Data-driven Publishing: A Definitive Guide

Written by : Rashmi Singh

The time has gone when digital publishers like news websites and magazine publishers used to create and publish content based on a hunch. Now, the publishers have several powerful tools at hand that help in data-driven publishing. 

Data-driven publishing is the key to getting consistent performance from your content. If you are wondering what that is, this guide is for you. Down below, we have explained the basics of data-driven publishing and practical tips on how you can implement it for your digital content marketing strategy. 

A common but false notion among publishers is that their work ends as soon as they hit the publish button. But the truth is, a high-ROI task starts only after a piece of content is published i.e., collecting engagement data. The process of using data to take editorial decisions is called data-driven publishing. 

As soon as you publish content, you should do something called a performance analysis. It includes capturing data about how users engaged with a piece of data. The performance analysis helps you with data-driven publishing in the future. 

Most of the time, the bottleneck of data-driven publishing proves to be the variety of sources through which publishers source the data. Collecting third-party data is the most common method of data collection but that is simply not enough. 

Here is a list of potential sources for collecting data:

• First-party data: Why rely on third-party data when you can collect first-party data on your website and apps? Every modern CMS provides the option of collecting first-party that can help you in decision making. 
  

• User Surveys: B2C and B2C brands use customer surveys to take a majority of decisions about their products. But, digital publishers rarely use user surveys to get insights into their content. You can use this under-utilized data-collection method by using any of the easy-to-use survey tools available in the market. 
  

• Social Media: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and every other major social media platform offer analytics to company pages. You can use analytics to get insights into the share-ability of any piece of content. Along with that, you can also use social polls to actively get quick insights from your audience. 
  

• Keyword Analysis: Billions of searches are made every day. This creates a huge opportunity for businesses that create content. But you certainly do not want to get random traffic from the internet. To get traffic that is interested in certain topics, you can do keyword analysis with the help of SEO tools and then get ranked for them on search pages. 
  

The following benefits of data-driven publishing make it worth looking into numbers:

• Performance analysis can uncover the average user behavior. Once you get enough insights into your users’ behavior and publish accordingly, you will start getting consistent engagement. 
  

• Data-driven publishing does not just help with the quantity of traffic but also the quality of traffic. For example, during keyword analysis, you can actively look for keywords that attract your desired demographics. 
  

• If you work on a subscription model, data-driven publishing can help you get more sign-ups, which will ultimately result in more revenue. 
  

Data-driven publishing involves making editorial decisions that are informed by user engagement analytics. You can source engagement data from third-party or first-party data analytics tools, social media, user surveys, and other sources. 

Data-driven publishing comes with benefits such as consistent engagement, attracting desired demographics, and more revenue. If you want a CMS that helps you augment your existing analytics stack with relevant first-party data, you should try our Bold CMS.