 Hello everyone, so yeah, so I'm good to be here and and to speak at this event Yeah, so as MC has mentioned, I've been using WordPress for for some time. Can you guys hear me? All good, right? Okay so I've been using WordPress for as long as I can remember like since almost as long as I I use Facebook, I remember it was like first year in uni when Facebook first came about for me So just to maybe customize my talk a little bit, how many are really existing WordPress users here? Most of you right and Okay, cool. So I'll maybe go into a bit more detail Yeah, so just a quick introduction of Tech in Asia. We have about over a hundred people 14 of which are in the editorial team So we do about, you know, five to 15 articles a day As mentioned about 1.4 million pages a month. So so but aside from the editorial team, we also have a Jobs feature where people can post and And and they are job postings if they're hiring or they can apply for jobs We also recently implemented a feature where people can submit content So anyone can be a writer on Tech in Asia, basically Yeah, so my job basically is to In Singaporean terms, Baokaliao. So I write I edit I help to manage Strategize content strategy everything. So, you know, that that's what how it's like in a startup, I guess That's what this is what Tech in Asia looks like. It's been through a lot of Uh iterations Yeah, so pretty Straightforward editorial website. You have the articles Um, you have jobs you have we also allow people to submit events On our website and on the top right, you can see the the right button where people can submit content Yeah, so just a quick snapshot of the stuff we cover Um, so this is EV, which is a great personal assistant that arranges your meetings for you. It's actually a bot So we do startup profiles. We do leaks We do Yeah, cute infographics like like this Um, yeah, there's a snapshot of what we do. Yeah, so, um, the subject of today's talk is really to give a glimpse Into how how we use WordPress Uh, to in our workflow how we manage content And and how we publish on WordPress basically So, uh, within the editorial team, we we use something called flow dog, which is kind of like slack or or What's the other hip hip chat or something like that? Um, yeah, so Uh, whenever someone wants an article published, uh rather edited on uh by Dialogue editors, they will post a link on a google docs link On flow doc and then, you know, some of us will just go in and and we'll edit the article Um, so we use like google docs as like the first stage of our editing Um before WordPress, right? So everything goes on there Um, the reason we use google docs is that it's very collaborative In that, you know, you can actually see editing happen live You know as it happens on on google docs. Um, you can do things like leave comments um, you can So everything's very instantaneous, right? It happens Uh, live, so that's why we we like using google docs. Um, yeah, maybe there's something similar in WordPress, maybe not so I love to hear your thoughts as well if you come across something like this Yeah, so the the first stage happens on google docs um We use something called markdown. Um, I'm sure some of you are familiar with this So, uh, basically markdown Is is a very easy way to write html. We you can actually write html without knowing html. So Um, yeah, this is basically markdown Um, so this is basically like a list, right? Uh An unordered list. So the yeah, I I'll show you how how you look like later Yeah, and then we move on to wordpress. So we'll upload the article on wordpress. Um Yeah, we we put the picture we Insert the headline and things like that yeah So there are a few very interesting, uh, customizations we do In wordpress itself. Um, thanks to to lester who's Really the brains behind everything in on our website. So, uh Yeah, so we there's actually markdown support in wordpress that comes with jetpack, right? Yeah, if you can correct me if I get anything wrong. Yeah, so, um, yeah so basically how this works is that you can just copy and paste the markdown into Wordpress itself in visual mode Um, and when you press preview right it actually turns out Exactly the way you want it as a as a list in this case So the the bolding is there the link is there Without the need to like convert it into html first and then Paste it into wordpress. So we used to actually manually convert into html But we managed to get rid of that intermediate step Um, we have another customization. So we we did like a short code So, you know pool code and then end off with another pool code tag and This is how it shows up on on wordpress so Very nifty feature Yeah, another customization we did was that um, so when we write about company will include like a Profile of the company at the bottom of the article So in wordpress, we are able to like select, you know the company and then Once we save, you know, everything will show up here um Another key part of our editorial workflow is that uh, we have like we're very clear about Who edited the article and the reason for that is is first of all accountability, right? If if somebody screws up the editing, you know, who's at fault basically and and that includes me, right? um Yeah, and also helps us to keep track how many editing work people have done So nothing fancy here. It's just like a text field where we key in manually edited by whoever Yeah Yeah, um, very important this So we have a what what plugin we use for this uh custom coded. Yeah, so um Yeah, so basically we it's very important for uh editorial website like tech in asia to Um to appear right on google so when google Um, and the reason for that is is google has like a 90 character Um limit for no not 90 60 character limit there about for headlines. So anything after that, right? Will be cut off That's why we have this right so We have like Guidelines so if we surpass 60 characters, you will know Again, right? This is like seo best practice Generally to to keep your description within 145 to 155 characters So we implemented this to make sure that our writers follow the guidelines Yeah, so if they So which that's why sometimes the headlines on our website It's actually very different from the headlines on google because We want to make sure that our headline is short enough and concise enough for google And also contains the right keywords Yeah Yep, so we have this in wordpress as well um What one thing we implemented recently was uh Nowadays, you know branded content is it's like the next buzzword in in media, right? Like buzzfeed is it's all about branded content and yeah tech in asia. We started going into this recently so We used to do this like brought to you by who the sponsor manually like someone would Do the image and then would Upload the image and then um So the whole thing was an image. Uh, so but now we just need to key in the Uh sponsor logo and then you'll show up there So that's another thing with it Yeah, so um I guess uh at this point Um, is there any questions about you know Anyone know about how we do things or Yeah Okay, right so, um, I guess how do we expose our content to readers, right? People don't come all right, right? So where do our readers come from? Yeah, because sometimes one story just goes viral very easily But sometimes there are some stories just like nobody wants to watch it So how have you get people really get excited about that? Okay. Um, there are many ways so Um, number one, uh, we sometimes do stories specifically for people that come in on google So we are very so we do like keyword research Um, so one example was that um, you know a lot of startups They are looking for funding in singapore, right? So I did an article about um So I did some keyword research. I found that venture capital singapore was very popular So I did an article like listing down all the venture capital firms in singapore Uh, and until today that has gotten traffic because I think it is still the number one Um, article if you search venture capital singapore on google So that's one way we we get traffic Very simple keyword research on google and then we write content targeting those keywords um, another way would be um I think that it's an art when it comes to writing stories for social media. So A lot of our stories A lot of our readers come from facebook So we are very careful So we pay a lot of attention to the headline like um We try to emphasize the The human element in every story um, so this uh last night there was a story about this startup called plinz who they're basically college dropouts and They left their scholarships to to do this company. So We we make sure we spend a lot of attention we pay a lot of attention to the headline to make sure that um The headline draws in readers. So The headline was something like, you know college dropouts race Funding to do their startup something like that to highlight the human story in it Yeah, not sure if I'm answering your question though like so Do you and do you pay Facebook for the readers? Um, very rarely. So all our traffic has been organic Um, I in the early days, we just kept publishing kept sharing And then we would publish a story on our facebook page Uh, and then we would just share ourselves and then we tag our friends And we just grew organically over four years Stories Yeah, so it's it's a numbers game like the more you publish The more you publish the more likely your content will go viral Um, that's one number two. Obviously is that you understand what makes good content So I also there are a lot of studies done, right? So content that's emotional, right? So if the content makes you go like holy shit, right and Or makes you really happy or joyful or angry Those kinds of content tend to propagate on social media So we will look out for those kinds of stories Yeah Any questions? Yeah, uh, I I've heard that you are using custom SEO plugin And so I'm wondering why not using something prove it. You ask SEO or it's not good Yes, I think Yeah, let's just answer that Of course our Our So we don't need anything. We can't have anything that's Code or snippets that's injected into the team. We don't use the reverse email So everything's exposed by API. So when we do our custom SEO, we can expose it via our custom API as well Then the react partner will render Google Yeah, obviously bogey text and the meta description Yeah Thank you. Okay. Um, any any other things? Yeah How do you work with uh freelancers because I know you have um, like writers and the community Community page Because um, the community page is is not paid for freelancers, right? So do you Do you work with? Um, okay. So your question is whether we work with freelancers? Yeah so we We we don't really rely on a lot of freelancers because Um, I think just part of how we do things is that we like to have full control over our content. So We engage mainly full timers um so On rare occasions, we do get freelancers. Actually, no, actually. Yeah, I need to correct myself. Um In the india team, so we have like about four writers in india full-time writers Uh, we we just tried one So in india, we do have like three or four regular very regular freelancers So how we manage them obviously is that uh, so at first we'll stick them out first So these are writers that um That our team members already know Um, and through their years of working in the industry So we'll engage them. Uh, often we treat freelancing as like an audition Um, so before we hire someone full-time, we sometimes give them freelance work. We pay them, of course um, and then Yeah, if they do well with their freelance articles if their language is good if they write well The content's great. Um, we'll probably hire them full-time So that's the extent to which we use freelancers. We have regular freelancers who we have like full timers will become freelancers um, so sometimes the story ideas come from us In that we'll we'll have like, hey, we think this will make a great story. We'll pitch it to the freelancers Uh, if they're interested, they'll work on it. Sometimes they pitch ideas to us So we have one person in India designated to manage the freelancers Um, yeah, so that's roughly how it works uh, yeah Cool. Um, yeah, I guess I'll move on to with the talk so so, uh, one thing I'm touched on is that um Like I've been using WordPress for seven eight years, right? So Uh, I guess I've seen in a way how the media landscape has evolved so I just want to touch a bit on um The the future of media and and where I see this going and whether WordPress will continue to be relevant Um, so in the past this has how more or less websites have been operating right how editorial websites Uh have been operating so that the website is king and everyone else, right? Uh, if you're publishing on facebook if you're publishing on twitter or linkedin or google The objective is To drive traffic to your website So everything else services the website Um, but I find that in the past Few couple of years maybe things are starting to shift, right? So So this is the future basically where facebook is like eating up the media and everyone about us are like serves in in a vast kingdom so So what's happening is that you know facebook has has instant articles, um, which we use um, that basically lets readers Read content on facebook without even leaving the website Leaving the social network google is also like encroaching on um on media because like nowadays you can Can play what tic-tac-toe on on google now or or solitaire or something like that. I think there's a recent announcement um, they are they even launching a travel Uh feature where you can I don't know like check flights or something on google So in a way it's also encroaching on On websites So I think publishing is going to be very distributed Um, and I'll give you a very good example So this is bus feet. Um You can see that since 2014 to now the website traffic has basically been flat, right? Um, but what has happened is for bus feet is that its video views has has actually grown By many multiples, right? So, um, it's publishing on on Facebook it's publishing on youtube it's publishing on snapchat Instagram and every other platform you can think of So I think that the era of websites uh, I think websites will still play an important role, but As a publisher if you're thinking of publishing if you're running a content marketing website if you're doing content marketing Um, I think this is the future right the era websites that websites are sort of diminishing um, so just to play this So this shows like how the bus feet editorial team has is evolving Um, yeah, let me wait for this too Yeah, so as you can see right in the beginning it was very straightforward just editorial And then they published to busfeet.com Right, but over time Um, you started to see how they're doing youtube snapchat vine How they are syndicating to over 20 other platforms Yeah, so I think I think this is the future and At tech in asia, we are also starting to shift uh In terms of direction So only like a couple of months ago, we started to realize that you know, we need to stop treating our website as The final destination right for readers Rather it's it's A means to an end it's One of the many ways which we can expect which we can reach out to to our audience Um, yeah, so we started experimenting with video Um, so this was published directly on facebook um Yeah, and we didn't we yeah, so and and this got viral on facebook Um, this was an article that we did on facebook as well So in the past right how we would do this is that we would So the news breaks, right? Okay. We're all scrambling to write the story We would just write this story on On wordpress and then hit publish and once we publish we share onto facebook um, but now Like we can just write the story on facebook, right? Why go to the website that and I think that's a question that many Publishers have to grapple with and the story did well And so yesterday night, right? I was doing and I was writing a breaking new story So I I wrote the story on facebook I did the interview on facebook Um, I shared the story on facebook as well. Only thing I didn't do was the image, right? Which I use canva so canva Who's familiar with canva? Okay, not bad. So canva is it's basically a uh Image editing tool that's much easier to use than photoshop and I highly recommend it. Okay. Um, yeah, so publishing is moving to social networks Um, yeah, we started doing stuff on instagram as well. So experimenting with memes and Very visually driven stories So like if you click onto this story, for example, it's actually a shorter version of the story we did on the website um so the the story on the website was about the news that they got funding but um, this story started with like, you know, are these these Brothers like indonesians. Indonesia's next media tycoons a more human interest driven stories Yeah, so it's very interesting what i'm seeing now because uh in the past We would just write for the website and we would just distribute it everywhere But now we're starting to write for facebook. We're starting to write for instagram And we are starting to think right? How should this story be presented natively for the facebook audience? um And this has kind of complicated things for us because Now instead of just having like one workflow, right? We have three workflows for three different platforms. So facebook uh website and Instagram and then we have a video team that does Our videos and we have an infographics team So the question becomes right, you know, will WordPress still be relevant? um, okay, honestly, I don't have a good answer to this but um I I do think and i'm not an expert on WordPress. Okay, so um, I I think WordPress does have the capacity to evolve right and and become Whatever the community wants it to be. So this this will give you an example. So this is cool schedule. Uh, anyone uses cool schedule Okay, okay cool something new. Um I haven't used this, but it has come across come across my reader. I might use it in the future So this basically allows you to use WordPress as a means to organize your editorial calendar to see what you're publishing to publish from WordPress to Facebook to Instagram Okay, maybe not Instagram to Twitter and other platforms um, so effectively WordPress becomes like a hub for your entire publishing workflow Whether it's on the social network or on the website Uh, and and this is integrated obviously with WordPress. Uh, but it's also a standalone solution Yeah Oh, okay, so um to end off maybe I'll just Talk about like if you're a publisher if you're a writer if you're a communicator Uh, if you're in marketing, I guess what it takes to succeed is really to be a jack of all trades to be able to tell stories visually Uh, whether you're on facebook on snapchat On instagram to be social media savvy and know what the latest trends Um, and not just write for the website Yeah, and to be an expert communicator in more than one format. Yeah, and that's it Yeah, so any last questions? Yeah In the past when we write for websites is because the website has like, um, you can sell ad space and all that but When you write for the social media platforms, it's more just like brand building and building up your brand, right? So is is is that indeed, uh, the shift because if you do on facebook, then How do you earn money out of it? Right? I think banner ads are Dead, uh, basically, uh, I mean obviously google still makes a lot of money and facebook Um, but the click-through rates are so pretty low, right? I don't know less than what 0.1 percent something like that. Um, so Okay, so how tech in asia makes money? Uh, we have our events. We have our conferences. We're we're we're seeing a lot of growth in branded content So brands say ibm pays you like five thousand dollars to write an article about Um, they are all about what since they are ai solution And then so an article So it's a full article and it's brought to you by ibm Like like you saw just now Yeah, I think so. Yeah, like like that. So um so what we're seeing at tech in asia is that We're seeing of interest from brands in this kind of advertising Uh, I think it's more engaging than banner ads um And sponsors don't care where this is published whether it's on facebook instagram or Whoever so it doesn't matter. Yeah Any one last question maybe yeah at the back Sorry Right. So, uh, that that's done for now. Um, so banner content is still new to us So we are tracking it Firstly using google analytics. So we know how many page views the website's generating Uh, facebook pages if so we run a facebook page and on the facebook page. There's uh insights feature that can track the reach of your articles on facebook So I think every Social media platform has their own analytics Yeah So just combine that and then we share that with the sponsor Okay. Actually you got time for one more question Yeah, hi, uh Yeah, I think that's the point you mentioned about Maybe being platform agnostic is interesting But I was also thinking like, you know, facebook recently they have been changing their algorithm to which group publishers in some way. Yeah. Yeah. So as a whole I mean think about it this way When it comes to revenue everybody as much as they say Everybody wants a piece of the cake So when it gets too good, I think the publishers, uh, sorry the social media platform They were just the one of the tech for the publishers as well. Yeah. So having said that, right, so in the longer scheme of day How do you think publishers? I don't think anyone have an answer to that. This is about how Maybe Yeah, good, good, good question. Very good question. I think all this all the time, right? So I think there are two answers, right? So either You really be like Buzzfeed and your platform and I'll stick in that if facebook turns off the tab You just go to the next platform So in the sense that you're not reliant on one platform So let's say facebook shuts off the tab Your your reach drops Your team is adaptable enough to move on to them to shift their strategy to adapt to the landscape So that's one second right is to just ignore social media. So there are a lot of websites like, uh, there's there's the information, right? Just this Damn expensive website pay like 400 a year and then you get really good content. It's very very high quality stuff So it doesn't care. So the website doesn't care about social media reach Uh, it's really about quality journalism Um, new york times it is adopting a hybrid. So a paywall model again, right? Very high quality journalism Uh, so it's either really high quality stuff Uh, you go to the Buzzfeed route just get as many people as possible and as many platforms as possible or Tech in Asia, we subsidize our media using events and other revenue streams That's okay. So I think we're out of time. So if you have any questions, I'm I'll be around. Yeah, I can answer them. Thank you