and there especially in video format. Youtube, Instagram and TikTok are contributing to the rising popularity of moving images, especially among Generation Y and Z. While professional articles are still in demand, due to the flood of information, interest in them is also strongly dependent on whether it is recommended by an acquaintance or a trusted influencer on social media.

Specialist media in particular have the problem of reaching a younger target group (learners, high school graduates, students ...). Can social media help here?

Yes, definitely. But it's not just about apprentices and high school graduates. By 2025, Gen Y and Gen Z will make up more than half of the global workforce. This means that if your goal as a professional medium is to reach the majority of professionals, then you need to take place on those platforms where your readers invest the majority of their digital attention, and that is social media.

Sunnie J. Groeneveld is an entrepreneur, board member, author and speaker. She is founder and managing partner of the consulting firm Inspire 925 as well as a board member of five medium-sized Swiss companies in the engineering, media, IT, insurance and communications sectors, and director of studies at the Executive MBA Digital Leadership at the HWZ Hochschule für Wirtschaft Zürich. 

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