How Do You Know if You're on the Right Track?

For this episode of Making Media, we spoke with Hiten Samtani, SVP of Content at The Real Deal. Now, I'm not sure if you've noticed, but real estate media is everywhere and, to me, The Real Deal sits uniquely at the epicenter of this industry. They are the largest real estate focused publication in the US, they have over 3 million monthly visitors to their website, tens of thousands of paying subscribers, and they still maintain a print distribution of over 150,000 subscribers. But maybe what's most interesting to me is that The Real Deal was ranked as the publication with the wealthiest audience on the web. As Head of Content, Hiten has experience with deep-dive journalism and various forms of media across written word, video, and audio - so he has a full background across media. I think there are a ton of lessons for media professionals across this conversation. Please enjoy.

For the full show notes, transcript, and links to the best content to learn more, check out the episode page here. 

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Show Notes

(00:01:41) - (First question) - How he landed in the real estate journalism segment

(00:02:41) - The history of The Real Deal as it stands out from the rest of the industry

(00:06:24) - Challenges the publication faced early on that made it stronger in the long run

(00:09:14) - An overview of their scale and structure

(00:12:21) - Audience analytics he focuses on to track the health of the business

(00:14:20) - How he tries to measure their presence in the zeitgeist

(00:16:59) - His emphasis on liaising with readers

(00:18:44) - The prevalence of direct website traffic versus ancillary routes to their content

(00:23:15) - How he thinks about paywall and subscription models versus advertising

(00:25:54) - Why they keep their editorial team and ad team separate

(00:27:51) - How they develop new IP and mass media based on their popular exclusives

(00:32:27) - Preserving relationships with sources while also maintaining journalistic integrity

(00:36:29) - How he typically sources his most important stories

(00:39:40) - His philosophies for training budding journalists joining the publication

(00:41:34) - What they look for in journalists they hire

(00:44:01) - Dealing with top journalists that want to leave to strike out on their own

(00:49:03) - De-brief