- I'm Vahe, and I grew up in NSW, Australia, with an Armenian background
- Founder of State of Digital Publishing (SODP) and SODP Media
- I've had a passion for digital media publishing since I was an intern at Hive Empire (Finder), helping initially shape their Savings Account Finder property back in 2010
- I went into agency land focusing on SEO, being the first hire of several agencies, including OMD and Online Marketing Gurus (it's now been over 15 years)
- I was introduced to the concept of Audience Development in 2012 by Adam Sherk and tried to offer this in Australia, but the market had a higher barrier to entry
- I started SODP the website in 2016 after seeing many publishers during the 2017 FB algorithm update fully pivot into video publishing or using 'rented" places to build their audience, but see that dissipate overnight
- Once I started seeing an increasing number of publishers come to Online Marketing Gurus shortly after, I realised that now was the time to specialise in this space with a larger mission: to help publishers develop sustainable business models
- Before dedicating to our current editorial path, I explored severable MVPs from a training platform to a community voting site, a martech integration platform, a content audit tool and a membership product. The lesson here is to diversify and offer solutions based on the lifecycle your business is in
- My supportive wife reminded me to narrow my niche, and in 2019, I exclusively focused on SEO for publishers and decided to register SODP as a company.
With this, it is said, what changes have been made given the changing landscape?
- We've decided to create a distinct brand called SODP Media for our solutions to avoid confusion and any perception of trying to funnel leads from our editorial efforts. I received this feedback long before this decision was made, but I wasn't ready to do this until now. There are no daily changes besides a logo addition.
- Publishers have been concerned about the dependency on organic search/Google, and current/past clients have even diversified to offline magazines to diversify their revenue. As a result, we've also diversified to offer additional solutions like martech consulting, digital transformation/workflows and content strategy. Our solutions will continue to evolve into more 360 audience development.
- Evolving our editorial to the next level; already running online events and webinars, our reports (published a few already with an AI one coming up in the next quarter) will aim to start benchmarking more of what we see with the landscape taking place.
I invite you to follow and explore how we can collaborate, whether through brand partnerships editorially or via our audience development solutions.
#sodp, #publisherseo, #audiencedevelopment
This post was originally shared by Vahe Arabian on Linkedin.