1. How to Become a Future-Ready Publisher
by building a digital supply chain of your content — and audience
2. But first, a few questions
#Sourcing
We have a good team
of in-house writers and
ad-hoc contributors
across the industry.
What other channels
do we use to generate
content?
#Production
Apart from the usual
articles, we produce
videos, audios, chats,
surveys and listings.
How deep is their
integration with our
mainstream content?
#Packaging
Our archive has five
years worth of stories
on every aspect of
people management.
Can readers find and
experience our content
based on their habits?
#Distribution
All our content can be
accessed on our web
and mobile sites.
What is our visibility
on our audience’s most
preferred platforms for
media consumption?
#Metrics
We generate several million pageviews a year and are
know as the top media platform in our niche.
But do we know which audience segment generates
most of these page views? Or the location? Or device?
Or time of day? What intelligence do we have?
#Monetisation
Advertising, both in print and online, is our primary
source of revenue. We also have a modest income
from corporate and individual print subscriptions.
Can we charge a premium by being innovative with our
inventory? How do we encourage digital subscribers?
What can we change to plug these gaps in our publishing? For starters, let’s pick just 10 points of action.
3. 1. Build a list-ening grid #sourcing
Segment audiences by industry and role. Then use list-based
tools to track their conversations and preferences.
Look for and engage with topics or influencers with high
social gravity. Include these in our editorial checklist.
Establish our lists as great resources for the industry to
follow. Each list must also be developed into a good sample
userbase for any content we produce in that segment.
Similarly, use Google’s keyword and trends tools to track
rising searches in various segments. This will ensure that our
content machine responds in time to changes in audience
interest and rides these graphs to their peak.
These tools will give us a very wide pool of topics to address.
How will we ensure our content throughput keeps up?
4. 2. Set up contributor programs #sourcing
Our team of in-house writers is finite. And
they can never be experts at everything.
Hence, user contributions.
Brands, industry leaders, even bloggers
seek a share of voice in their niche media.
But their contributions are usually one-off
appearances and inconsistent over time.
Build relationship programs that connect
with all types of influencers, map them to
an area of expertise and then assign and
retrieve regular contributions from them.
Outreach for content will also improve our
speaker selection, lead generation, talent
referral, even audience development.
Conversely, can we get such non-editorial
activities to generate content?
5. 3. Get content, data at events #sourcing
The Internet Retail Expo ‘14 sessions can be accessed
as trailers, full videos, slideshows, Storifys, even
audience data charts. Can such event archives evolve
into a paywalled and searchable knowledgebase?
Our events — we do several each month — aggregate
the industry’s best around meaningful conversations.
Why do they need to have a shelf life? Document
every interaction as a multimedia recap.
6. 4. Structure your content #production
Create content like code — in modules.
Modules can be reused and repurposed
across multiple stories. They are more
adaptive across platforms or contexts, and
easier to search, sort or filter.
Use natural language processing (NLP) to
automatically and thoroughly bag and tag
each module of content.
This structure also allows us to produce
stories with multiple, distinct sources and
creates possibilities for co-creation with
our users — even with programs.
With structure, we can also allow users to
follow specific topics, writers or stories
instead of the entire site. But how will we
ensure content relevance?
7. 5. Personalise #production #packaging
Once content is structured, we have
room for everything from gamification
and loyalty programs to engagement
tracking by module type, number of
modules per visit, and more.
The key is relevance. Know who and
what our audience reads, the order
they read it in, the platforms or devices
they read it on, the time of day and
location they read it at, people they
share it with. Plan, produce, deliver
content accordingly. Merchandise it.
In time, each user’s experience will be
customised to his/her preferences. But
how will we extend these insights to
macro-level editorial planning?
8. 6. Ride the audience’s habits #packaging
Audience insights, however granular,
show patterns over time. Broadcasters
have always used these as the basis for
their channel programming.
That’s why we know that Star Movies’
Fridays are comedy nights and Sunday
afternoons are thriller marathons.
We need to build audience habits and
push related properties that we want to
be known for, based on insights
gathered in sourcing and production.
Set up an editorial calendar to start
building monthly themes and recurring
genres. Then assign story ideas and
formats to writers and contributors.
Now, do we bring the audience to the
party or just go where the audience is?
9. 7. Show up and follow up #distribution
Connected audiences today consume news
and information in bits and pieces from
multiple streams — mobile notification
screens, email newsletters, social feeds,
aggregation apps, etc.
We need to be everywhere, no excuses. The
key is to automate just enough of the
process for it to stop being an effort, and
manually coordinate the rest so users don’t
feel there’s a robot across the channel.
But what happens when people talk back?
Social media management is exactly like
running a contact centre. Be quick, be
relevant, don’t screw up. Set up guidelines.
At a critical mass, our communication will
evolve beyond posts/replies to
reminders/suggestions. How will we know
when?
10. 8. Track the audience lifecycle #metrics
There’s no point to measuring
everything if we don’t know what to do
with it — and when. Hence, lifecycles.
Use cookies to identify users and
compile their online habits. Assign to
various stages of the audience lifecycle.
Transitions between stages can trigger
user prompts to dive deeper or stay on.
Track acquisition, retention, leakage, et
al. Identify affinities between user or
content segments. Build, act on data.
Correlate these with performance data
on our topics, formats, even authors.
With all these numbers, can’t we also
give advertisers better opportunities to
connect with our audience?
Visitor
New Contact
Engaged Contact
Evangelist Contact
Dropout
Slipping Contact
11. 9. Create new inventory #monetisation
Why have just display ads? Why not brand
multimedia content like infographics,
photos, videos, live chats, ebooks, more?
Note how IBM chose power of data as the
single theme for useful content in various
formats, then aggregated them in one unit.
Sponsored widgets are a tremendous way
for brands to build a reputation as a source
of useful content in their niche.
For users, we should also experiment with
freemium subscriptions, micropayments.
Steps 1 to 9 are all key changes in product,
workflow and culture. How will we execute
them without bringing the house down?
12. 10. Work with Content Strategy Experts
#smartpublishing
Sourcing
• List-ening Grid
• Event Content
• Social Gravity
• Relationship
Programs
Production
• Tools, Strategy
• NLP Effects
• Structured
Content, Data
Packaging
• Programmed
Publishing
• Content
Merchandising
Distribution
• Tools, Strategy
• Social, Email,
Mobile, UI/UX
Management
Metrics
• Tools, Strategy
• User Research
and Tracking
• Performance
Metrics, Alerts
Monetisation
• Inventory
Innovation
• Subscription
Programs
13. Need Help with Enabling Smartpublishing? Call us
Abhinav Dinesh Garg
Vice President – Marketing
Contact Number - +91 886 063 0933
Mail Address – abhinav@wirefoot.com
Pawan Kumar Gupta
Chief Executive Officer
Contact Number - +91 900 878 8500
Mail Address – pawan@wirefoot.com
