Vito Glazers is an American entrepreneur who has developed an expansive career and a seemingly endless network of contacts from working in nearly every capacity of the media industry, from digital advertising to film production, and everything in between. His entrepreneurial career began to gain public interest when he was featured in the season finale of the reality television show Mystery Millionaire. Glazers often discusses his mission of bridging the the gap between business and the creative arts when he makes appearances in the media, on podcasts, and as a speaker at events around the world.
Since starting One World Publishing in 2011, Glazers has helped hundreds of advertisers, creators and public figures generate millions of website visitors and television viewers. He is currently the executive producer of the documentary film Too Big For TV, and is also involved in several other film projects. But Vito Glazers is primarily known for being vocal about the causes he supports. Gender equality is one cause he has spent a lot of time promoting. Providing opportunities and mentorship for aspiring artists and entrepreneurs is another important cause he is associated with.
Now Vito Glazers’ work is going beyond just helping build and launch brands as he has taken up the cause of spreading awareness about the dangers online businesses and all people face by leaving their digital brands vulnerable to libel and cyberbullying. In the past year, Glazers spoke to audiences in Europe, Asia and the United States about various ways he was unethically attacked online, the lengthy, tiring process and journey to repair the damage caused, and why part of his company’s mission is to help spread awareness on how people and brands can fight back. I recently had the chance to interview Vito Glazers. Here is how Vito Glazers has made a successful business out of helping others tell their stories.
Tell us about One World Publishing. How did you come up with this idea?
Vito Glazers: I originally started One World Publishing as a digital publishing company that helped connect online publishers and advertisers. The digital advertising business is very mathematical, while the content world is very creative. It can be difficult for anybody, no matter how talented, to manage both of those worlds simultaneously. As the industry evolved, I noticed a trend that the quality of content was the primary factor separating successful brands, businesses and creators.
Before the internet and social media really went fully mainstream, a small group of producers and networks controlled all of the distribution channels. Once smartphones with high quality cameras built in and social media really took off, everyone became a content creator. The only thing that seperates creators is the quality of the content, and the ability to get it in front of the right audience. Because I have an understanding of both the content creation side, and the audience targeting side, I decided to use One World Publishing as a platform to help people craft their stories, create content around that, and deliver it to their ideal audience.
An important part of my mission is to help other people tell their stories. When I first started in business, I was so focused on my numbers, that I did not care about my personal brand and I never worried about what people were saying about me, as long as I knew that I was being honest with myself and the business was succeeding. That is how most entrepreneurs and creators feel. But when a group of unethical competitors hid behind their keyboards and destroyed my reputation online, it felt hopeless. Even though the people I was doing business with knew the things being written about me were fake, they did not want to be associated with it. I could barely even get a girl to go on a second date with me if she looked online at the libel that had been written about me.
I quickly learned that since technology moves so much faster than legislation, there was absolutely nothing I could do in court to end these illegal attacks. After two years of working with lawyers, public relations companies, and reputation management firms, I finally had to take things into my own hands and find solutions. Working tirelessly paid off, and after I solved my problem, it did not take long for other people who were experiencing the same issues to find me for help. Now I have made it my mission to help people tell their story.
How did you promote your company in the early days?
Vito Glazers: When I first started One World Publishing, I did not have a lot of money for marketing, so I started with Email marketing to promote my advertising network. I did a lot of manual reach outs. Just finding contacts online and contacting them on Skype, calling or Emailing them. Social media was just starting out and I was one of the first companies that really took advantage of that and built a following on it. Even with social media growing, my goal was to get prospects into my Email list. At the company’s peak, I had more than 13,000 publishers in the Email list. I would send an Email out every Sunday night, and Monday morning the office would be flooded with inquiries.
How have you been able to grow your business? Get specific.
Vito Glazers: The best method that I have used to grow One World Publishing has been through joint ventures with thought leaders. I do a surprisingly small amount of paid advertising for someone with such a dynamic background in adtech, but I would say that my advertising is efficient and effective. The majority of my marketing revolves around doing joint ventures with the top thought leaders in different industries, and educating their audiences on how to protect their reputation online and in the real world, as well as how to navigate the digital media landscape from a branding perspective. Outside of speaking and partnerships, I make sure to stay on top of updating all social media channels and drive those prospects to my website. The only paid advertising I religiously invest in is retargeting.
What are some secrets to virality/sales in your most successful platform (Fb, Twitter, IG, Snap, Ecommerce, etc)?
Vito Glazers: There are two secrets that I have found work for me over and over again in terms of generating virality.
The first is to really know your audience. No matter what you are doing, whether its selling cars, running a campaign for life insurance, or making a film, you have to know exactly who you are appealing to and how to connect with them. There are a lot of options for just about everything now. For people to consume what you have to offer, you have to speak their love language and make them want to come to you. So audience is always key.
My other secret is something called newsjacking. Newsjacking is the ability to make a controversial statement in a brand’s voice on a trending topic in the media, and by making this controversial or polarizing statement, generating media attention. You have to be careful with this one, because if done correctly, can be very polarizing. The goal is to double down and fully appeal to your core audience. President Trump and Elon Musk are two of the best news jackers in the world.
What do you think you do better than most people? How are you able to do it?
Vito Glazers: One of the things that I am better than most people at, is being able to understand an audience, and crafting a story that will be well received. I follow a variety of formulas when telling stories, or helping clients develop their story. One thing I realized, is that no matter what the topic is, people want to know about the history and the journey of the person telling the story. It is always important to put the background into context. It is also important to have a clearly defined mission. The most important thing about creating a story, is keeping it genuine, relatable, fun, inspiration and motivational. Stories should be entertaining, but also educational. Audiences want to feel like the received value from the content they spend their time consuming now.
So how can millennials protect their reputation online?
Vito Glazers: Defining your personal and brand narrative, and mastering the art of telling your story is a work in progress that will likely be a journey that lasts as long as your brand does. But there are a few things anybody can focus on if they want to protect their reputation online and build a foundation to build their brand’s story on.
The first is to create established and updated profiles on all the major social media networks. It is ideal to give your followers different content on each platform so they have a reason to follow you there. The most important task for protecting your reputation, is to keep it updated. Many business owners have told me stories about losing out on a customer because their social media had not been updated for several months or longer, and then finding out from the potential customer later on that an opportunity there was missed. Keeping updated social media also ranks high on search engines for your personal brand.
Besides keeping all the major social media outlets up to date, it’s important to have regularly scheduled, updated, new and valuable content being published about you. That can be updates on a website, interviews in business blogs, educational blog posts, or whatever fits the brand, but always have content coming out. Ideally some of the content will be on a homepage, and some of the content will be featured on other blogs.
Lastly, work on getting positioned as an authority or expert in your space. Give value to journalists and reach out to high level industry publications and work to get earned media coverage. Work with a PR agency to do a newsjacking campaign about something controversial. Or align with a cause and spend resources promoting the cause, and also promoting, and protecting the brand’s name and legacy in the process.
Where do you see yourself in a couple years? What’s your dream?
Vito Glazers: In 5 years I see myself running a growing digital agency and working on producing films full time. I love using film to tell people’s stories. My dream is to grow a large enough platform and following to be able to tell stories about unknown people or subjects, and launch national and global conversations about them. Right now, I am only doing films about famous public figures. The films are getting interest because the subjects of the films are famous people, and that’s great and I am extremely grateful to be involved in projects that audiences care about. But there is a lot of great stories out there that need to be told and stories that can help change audiences lives for the better, so I hope to be part of a platform where I am influential enough to be able to drive audiences to those stories.
It was a pleasure interviewing Vito Glazers. We can surely learn a lot from him.
He can be reached at:
Facebook: @vitoglazers
Instagram: @vitoglazers
Twitter: @vitoglazers
Website: https://vitoglazers.com