Wow Strategies For Publishers To Engage Their Readers

In the era of enormous content consumption, why should potential readers choose books or journalistic pieces instead of easily digestible YouTube videos or Elon's Tweets?

Marketing strategies for publishing companies require more than just SEO optimized blog posts and promotional videos. Even if publishers interact with users on all social platforms, it does not necessarily guarantee audience engagement. 

What does then? Content that resonates with readers on a personal level does the trick. Let's check three effective engagement strategies from high-profile media brands:

Effortless Solutions For Publishers

Webinars with authors, live events, content partnerships, influencer marketing are good tactics, but they all require a large investment of time, not to mention cost. There are a few ideas that can be implemented in just one day and result in higher engagement: 

Product Recommendation Quiz

Start being helpful. For example, help your audience find the right product on your website - such as an article or book.  

You do not have to text with your readers in a live chat. Instead, include a product recommendation quiz on a homepage or on specific landing pages of your website. While this tactic is often used in e-commerce due to the large number of products, it can also be used effectively by modern publishers.

With a custom quiz, you can provide personalized product recommendations based on the user's preferences, interests, and needs.

Here's how Book Riot does it on their website:

The largest independent editorial book site in North America also has a pop up encouraging new visitors to take a quiz and get content recommendation:

Creating a book quiz like this is easier than it looks as it does not require coding. Here's step-by-step manual:

Step 1: Create a Free involve.me Account and Choose a Template

No matter what template you choose, you can change every little thing in it - layout, colors, logic behind a quiz, etc.

Step 2: Add Your Own Questions

To write the right questions, first think about books and articles you want to promote. You should also consider the different types of audience and create a separate logic path for each type.

It's recommended to use a mix of multiple-choice and open-ended questions to get a better understanding of your audience's preferences.

Step 3: Match Questions with Answers

Each of the answer options should be assigned to a specific product group. Thus, if users select "science fiction" as their preferred genre, they must receive appropriate recommendations.

Here's how you can map your answers to outcomes: 

💡To increase the likelihood of a sale, redirect the user to the page where the book is available for purchase, rather than simply displaying the book title as the quiz result.

Step 4: Test Your Quiz and Share 

Everything is working as you planned? Great! Publish your quiz and share it with your audience. You can either embed it on your website, send via email, or post it on your social media channels. Helpful, high-quality content, such as a quiz with book recommendations, is more likely to be re-posted by users.

With involve.me's analytics dashboard, you can view completion rates, partial submissions, demographics and more. This helps you identify book trends among your readers and optimize your quiz for better participation (by changing some questions or shortening your quiz, for example).

Personality Quiz

Custom personality quizzes are a bit different from product recommendation quizzes. They're designed to help users learn more about themselves, their personality traits, and their preferences.

Here are some personality quiz topics digital publishers can cover:

- What Genre Should You Read Next?

- Which Fictional Character Are You Most Like?

- Which Historical Figure Are You?

- Which Famous Author Are You?

- What Kind of Bookworm Are You?

Why would anyone take a quiz like this? It's a fun and engaging way to discover new books and authors your visitors may not have known about. And unlike the trendy Buzzfeed quizzes that millions of people use every day, it offers more practical value. 

Grab one of the templates to create your own personality quiz:

💡 No matter what quiz type you choose as an interactive element for your website, it's essential to collect first-party data such as email address, education level, and browsing history. This data can help you create more effective and targeted email campaigns.

To collect personal information using involve.me, simply add a "Contact Form" element to one of your project's pages:

Contests and Giveaways

Creative native content is just one of the effortless strategies for publishers. To generate more buzz on all your social media platforms, you can create a giveaway contest.

For instance, you can ask your audience to submit photos or videos related to a specific topic. This way you will get tons of free, user-generated content as well as happy followers who will win prizes. 

Another idea is to create a knowledge quiz and offer a prize to the person who answers the most questions correctly.

💡 To make it more challenging, set a countdown that applies to your overall quiz. You can find this involve.me feature on the top navbar in the editor, just click the gear icon:

A giveaway can be an effective strategy to attract potential subscribers without breaking the bank. Depending on your business, you can offer a range of prizes such as physical products, free trial subscriptions, e-books, or services.

And if you need more data about your users', you can combine a giveaway with a survey. Just like in this example:

The Hidden Benefits of High Engagement

All businesses want to keep their users engaged for two reasons - to increase customer lifetime and naturally attract more users. But there are some other benefits of high engagement that can be achieved with little effort:

Community Building

Creating awesome user experience can help you foster a sense of community among readers. Having a community means getting free user-generated content and valuable feedback on your offerings, features.

As practice shows, a loyal and engaged audience is more likely to share the publisher's content, and become brand advocates.

More Opportunities for Monetization

Publishers with highly engaged audience have more chances to generate revenue from their content, apart from using display ads. These opportunities include options such as affiliate marketing, sponsorship, and merchandising.

Something not very obvious - an engaged audience can help you develop a true product thinking mindset. With insights your audience provides (like their preferences and backgrounds), you can create personalized content your users will love and buy.

Better SEO

Interactive elements such as quizzes, surveys, giveaways make readers spend more time on your website. It directly signals to search engines that your website content is high-quality and deserves higher search engine rankings. 

Moreover, interactive elements can also help reduce bounce rates, which is an important metric for search engine optimization. 

SEO is a tedious task, but if you heed the tips presented here, you can achieve better results with fewer resources.

Final Words

Relying solely on banner ads or mass marketing emails is not enough for publishers to effectively engage with their audience.

To truly foster engagement, it's essential to analyze the available content categories and create personalized content that is relevant to readers. This way, digital publishers can gain a better understanding of their readers and collect more data. A combination of audience data and market trends helps ambitious publishers create compelling content that resonates with their target audience.

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