Meet Yu-Ming Wu, the Busiest Man in the Digital Media World of Sneakers
Yu-Ming Wu is probably working right now. At this very moment. Like right now.
The New York City native is the founder and publisher of Sneaker News, the web’s premiere destination for sneakerheads and the most read publication pertaining to footwear. He also founded Sneaker Con, the world’s biggest sneaker convention and is a partner at a New York-based retail and consignment shop named Stadium Goods. Within each business, Yu-Ming manages the digital media and marketing aspects by administering and creating high-quality digital content to attract consumers to each. To balance all of that, one must a master at multitasking, right?
We sat down with Mr. Wu to discuss a day in his extremely busy life and social media tips on engaging his ‘sneaker’ audience.
11:00 AM EST – The Email Run
The first thing I always do is check my emails. I have several email accounts for my different business, and I usually open them up to about 50 emails, total, between all of them each day. I generally try not to answer emails between midnight at 10:45 AM, which is why they pile up when I do get around to them. I really just like waiting until I get to the office.
12:00 PM EST – Fire Extinguisher
Next, I set myself up to deal with the daily issues of running a business. I try to pinpoint which business is the priority at that time. Basically, I see which company’s fire needs to be put out at that particular moment. I’m still publisher on the Sneaker News side, so on a high level I’m still looking at what we’re doing as a company, future-wise. Editorially, I don’t make as many choices as I did in the past, but in terms of what we’re doing, social networking-wise, I’m still heavily involved. With Sneaker Con, a lot of my focus is on the digital marketing aspect of it. So I’m constantly looking at how our tickets are selling for the next show and are we promoting the event enough. With Stadium Goods, I am officially the Chief Marketing Officer there, so I primarily deal with digital marketing as well. I put my hands on whatever we’re doing marketing wise, whether it’s talking to the press or working with different media companies to make sure our press looks good. We’ve also kicked off an editorial aspect to Stadium Goods because we want to be known as somewhat of an expert in the field of sneakers. So we’re publishing sneaker content – giving history lessons to our customers – at a near-expert level. Believe it or not, a lot of our shoppers are not sneakerheads; we do have the sneakerhead population that shops with us but we have a lot of tourists and people who simply find us on Google that come into the shop. So the purpose of our sneaker content is to inform that particular shopper about specific shoes.
With putting out all of the fires for each one of those businesses, that brings me to about the midway point of the day.
2:30 PM EST – MultiTasking
At this point, I’m usually attacking my businesses on case-by-case situations. For example, I had a meeting with my Sneaker Con partner, Alan, about our next show – in regards to whether we were going to do the basketball game again or not. I also worked with our new editor on the Stadium Goods side to discuss our editorial direction moving forward, and I chatted with my Sneaker News team to discuss a branded video that we’re working on. So it’s quite a bit of multitasking to say the least. I am very lucky to have mastered multitasking in a sense; I’m very good at switching roles and switching my mindset between businesses at the drop of a dime.
7:00 PM EST – The Sneaker Con Weekend
I’m usually out of this office by 7 PM, but during Sneaker Con event weeks I don’t even come in to the office on Thursday’s and Friday’s. I actually attend every Sneaker Con, by the way, and all of my teams within my different businesses know that Friday is off limits for me in regards to putting fires out because I’m so focused on the show for that weekend. Unless it’s super important, I don’t tend to the other business during that time. I always keep my laptop with me just in case though.
1:30 AM EST – Conference Calls
For me, there is no morning or night. Usually, there’s a traditional morning of people waking up at some point between 6 AM and 9 AM, but that doesn’t exist in my world. This is the time in which I usually connect with my people overseas. For instance, I was on a conference call with my developers in India at 1:30 AM just last night. We were discussing a special project that we’re working on around Instagram and how we can effectively monetize the power of our account. We’ve been bouncing ideas off of each other back and forth on email, but I wanted to get on a call to kind of hash things out a bit. Usually, my calls are about 1-1 1/2 hours, but this one only lasted 40 minutes.
2:15 AM EST – ‘Me’ Time
Just to laugh a little bit, I usually spend the next hour catching up on some TV – just to settle down a bit and get my mind completely off of sneakers, my business and all of that stuff. My snooze time usually begins around 3 AM, and I always wake up around 10:30 AM.
On Page 2, Yu-Ming Wu provides social media tips on engaging your audience.
