Inside The Huddle: Monetizing Social Content With Alex Korn

In the buildup to Front Office Sports’ Digital Media Huddle presented by opendorse on February 22, we’re introducing you to the huddle leaders who will be lending their expertise to the conversation.

Today, meet Alex Korn, senior director of content, partnerships & talent at Whistle. He will be one of the leaders of the huddle “Making Money on Social: Creating and Delivering Monetizable Assets.”

Korn came to Whistle in 2016 after seven years at sports and entertainment marketing agency star power. Korn leads the charge in helping to create and distribute content across Whistle’s social channels, for brands and leading streaming and linear content providers. One of Whistle’s staples in this area is longer-form premium video content, which Korn helps bring to life alongside Whistle’s studio team.

Much of this content features Whistle’s community of creators, professional athletes and top social influencers. Korn oversees relationships with talent as well as the procurement and casting process. In his role with Whistle, Korn takes pride in making an impact on today’s social generation through Whistle’s content.

“Whistle is a company that genuinely believes in creating good content that’s motivational, that’s positive, that’s trusted,” Korn stated. “The creators and talent that we work with want to embody that ethos. The brands and platforms that we partner with believe in and benefit from that message and know they can come to Whistle to inspire their audience in a positive way.”

With the digital and social landscape changing so rapidly, Korn credits his team’s ability to stay on top of trends and adapt to new best practices by leveraging research and insights when making key content decisions.

“Working in the content creation space you learn that everything changes quickly. Keeping up with different creators, platform modifications and analyzing data is a challenge that takes a tremendous amount of effort. But, those things have helped me and Whistle become a forerunner in the industry and that you’ll see is a common denominator among leaders in this space.”

Looking forward to being part of @frntofficesport's innovative take on industry events. Will be discussing how to create and deliver monetizable assets on social alongside @jonahballow #HuddleSeries 💡👍

For tix and more info: https://t.co/geVkcrkzsK pic.twitter.com/bDFAkAEzpj

— Alex Korn (@akornNYC) January 12, 2019

A great example of this is Whistle’s original series “Bad Jokes”  that lives primarily on its YouTube channel, where a wide array of celebrity creators and talent try to make each other laugh with some of the corniest one-liners you’ve ever heard. In late 2018, after conducting research and surveys on who would resonate most with their audience, Korn and team created an installment in this series that featured the stars of the cult classic baseball movie “The Sandlot,” which Korn a self-proclaimed superfan of the film explained was up there as one of the highlights of his career.

Having an ability to adapt and continually innovate is something Korn suggests all digital professionals learn in order to properly monetize social content.

“Creating monetizable content requires constant iteration and something that is ever changing. One formula doesn’t work across all platforms and you really need to be strategic in the way that you’re going to program for each platform in order to be successful.”

Meet Alex and hear more of his thoughts on the current digital landscape at the Front Office Sports Digital Media Huddle presented by opendorse in New York on February 22. For tickets and additional info, click here.