Skillfully deploying publisher content is a key to multiplatform publishing; plus subscription strategies and more
Repurposing publisher content is a best practice that all Mequoda Members do as a matter of course.
You should try it, too.
It provides great value, requires minimal albeit dedicated investment of resources, and can generate revenue while you sleep. It fuels social efforts, varies your offerings for consumers, and gives you flexibility.
Digiday covers this latest trends, while also touching on some other interesting developments like subscriptions and tech. Let’s start with them this week!
Publisher Content Is a Renewable Resource
Digiday explores how the modern magazine publisher content goals are evolving, but also drawing upon what has come before.
“Part of the increased interest in evergreen content is the rise of Facebook. The average lifespan of a post (when an article reached 90 percent of its pageviews) is about 2.6 days, according to Parsely, a publishing analytics firm. That’s not a ton of time, and it means that publishers have to create a lot of content to sustain their traffic, and evergreen content can do that, said Sachin Kamdar, Parsely’s CEO,” Lucia Moses writes.
“News publishers may have a bias in favor of the new, but they’re also learning evergreen tricks. The New York Times has been experimenting with ways to repurpose archived content for the past couple of years, since its 2014 Innovation Report pointed to the need for it. Recently, it introduced a new section on the home page and apps, Smarter Living: Tips for Daily Life, highlights service journalism pieces in areas like health, food and tech.”
The Washington Post Working Hard on Digital Subscriptions
Subscription strategies are a priority for The Washington Post, and it’s working, Digiday reports.
“The Post has been selling digital subs for three years, and its strategy has a number of prongs to it. First, there’s distributing the journalism to as wide an audience as possible, through social media; hence the Post publishes all its stories to Facebook Instant Articles. Taking advantage of Bezos’ role at Amazon, the paper also pushed out the brand by making its app free on the Amazon Kindle Fire tablet and offering free, six-month subs to Amazon Prime members. On the content side, it’s broadening the opinion and politics coverage, two areas that the Post said subscribers are especially interested in,” Moses writes.
“The No. 1 predictor of people subscribing is how much they read, so once people have sampled, the next step is to get them reading more. To that, the paper has cut page load time 85 percent and studied reader behavior to determine what articles to offer them next. … It’s also making a big push with email newsletters as loyalty tools.”
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Time Inc.’s Latest Acquisition Provides Glimpse of Intent
Time Inc.’s tear continues, this time with the acquisition of Collective, Digiday reports.
“London-based Collective and its 47 staff will continue to operate separately but will now collaborate with Time Inc. staff on briefs with clients. The company has clients including O2, Sky, Disney and Unilever, and it provided branded content, display and video services for them. It also has a suite of digital native ad products Time Inc. can now tap. The move is going to set in motion numerous other plays, predominantly in the native advertising, video and programmatic space, according to Time Inc. UK’s chief revenue officer, Sam Finlay,” Jessica Davies writes.
“The two main areas Collective will help Time Inc. UK scale: programmatic and native advertising. The publisher was relatively slow to join the party when it comes to in-house native content studios, but it’s looking to catch up fast. It launched its creative solutions arm, The Foundry, earlier this year and has since seen revenues grow ‘double digits,’ according to Finlay. The studio’s structure is still being finessed, but this is a major area the publisher plans to scale.”
Publishing Tech: The Pitfalls
Interesting post at Digiday about publisher tech problems.
“Most publishers aren’t intentionally overloading a page with scripts to create a horrid user experience, goading their precious audiences into leaving or spurring them to install ad blockers. Once someone has taken either step the publisher has lost control. The publisher needs to act before this ever happens, deciding which scripts to block and how to optimize, improve user experience, maximize revenue and help their business partners,” DashBid CEO Tom Herman writes.
“Publishers need to separate revenue opportunities and useful applications from the unwanted elements that tag along for the ride. They need the ability to block unwanted scripts that cause latencies or come from unrecognized vendors who may be stealing data or worse. They need to do so on an individual basis, without throwing out the baby with the bathwater.”
Are you a publisher? Content a conundrum? Let us know what’s going on in the comments!
To read more about publisher content concerns and other news, visit Digiday.
