Are we still making resolutions? Or are we going into 2021 with low expectations and our fingers crossed? Personal resolutions aside, I think we can all agree there is nothing wrong or superstitious with setting some business goals this year ... especially with all that we learned in 2020. From pivoting to virtual events and changing up content directions to the loss of newsstands/in person purchases, and more, so much more, 2020 has certainly helped shape this year's digital direction.
The TFD team rounded up some good goals to reach for this year so you can jump back on the content train, crush engagement and continue to grow an audience that loves to love you.
Stop trying to make Facebook happen
Facebook has long been a traffic driver for city and regional publishers, but over the course of 2020, we have seen a significant drop in traffic from Facebook. We’d love to say that we have a magic 8 ball that will tell us if/when it ever comes back, but we don’t. We’re not saying give up on Facebook altogether, but perhaps it’s time for publishers to give up on Facebook being the social media savior and start focusing on trying to grow other social media channels as potential traffic drivers.
Instagram is an obvious pivot from Facebook for publishers to focus on. But Instagram is focusing on amplifying video content and Reel content right now. In 2021, follow in the footsteps of publishers like YahooNews which are capitalizing on the algorithm’s new focus by uploading their TikTok content on Instagram.
Publishers on TikTok are amassing massive followings by utilizing a dedicated editor as a personality to host their videos. Washington Post has 833k followers on their TikTok account, where the channel’s host follows trends within the app while also reporting news and posting videos 1 - 2 times a day. You can tell that these are videos that are all produced using the app itself and their features are not formally edited. The quick editing within the app can absolutely be leveraged by publishers to create content about things going on in your community.
Last month I wrote Don't Sleep on Twitter, which outlined what I think are the best ways for publishers to leverage Twitter. Reiterating a point that we made already, Twitter is the only app that users expect to go to be linked out.
Humanizing your editors
In 2020 you should absolutely start humanizing your editors to your audience. Consider how popular SubStack is. In July they had over 100,000 people paying for newsletter content and those numbers are only growing. Take a page out of the Morning Brew’s book, and have your editors intro every newsletter and sign them off, greeting their audience every time they come into contact with them.
Publishers, I cannot stress this enough, elevate your editorial staff. Give your users the opportunity to become fans of them and their work. Make it easy for users to find all of their content on your site, link out to their Twitter accounts, have them on Facebook and Instagram Live to talk about stories they’ve written recently. Look at the success of #NewsNotNoise by Jessica Yellin on Instagram. If you have a podcast for your community, invite your editors onto the podcast so they can get exposed to your audience.
Get your website back end in order with Advanced Analytics
Attention spans are shrinking and audiences are harder to keep engaged. You can’t afford not to know what is and isn’t working with your audience and your website. If you can identify the audience that is most likely to convert, subscribe, or follow and see the topics and content they engage with most, you can build a plan toward monetizing that audience directly. Google makes learning how to use Analytics in this way easy with free Advanced Analytics courses. Plus, Google Analytics is getting a sexy new upgrade in Google Analytics 4. It’s the perfect time to invest in getting more out of your analytics dashboards.
Beyond that, you must fight for every conversion. If you can use a tool like Google Optimize (free) to A/B test your way into a “Subscribe”, “Donate”, or “Add to Cart” that outperforms the others by 10% you need to do that or you’re leaving money on the table.
Position Zero
The new holy grail of SEO is known as position zero. And it is, in fact, position zero. It’s the first search result on a Google results page that displays the answer to the users query without requiring a click. Sometimes it is a featured snippet which can show you a portion of the content of the article without requiring a click. Sometimes it’s the answer for what you should watch on tv tonight. This is position zero. After that is position 1, 2, and so on.
You may wonder what the benefits are of being in position zero in search. First and foremost is voice search. 41% of voice search results come from featured snippets and voice search is increasing its market share of searches in 2021. In a world where we live most of our lives on a screen, your brand visibility can in search can more than rival impressions from a physical event or offline effort. Featured snippets are most popular among searches including the keywords ‘best’, ‘make’, and are most popular with recipe searches. Ahrefs has a great overview of featured snippets and how you can land position zero.
Chat Bots
Customer service is rightfully a top priority for many brands, especially during a pandemic, ‘working hours’ aren’t always the traditional 9-5. Small business owners might be looking for information about where to advertise online at night or your customers might have a question about how to access your content outside of normal business hours.
Whether it’s arming your Facebook Messenger bots with responses to common questions or installing a chatbot on your website, it will be an easy way for your prospects and customers to get quick answers to common questions and not fill up customer service inboxes. Website visitors say the top benefits of chatbots are 24-hour service (64%), instant responses (55%), and answers to simple questions (55%).
If you use HubSpot, you already have access to amazing chatbot functionality. You can program responses, direct more complex questions to customer service teams and create tickets to prioritize responses.
Privacy and the First Party Cookie
First and third-party cookies are not created equal. Cookies are pieces of code that are saved by websites onto a user’s browser that are used for tracking personalization and session management. Third party cookies are set by domains that are not the website the user has visited, for example elements that are installed on your website like chat bots or social plugins. They save user behavior information to their browser which is used for behavioral ad targeting. There are lots of other types of cookies, but the main focus is on first party cookies, which are controlled by the website the user visits, collecting data on page views, number of users and sessions.
Google is phasing out third-party cookies to make the web more private and secure for users. Safari and Firefox already removed third-party cookies some years ago, but Google Chrome’s browser makes up 66% of the market share. 2021 is the time for publishers to get their house in order regarding their user’s privacy on their site. Go through all of your site’s plug-ins. Do you need to upgrade the versions? Talk to your vendors about how they’re handling the switch from third-party to first-party cookies.
Get Your Audience Involved
2021 is the year to get your audience excited about what you’re working on. Get them involved in the mission of your company. Start by defining the purpose of your company and then emulating that in everything that you do. Are you trying to be more sustainable? Are there different processes you could put in place that limit your company’s use of non-renewable resources? Make the purpose driven initiatives known to your audience. Be transparent with your audience about your process keeping them apprised of your progress towards your goal. Audience’s love to back a brand that has a purpose driven mission. Having a purpose has been proven to increase sales, improve brand loyalty and help brands stay top of mind with users that agree with their mission.
Now is the time to implement a User Generated Content campaign, and get creative with it. UGC has been proven to increase engagement and brand loyalty, but what it really does is create FOMO (fear of missing out). Seeing other people read your magazine or engaging with your contest/content can create a ‘what about me?’ feeling in people outside of your most loyal audience, that perhaps they’re missing something, and hopefully compels them to purchase.
Where are you focusing your energy this year? What lessons did 2020 teach you and how are pivoting? I’d love to chat! Email me at natalie@twentyfirstdigital.com.