Engaging more users OR creating more engagement with existing users- What should a publisher focus on? In the world of news consumption, publishers take time to research and articulate and come up with the best content for their viewer. Making the most of all the resources to create, promote and sell the content is not an easy task in the competitive world. Everyone is on a hunt for quality traffic that guarantees loyalty. However, getting a huge number of visitors every time is not possible and not all the readers will spend enough time on your site. If you are a publisher facing such issues then that’s a bummer, isn’t it?
News site owners try out several ways to fix this issue and gain more users for your site. Every publisher knows that the best way to satisfy the hunger for the users is by coming up with excellent content. But do you know the best way to keep track of your website performance and understand whether it is doing good or bad?
The answer is simple! An efficient and very valuable metric for publishers- Recirculation
If you’re not familiar with the power of recirculation, this article will help you understand the various factors responsible for better engagement and overall performance. Let’s start from the beginning.
What is Recirculation?
Content Recirculation is a major metric that makes you aware of the percentage of visitors who have read an article and then further moved on to reading other articles or pages from your site. Always remember that the number of users returning on your pages define your user loyalty.
Recirculation is an excellent technique to measure the performance of a particular article, understanding the taste and preferences of your readers, what content they would like to read further on your site along the time spent. With this analysis, you can come up with ways to improve your content outreach like suitable links for your pages and articles that will further result in more engagement for your site.
If you have several casual readers on your site, it is helpful. If those casual readers are not getting converted into loyal readers, then you will have to struggle in having brand lovers. That is something you need to work on. If you have a high bounce rate, it is an issue to worry about.
Are you excited to learn more about the best practices to gain loyal users and ultimately more revenue for your site?
Keep reading!
Why shouldn't publishers ignore Content Recirculation?
The importance of recirculation includes two significant factors that make it a straightforward metric for your website. Here are the two key reasons why recirculation and recirculation rate matters so much.
- The visit depth of your readers determines the rate of engagement and user loyalty. It’s a simple equation, ‘More loyal users, more engagement and more consumer revenue.’
- For mobile users, the world of the Internet is flooded with content all the time, it works as a blessing and also a curse. Due to the limited attention span on mobile devices, one has to make all the efforts possible to take the readers to the next article.
For some cases, a high bounce rate for a particular article is reasonable, but if it happens again and again, then there is a scope of optimization. Content Recirculation makes you aware of various parameters that define the content performance with factors like page views and session metric. Average time on a page or number of shares are great ways to know about the popularity of the content, but that doesn’t show if the user is kept engaged. Hence Recirculation is a trump card that every publisher should grab.
Best practices to increase Recirculation
Now that we are aware of what content recirculation actually means, let us take a look at some of the most effective ways to increase content recirculation for your site. All the tips mentioned in this article will help you gain audience engagement with quality traffic by valuable potential users.
Learn to Link
A piece of content can let you sell the entire site if you can present it well. Insert links that lead to other pages and articles of your site. Try not to insert too many links as it might not have a good impact on SEO. You can add links to the article’s text and guide your readers to other interesting content on your site. Along with this, adding relevant tags is a helpful way to allow users in getting clarity regarding the type of content you post. Adding cross-links to the article and having an impressive collection of content in your ‘Read More’ section will help you in getting better content recirculation results. Try once!
Recommendations for User Engagement
If you see any article performing well, take a moment to analyze which pages and articles were visited next by the users for the same. Ask questions to yourself from the perspective of a user and understand the reader’s behaviour. With this, you can predict what kind of articles the reader would like to read. You can come up with the best set of recommendations with informative articles. Whenever you come up with recommendations, always ensure that your articles are in the right place and look attractive. If you already have recommendations set for your articles and still don’t get enough traffic, there is the scope of optimization. Take the recommendations placement seriously, add links that are easily visible and prioritize the best and most popular articles.
Push Notifications for Quality Traffic
Utilizing Push notifications with catchy content certainly gives a little push to the reader to click and read the article. Readers get these updates in their browsers or mobile devices, thus giving you a way to connect with the users directly. Driving quality traffic to your site by encouraging users to read your articles even when they aren’t at your site is the purpose of push notifications. It comes with several benefits like:
- Works best for spontaneous content like breaking news, sports scores, weather alerts and more.
- A direct way to communicate with users.
- Drives quality traffic that is more likely to get converted.
Recirculation with Newsletters
Newsletters are a reliable way to reach out to readers and create a personalized bond with them. The user acquisition strategy should include newsletters because as compared to other sources of traffic, readers coming from newsletters have a high visit frequency and depth. Also, newsletters are a reliable way to reach out to loyal readers. A publisher should always focus on converting their readers into newsletter subscribers. Here are some things they should focus on:
Positioning & Visibility: Always ensure that the sign-up box is easily visible to the readers in both mobile and desktop view.
Auto-fill option: Enabling the auto-fill option can save the time of the user and increase your chances of gaining a user by removing the sign-up friction.
Personalization: Users love to get a personal touch when they read online. Ensure that you leave customized messages for the users and convince them to sign up.
Recirculation with Social Media for Extended Audience Engagement
Everyone loves to share a cool article or an informative blog post. As a publisher, you should not miss on providing the simplest ways for the users to share the content using social media. A significant visit growth can be obtained with the optimization of social button placements. Focus on the position of the social buttons (Linkedin, Facebook, Whatsapp, Twitter). You can choose to place the anchor format with sticky headers. Focus on the look and feel of social media sharing options. Original icon colors and similar tabs are always good to go!
User engagement with Images, Videos & Links
The textual content can be engaging but visuals add life to the article and make it more engaging. Once users are intrigued by the images, you can expect a longer session time by them. Include interactive images and informational videos to make your content more attractive. One thing that you can do wrong and result in poor recirculation is by not including links in the article or page. While you include links, ensure that they are visible and open fast on clicking them. It is not just about the content but also how you place it that matters. All your images, recommendations, videos, links, social sharing options should be placed in a way that can grab user’s attention easily.
What is the best way to ensure Content Recirculation?
Now that you have understood the meaning of Recirculation, why it is necessary and how to improve it for your site, all you need is to implement it. With a goal to maximize visibility and offering more relevant and engaging content, you can have an end-to-end recirculation strategy. Furthermore, the allocation of resources for making this possible is one way to look at a bigger picture.
On the other hand, the RWADX One Unify toolbar is a seamless option for all publishers. Rather than investing time in activities like sorting recommendations, images, videos, social sharing, sending push notifications and many other tasks, you can choose One Unify, and everything will be taken care of.
With innovative features like Trending Content, Voice Search, Video Integration, Epaper, Stories, App Promotion, Citizen Journalism and more, One Unify can help your Recirculation rate be better. It utilizes Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to show the relevant content to each reader coming on the site. Along with this, it also leverages real-time analytics to deliver trending news on current affairs and more.
Wish to get One Unify for a better content recirculation rate?
Drop a mail at helpdesk@readwhere.com, and we will get back to you.
If you have any more suggestions or queries, please let us know in the comments section.