Week 1: A Conversation with Guest Speaker Clint Schaff by Jeannette Oganova

By UCLA X469.21 Student Jeannette Oganova

Clint Schaff was our first guest speaker, and he was incredibly informative about best practices in social media. He began the discussion by telling us a little about his background, which ranges from working for startups to managing major brand campaigns and a vast array of original storytelling experiences.

Clint was born and raised in a small town in North Dakota. He currently leads LA Times Studios, which is part of the LA Times. Some of his accomplishments include launching the studio to produce bonafide podcasting hits such as “Dirty John,” “The Ugly Truth,” “Detective Trapp,” “Man In The Window,” “Room 20,” “Chasing Cosby” and many more. 

Previously, Clint led US operations for a Vision7 – a global digital marketing agency group. At Vision7 and other agencies, he helped organizations and brands produce creative storytelling that connects with audiences in the spirit of informed conversation.

Clint started his career working for David Bowie, the New York Yankees and the Clinton-Gore White House. He has also served for 10 years as an adjunct professor for USC’s acclaimed Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

Some of the things we learned from Clint include:

• Even negative press and online discussion can be positive. Always seek to turn negative into positive.
• Partner on promotion. Team up with other content creators who target a similar audience. “I’ll promote you if you promote me” arrangements can be a win-win.
• Whenever you post content, consider the “POST” acronym:
  • P—people
  • O—objectives
  • S—strategies
  • T—technology

Clint concluded by stressing that we shouldn’t just present information to our audience – we should make the audience part of the discussion. He demonstrated this advice masterfully while discussing his background and encouraging us in the audience to say “next” whenever we got bored and wanted him to move on to the next topic.