Sally Mac, a digital native and founder of The Mermaid Society, explains why you have to be a triathlete in online media and content in today’s digital landscape.
With a background in journalism, Sally’s career has seen her create content as the editor of Coastal Watch, and more recently she produced a captivating video series for the Vissla Sydney Surf Pro website.
She shares her insight into the best ways to grab your customer’s attention in those vital first three seconds in order to stop them from scrolling…
John: Today I’m in Pyrmont in Sydney where I’m joined by Sally Mac. Sally’s a digital native who specializes in content strategy and production. She also has her own business, The Mermaid Society, which promotes women in ocean sports. She is a former digital producer with the highly trafficked surf website Coastal Watch. Furthermore, she did an amazing job for us executive producing content for the website that showcased the Vissla Sydney Surf Pro at Manly in February 2018. I’m excited because today she’s going to explain her approach to content and how to produce it efficiently and cost-effectively. Sally, welcome to Customers Matter.
Sally: Thanks for having me, John.
John: Sally, when did you join Coastal Watch, how long were you there, and what exactly did you do?
Sally: In 2013, I had my daughter and lost my job, so I started The Mermaid Society then. It was a women’s ocean sports site based on news and results because I didn’t think any women’s or girls’ surfing or ocean sports results were being published anywhere, and they were never published quickly. Obviously, the men’s results usually get priority online and in print. I created this platform and the audience grew really quickly because I was interviewing the winners and participants as soon as a contest finished. I would get all the photos off social media; Instagram and Facebook became my Reuters, essentially. It was live, and I was pulling content and finding information before the event managers could even write the results for their own sites.
I was grabbing all their SEO, and it grew from there. Because I was doing that, I interviewed so many people and built an incredible network very fast. A friend who was working at Coastal Watch asked me to apply for the editor’s job. I applied but didn’t think I was going to get it because I was up against three ex-magazine editors. I was just myself through that process and got the job. I was initially a bit scared because I knew how big the audience was and how “core surf” it is. A lot of people are traditionalists, and as a woman, I think that was a little confronting. I had to intuitively switch on to the kind of content they wanted to drive subscriptions and audience growth simultaneously.
John: Tell me more about The Mermaid Society. You mentioned you grew an audience; how big is the audience now and what is the business doing these days?
Sally: In the first edition, before I got the job at Coastal Watch, I was receiving up to six thousand views a day on the site. At that time, it was primarily news, results, and videos. I wasn’t making much of my own content; I was doing a lot of writing and hadn’t really grasped what digital products were yet. When I moved into Coastal Watch, many products already existed, but the scope to create them was much larger because I had a budget.
John: What sort of products are you talking about?
Sally: By digital products, I mean anything that is digitally available for someone to view, use, or become immersed in. For example, we started board guides, wetsuit guides, and video reviews. Essentially, these are standalone products that feel like a physical product you can sell through advertising to a company.
John: What did that mean for your approach to The Mermaid Society? You were the editor at Coastal Watch for nearly three years and learned about creating digital products to monetize the website and appeal to the audience. You brought that know-how back to The Mermaid Society, so what are you doing differently now?
Sally: When I work on something, I am four hundred percent committed. Coastal Watch took up all of my time, so I had to deprioritize The Mermaid Society. It remained live because I was getting so much SEO traffic until the point where I closed it down for a full refurbishment of the website.
John: What did you do when you relaunched it? What is different about The Mermaid Society now?
Sally: I wanted to bring in everything I learned at Coastal Watch regarding product development that connects and engages with the audience on a high level while also generating revenue. We found that advertisers were attracted to these nearly physical products that people became dependent on. At Coastal Watch, the cameras were the core; people came to see the surf and watch the cameras, but they also wanted the byproducts, such as education or products that improve their surfing experience.
With The Mermaid Society refurbishment, I wanted to bring in those elements, especially regarding advertising—being able to talk to a brand, deliver what they want, connect that to an audience, and create content that makes everyone happy.
John: What are some examples of bringing that philosophy to life?
Sally: I think with women’s sports especially, women haven’t always taken as much interest in equipment details as men have. Men traditionally love their “man sheds” and tools, but we are now in an age where sport is so equalized between genders that education regarding gear and boards is incredibly useful. Anything you can use to enhance your experience in the water or with sport is valuable. Guides are useful to people and have real longevity online because until a product becomes obsolete, people will continue searching for it. Those kinds of products have proven to be a very successful model.
John: I want to ask you how you brought the Sydney Surf Pro website to life. People who have seen that site have raved about it. I know it was the content as much as the functionality that earned those reviews. Tell me what you did there.
Sally: It was an amazing opportunity to have the freedom to pull in all my experiences to create that content. We talked about what was important to the event and what had been missing from past events. It is important with digital content to understand the balance between your niche and the general population. With the Vissla Sydney Pro, it was vital to remember that the local community brings just as much to the event as the surfers do.
I utilized what I learned about audience development at Coastal Watch: people love history, facts, education, and nostalgia. By picking a significant event and bringing back icons of different eras and the industry to add credibility, I wanted to make sure everyone felt involved while including a bit of fun and history.
John: For anyone who hasn’t seen the site, could you describe the navigation channels and the different content types you created?
Sally: We decided to have the video series we created, “The Road to Manly,” predominant on the homepage, while ensuring the surfing itself remained the main focus. Many events let the actual surfing get lost within the site. The site has to be easy for anyone to use, not just surfers. We also took into account that the Vissla Sydney Surf Pro had an incredibly large international audience, many of whom are from South America and may not speak English as their first language. We made it a very visual pathway and journey for people.
John: What about content types? Obviously, it isn’t all text. How did you create content for it and what forms did you use?
Sally: I thought it was important at the start to talk to as many people as I could about Manly. By speaking to those people, I understood much more about the history and could summarize it for those who didn’t know it. I picked out a couple of significant events to highlight, such as the 1978 Surfabout which had perfect ten-foot barrels at North Steyne. It was the most significant surf event anyone spoke about. I wanted to reignite everyone’s excitement about that day. That day changed people’s lives. Doug Lees, the General Manager of Coastal Watch, watched that final between Larry Blair and Wayne Lynch and said that day was a fork in the road for him. He chose to dedicate his life to the surf industry rather than finance or accounting. Those little stories make a big impact on the community, and that was the path I took to highlight that history.
John: You didn’t just use text. Tell me about your approach to different content types.
Sally: It is important to create content that crosses all boundaries. Transcription is very important, not only for SEO purposes—since Google scans all the words to help generate traffic—but also because many people still want to read. They might watch ten seconds of a video and then scroll down to read the summary or transcription. I created a visual and contextual timeline to support the video series. The videos were no longer than two and a half minutes, making them very consumable for the average person.
John: That was the content on the site before the event, but you also did interesting things during the event. What content did you make then and why?
Sally: During an event, many visitors aren’t there to ingest large amounts of information. They want updates, scores, results, and little snippets from the day. Most importantly, social media took off because it created a “behind the scenes” feel for the audience. We have a human intrigue to want to know what everyone else is doing. We took that model and created a behind-the-scenes clip every two days. We also did athlete profile videos, which were Q&A sessions with qualifying series athletes from New South Wales and internationally, asking about their progress and goals.
John: You mentioned social media. What is the relationship between the website and social media, and how does that ecosystem work best?
Sally: Facebook has a hold on everyone at the moment, and whenever they change an algorithm, it can disrupt your digital strategy. However, you shouldn’t focus on that too much. Get back to the basics of understanding what people want to read and watch, and keep it genuine. The current buzzword is “mindful.” Having mindful conversations with people is key because people just skim their news feeds. You have about three seconds to get someone’s attention. A meaningful conversation started with engaging content is the only thing that will stop someone from scrolling or tapping.
John: Does the website perform as a hub for your social media content? What is the ideal relationship between the two?
Sally: With an event, having live and genuine content specific to social media is what you want. You want people to see the event branding and stay updated. This is why the World Surf League partnered with Facebook to broadcast their live stream; it is difficult to get someone to click through four times to reach a website, but they will respond to a live notification on Facebook. You have to be smart and work out what works best for your audience.
With the Sydney Surf Pro, we shared article pages to social media but also embedded video directly into the feeds. To do this smarter, you can create small trailers with a “see more” link. You have to work out your priorities. If you want the most views on a video, cover all bases: Facebook, Instagram, Stories, and the website.
John: There is a difference between an event website and an evergreen organizational website. In a non-event context, how do you make that digital ecosystem work?
Sally: With an evergreen website, the strategy is different because people come there all the time, so your SEO buildup is better. We were strained with the Sydney Surf Pro website because it was finished only two weeks before the event, which wasn’t enough time for Google to index it. We depended on partners like Destination NSW, Manly Council, and Coastal Watch to push traffic through. With a normal site, you have the time to build that relationship with Google, master the SEO, and build a unique audience. Social media connection is different because you set up your article pages and products consistently for when people are likely to interact with you online.
John: Do you see an organizational website as a hub for content deployed across all channels? What are the big principles people should consider when creating a web platform for their business?
Sally: It all comes back to the balance between your core market and potential growth. Understand what your core needs to keep them happy, but also consider the content required to reach new markets through social media. It only takes one amazing product or piece of content to go viral. Experiment while maintaining the balance between your core and your potential new audience.
John: Sally, finally, what are your top three tips for any organization thinking about their content?
Sally: First, have a dedicated social media manager or coordinator. This should be someone who is at the edge of current trends, understands updates, and has a broad scope of the international social media network. They shouldn’t just follow trends but slightly diverge from them to create and amplify content.
Second, amplification should be at the forefront of content development. If you can’t amplify it and don’t have a budget for that amplification, it will go nowhere. It will sit on your site where no one sees it. This is a reverse-engineering of how we were brought up to think. In the past, you paid for print, radio, or television because they already had the market. Today, you have to break through the online distractions of millions of businesses. You must bring the social and amplification strategy to the forefront during the creation process.
Thirdly, talk to people. Emails are overwhelming us, and there is nothing more valuable than being on the ground talking to people. Conduct interviews to pick their brains and find those key moments. Talk to people who aren’t in your core demographic just to see what they like or how they think. As a creative or manager, you never know what one tiny point might change the direction of your marketing or social strategy for the next year.
John: Is this actual interview content you’re talking about, or just talking to people to help put a strategy together?
Sally: It can be both. You can set up interviews that actually become content. The Sydney Surf Pro video series started because I wanted to video interview people, though I didn’t know exactly where those videos would go yet. As we went along, I realized I could have talked to a hundred people. Always interview people as if you are going to publish it because you then have it on record and can go back and revisit that energy. Just talk.
John: Sally, it has been an amazing discussion. I think people will be blown away by this way of thinking about content. I’m really grateful for you spending time with us.
Sally: Thanks very much, John. I look forward to your future interviews.
John: Thanks, Sally.