The BLACK Media 2019 Year End Review & A Look Inside The Business

TheBLACKMediaTheBLACKMedia
Owner of The BLACK Media, LLC Tahir Register

2019 Year End Review

If you’re one of our frequent visitors, you may’ve noticed a huge change on our website this year. If you are a newcomer, welcome, I hope this article inspires you to make hard choices that benefit you in the long run.

TheBLACKMedia has been around since 2013. Since inception, we’ve averaged about 230 articles per year, and about 20-30 articles per month. By design, TheBLACKMedia purposefully chooses to not participate in the 24 hour news cycle, and to only give you news we believe will inspire you, inform you, and ultimately entertain you for the better.

This year, our monthly average in articles is only 3 per month, and to date, excluding this article, only 41 articles have been published. Never in our history have we under delivered to our supporters via our website, and for that, TheBLACKMedia apologizes.

Now, let’s get into why our numbers were so low this year, and what that meant for the business.

Restructuring The Business

After a week long business retreat at the end of 2018, TheBLACKMedia’s restructuring plan was underway at the top of 2019. In an effort to grow a faster base of vocal supporters, we decided to take a step back from article writing and grow our social media pages, specifically Instagram.

In business you must move where there is movement while maintaining your mission, and brand. After seeing CNN, FOX News, The Weather Channel, and more shift to using Instagram to not only share news, but to share it in full detail, it was time TheBLACKMedia did the same.

If you’ve been a supporter since 2013, you know TheBLACKMedia relied heavily on our website for most engagement, and updates. Unfortunately this hurt the business over time. For instance, TheBLACKMedia was founded and running before BLAVITY, and TheShadeRoom, but because of their early, avid use of social media, those brands have catapulted into viewership/engagement publications dream of.

In an effort to catch up, TheBLACKMedia decided to dedicate its resources to Instagramming, an extremely difficult choice, but a beneficial one.

Did It Work?

In January 2019 TheBLACKMedia had about 12,000 supporters (followers) on Instagram. Unfortunately in 2019 (and for years to come), the number of supporters (followers) you have online is a crucial part of business we couldn’t neglect any longer. The plan was to increase engagement, supporters, celebrity followers, visibility, and weekly reach/impressions.

Yes. It. Worked! It was a hard choice to make to stop updating the website, which we own, and focus on Instagram, which we do not, but in business you must sometimes take a loss to gain longevity. The name of the game is longevity people. TheBLACKMedia is only a few years away from our 10 year mark, having already done the years of work on the website and brand, added with the social media aspect, another 10 years has been added!

In 12 months, TheBLACKMedia’s instagram page gained over 20,000 new supporters, countless video views from repost and originals, hundreds of viral original memes, repost, and headlines. Even though our viewership via the website wasn’t as strong as the past years, our plan to increase our social reach worked! Besides, we still were able to manage thousands of views per month every month in 2019 via TheBLACKMedia.org

What Does This Mean?

Even if Facebook, the owners of Instagram, decides to sell instagram or delete it completely the work TheBLACKMedia put in for 2019 and the reach, and visibility alone helped place TheBLACKMedia into millions of minds across the US and some internationally territories. That kind of exposure would’ve taken much longer had we not used social media.

In the end, having people see your logo, brand, and company name in association with whatever industry you are in is a major win for any company. So, if it all (social media) ended tomorrow, all is not lost!

2020

All in all 2019 was a huge learning curve, but 2020 is coming soon, and TheBLACKMedia has major plans. If 2019 is an indication of anything, it’s a year of showing and proving. The 2018 plan for 2019 worked, and the 2019 plan for 2020 will too!

Here’s a look at what to expect in 2020:

  • Celebrity Interviews
  • Interesting People Interviews
  • 30-40 Monthly Articles
  • More Merch To Shop In Our Online Store
  • Original Content Via Social Media
  • Major Press Coverage
  • More Exclusives
  • Consistency

I hope you are inspired to take a step back, review, rework, and execute. It may be scary at first, but do it anyway.