The Creator's Guide to Staying Relevant in the Digital Age
The rise of new-age publishing tech has reduced the entry barrier to the media industry. Legacy media houses are constantly being challenged by independent journalists, digital publishers, and content creators. But the underlying tech that benefits these creators can also make them obsolete.
The publishing tech that fuels media is changing by the day. One-minute videos are the norm today but they can be replaced by a newer format tomorrow. This leads to an important question – how can a digital creator stay relevant in the changing times?
If you have found yourself asking this question again and again, this guide is for you. Down below is a list of five things you can do to stay relevant in the upcoming years:
1. Own Your Audience
Probably the most important thing one can do in order to stay relevant in the media industry is to own their audience. Generally, creators rely on big-tech companies such as Google, Facebook, or Twitter when it comes to building an audience. But if a tech company chooses to ban your account one day, it will impact your business hugely.
Instead of relying on other tech platforms, you can build your own audience on your own platform. For example, you can collect the emails of your audience on your website and keep in touch with them via a newsletter.
2. Use Multiple Publishing Channels
Capturing the emails of your audience is one way to make a long-term relationship with them. Another way is publishing your content on multiple channels so that they can find you anywhere they go.
Another major benefit of publishing on multiple channels is that one channel might become obsolete someday. If that happens, you will still have the attention of your audience on other channels. If a new channel emerges in the future, you can start publishing on that channel without having an impact on your audience count.
3. Keep a Tab on Trends
Generally, gauging media trends is something that occurs automatically during the process of content creation. It is rare that one puts conscious efforts into knowing what is coming in the future. This has to be changed if you want to stay relevant in the media industry as a content creator, journalist, or publisher.
There are many tools out there that can help you in keeping a tab on trends. A reliable and free-to-use tool is Google trends. It shows you data on how people’s interests have changed over time on a certain keyword. You can also set Google alerts for keywords that you want to keep a watch on.
4. Stay Consistent
For companies, it is easier to publish content consistently as there are multiple people in the editorial and publishing team. However, if you are an independent journalist or a content creator, it might be hard for you to create and publish without feeling burnout. The problem is – taking long breaks because of burnout can put you out of touch with the current trends.
The right way to take a break from publishing regularly is by creating content in advance and scheduling it for future dates. You can create an editorial calendar and content pipelines in order to make sure that everything goes by the plan.
5. Use the Latest Publishing Tech
Using old publishing tools can slow down your creation and publishing process. This is the main reason why a lot of well-known names in the media world invest in the latest publishing technology.
Thankfully, the latest publishing tech is affordable and cost-effecient even for small players who do not have many resources to invest yet.
Conclusion
Quintype provides digital publishing tools to leading publishing companies such as Fortune India, Bloomberg Quint, The Free Press Journal, and many more. If you want to move at a faster pace in your publishing journey, you should definitely check out our suite of digital publishing solutions. Click here to know more.