Best Practices: How to Get the Most from Your Enterprise Publishing System, Part II

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Best Practices: How to Get the Most from Your Enterprise Publishing System, Part II

February 17, 2014

Sometimes, we think we need new software to expand our capabilities, when we can really just make better use of what we have. Here are a few ideas to make sure you are using your Enterprise Publishing System (EPS) to its fullest potential. 

In our last post, we outlined four capabilities that you can use to build revenue and increase efficiency:

  • One-click subscription sign up
  • A-B Testing
  • Specialized Information Products
  • Responsive eNewsletters

Now that you’ve had time to look at your EPS in the context of those four, let’s add to the checklist.

White Label Subscriptions: Chances are, you have partnerships with companies that produce proprietary data or content that adds value to your content and is relevant to your readers. White labeling allows you to sell access to value-added data or a re-branded subscription service targeting a specific segment of your audience or marketed to expand your market. 

Natural Gas Intel's Shale Gas Prices and Bid Week Price Data feed complement its focus on state and regional gas prices and trends by aggregating data from many disparate sources.

Similarly, Modern Distribution Management produces sponsored newsletters that group MDM's proprietary articles with advertorial content from a sponsor. The newsletter often includes a link to a webinar or video managed by the sponsor. The sponsor pays a premium to access MDM's audience under the MDM brand. 

Webinar Subscriptions: Want to get the most mileage out of your webinars? Create a subscription.  The FDA Training Pass offers access to an archive of webinars in one place as a training and education tool. Site visitors can purchase a webinar access-specific subscription and gain comprehensive knowledge in a particular topic area, while you learn more about your audience's content and format preferences.

Metered Content and Google News: Are you metering?  If you aren’t, you are missing out on opportunities to fully monetize your content and provide another option for readers to access premium content.  Metering tools give you flexibility to test the optimal number of articles or downloads to make available before requiring payment, subscription or registration.

For Natural Gas Intel, Google visit referrals increased 40% increase after their acceptance into Google News.  While Google news has helped drive traffic to their site from Google Searches, NGI has made the most of the opportunity, using contextual offers and a finely tuned metered paywall to increase conversions while offering fewer trials. Revenue is up 22% in four months, since implementing this winning combination.

Advertising Targeting. Online ad models are constantly evolving to meet increasing demands from advertisers to reach specific people based on content and product preferences. Topic pages and other places where readers reveal interests through online behavior are an excellent opportunity to add value.

Three particular locations offer the opportunity to identify specific interests or preferences:

But, it’s also about the ability to shift your strategy. You can:

  • Topic landing pages: dynamically generated pages that present articles, downloads and other content on a specific taxonomy. 
  • Search results pages: search strings reveal demand for content and products even if they're not on your site.
  • Event tab pages: tracking traffic to specific session pages will identify segments of a larger audience.
  • Provide content marketing for advertisers; tell a story in addition to displaying a message.
  • Offer native ad/sponsorship ads.
  • Deliver qualified leads in addition to impression data.  Try a Buyers Guide - your advertisers will manage it for you!

Optimize Every Update.    Built in SEO tools will save you money in consulting fees and bring more traffic to your site.  Make sure articles and posts have search engine friendly urls, and that editors are analyzing keywords and applying meta-keywords and meta-data. Every update will make your site more visible to Google, Bing and other search engines.

Before you start thinking about new software, take a look at these capabilities and make sure you are leveraging them for your success--to increase efficiencies, engage readers and make more money.