How to behave like a publisher and make the most of your content

If you are a brand of any size now, you’re a publisher of content. Businesses now publish content across multiple channels, and in many cases serve it up in personalized individual ways for each consumer.

Successful brands like Nike now create and distribute as much content as many traditional ‘publishing’ companies. It’s important to recognize this, as it’s a mindset shift from the traditional approach of purely advertising and using a website to convert. So, what does it mean to act and think like a publisher?

Publish once, distribute many times

A key aspect of digital publishing is the ability to maximize the use of a piece of content through the distribution process. This means every piece of content should work hard across all relevant channels once created. A publishing company such as the New York Times will create a piece of content, publish on their site, app but also distribute it through CRM & social, lighting up multiple audience groups. Brands have evolved this same approach, ensuring that content is distributed to audiences across all channels.

TAKEAWAY: Think through all your relevant channels for distribution. If you’re creating content, consider how elements or all of it could be reused. For example, if you’re building content for your social channels or SEO could it be used for onboarding CRM emails too?

Create replicable formats

Whilst it’s important to publish and distribute, it’s also key to create some expectation from the audience around the kind of content they can expect - and grow individual audiences around content they engage with. Publishers do this by establishing series with replicable formats – and successful brands have followed suit. These formats or franchises are usually named and given a type of design and styling (We like the schadenfreude of PinkBike’s #fridayfails posts, for example). As a publisher develops content it always considers if it can be turned into a replicable format from the start if it resonates.

TAKEAWAY: From the moment you start creating, develop concepts that are repeatable, if they work, keep building the audience around them.

Make data-driven decisions

It used to be that editors made decisions on what would delight their audience based on gut instinct and experience. Sounds great, DAD. Publishing companies now use audience data to determine areas of interest to their audience and specific topics they should invest time in. Publishing companies now have audience development divisions that work with data teams to build and develop their audiences by creating the demonstrably resonant content.

TAKEAWAY: Look at your audience data and establish what is actually working and what’s not. Invest time in creating topics or content types that are resonating and delivering on your business goals.

Think organic engagement first

A big aspect that separates brands from publishing companies is that publishing companies start with zero media budget to drive reach in their content – it’s organic engagement or bust. Whereas traditional brands reflexively spin up media budget, often spending millions to try and get a message in front of their audience, it’s often a message that doesn’t really resonate. Editors have to create content that will organically be engaged with, this forces them to ask tough questions as to whether people will be interested without having it thrust in front of their eyeballs.

In British journalism this is often referred to as the ‘pub test’, would someone in a bar be interested in this story and share it with someone else at the end of the day? If not, is it worth spending time on?

TAKEAWAY: Always think ‘would someone be interested in this?’ before you create, if the answer is no, consider how you could change your approach to drive engagement.

Create the engagement loop

Gone are the days of publishing companies just creating content through linear channels such as print and tv without any one-to-one engagement. Social media fundamentally changed publishing. For the first time, publishers could directly engage with their audience. Successful publishers brought the audience into their storytelling, creating a loop in which the audience was engaged around a topic, content was created around the topic, the content shared and audience re-engaged. By doing this the audience is actually part of the storytelling and creation process, it brings them into the fold.

TAKEAWAY: Engage your audience throughout your content creation process, use them in your storytelling and ask them what they want to see or their opinions.