With the rise of self-publishing website Medium, microblogging platforms like Tumblr, and the multitude of social media channels available, everyone’s a publisher these days. However, while this has been great for giving people a voice, it’s also made it increasingly difficult to attract and retain audience attention. There’s a lot of content out there, produced at a rapid pace and by a wide variety of sources — meaning publishers are now competing against everyone from marketers to social media personalities for attention time.
Here’s how to stand out as a go-to source of information amidst this content glut:
Go Mobile
Whether through an app or mobile-optimized site, making your content easily consumable on mobile is one of the best ways to maximize your traffic. According to Pew Research Center’s analysis of comScore data at the start 2015, 39 of the top 50 digital news websites generated more traffic to their sites (and apps) through mobile than desktop.
Though desktop visitors do spend more time per visit for most of these sites (with only 10 sites showing the reverse trend) this shift towards mobile is still significant. If people are consuming content on mobile, making your stories easily accessible and shareable in that environment will help them travel further. Creating unique mobile-specific experiences can increase time spent as well, further helping with distribution.
Embrace Multi-platforms and Formats
Earlier this year, Condé Nast reported a 75 per cent year over year growth of their digital audience and a 132 per cent year over year growth in mobile. Across their 21 websites and 17 digital video channels, the media giant attracted 80.9 million consumers in February 2015.
What’s their secret?
According to Bob Sauerberg, president of Condé Nast, “These results speak to the quality and power of our content across all platforms.” Elsewhere, he has stated that the aim is to make Condé Nast “the home of the best pages, screens and experiences,” by making core assets available on platforms where they can succeed. This cross-platform approach is essential in growing your reach because it provides audiences multiple entry points into your brand. For example, podcast listening in America has almost doubled in less than 10 years, with download requests rising from 1.6 billion in 2012 to 2.6 billion in 2014. By creating content to for this group of people, you can introduce a whole new audience to your brand.
Provide Engagement Tools
We’ve come back to this study by the Engaging News Project a few times, and that’s because it’s so telling. Their research shows that audiences are going online to engage in dialogue, express their views, hear from others and participate in a community. Providing a safe, moderated arena for that connectedness will no doubt encourage people to your site for discussion. This will not only increase your traffic, but also your reach as people share the discussions and stories they’re engaging with. This has the added benefit of gaining you an engaged and loyal readership that you can monetize, as opposed to just a large number of page views.
Socialize Your Content
Giving your audience the ability to share your content is just one prong of the social game. The other is being actively involved in social yourself. This doesn’t just mean sharing your own content (though that’s important as well), but getting involved and driving the social conversation around a topic. For example, when The Washington Post sponsored the hashtag #Election, they established themselves as the go-to source of information about the event in 2010. According to The Pew Research Center, 63 per cent of both Twitter and Facebook users get news about events and issues from those platforms (not including shares from family and friends). Being on these and other social channels will drive these audiences to your content more readily.
Analytics
Last but certainly not least is analytics. Analytics can help you growth hack your way to wider audiences because you’ll better understand who your content is attracting and can tailor your newsroom accordingly. It can help you erase “church-state” separation in publishing by tracking how branded content performs, it can help you identify when a story is “good enough,” and it can help you monetize your strategies. Simply put, audience development is driven by analytics and data these days, and they are essential for your growth.
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