Ad Age recently ran an op-ed by Purch’s Antoine Boulin on five strategies for publishers to better integrate data. Here are some excerpts:
Understand data’s role: “Data informs editorial decisions. It shouldn’t define them. A content strategy needs to be shepherded by content creators – those with expertise in creating high-quality content that traffic drivers such as Google or Facebook reward. If you let data lead editorial, you might see some short-term gains in scale, but, long-term, you’re more likely to be punished.”
Put editorial at ease: “For legacy publishers with established editorial teams, integrating with data can seem like an affront to their livelihood. That’s why publishers need to be clear from the beginning – that data is a tool to support editorial and make it stronger.”
Communicate the benefits: “You have to sell the potential, both at a general level – identifying stories, better content, user-first approach, etc. – but also in detail, by looking at actual, high-quality editorial content that could have performed better with data analysis supporting it.”
Remove barriers to collaboration: “At Purch, we have weekly meetings with our editorial and data teams to discuss our successes and failures. We’re big on video conferencing to remove the physical barriers between team members. We also brainstorm together.”
Writers are not data scientists: “Giving them access to data without greater context provided through experience can cause them to waste time chasing the wrong metrics when creating stories or content. You have a data team for a reason, so use them.”
To read more about data integration best practices for publishers, visit Ad Age.
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