how to engage with your readers for your digital publication magloft universal app

Want your readers to hear from you regularly? Or, make sure your readers are consuming your content continuously? Then you’ll need to keep in touch with your readers.

Your readers are your publications’ most valuable asset and should be treated accordingly. If a customer hears from you regularly, they are more likely to remain loyal to your brand and content. If you do not make an effort to connect with your readers, it is easy for them to forget about you.

That’s why it is essential to keep your readers engaged by staying in touch with them.

Where to find them?

We’ve touched on the why, now we’re going into the how. There are two main ways readers find content, either by intentionally seeking information or stumbling upon it.

Intentionally seeking information is typically conducted through the internet. Most commonly by punching keywords into search engines and going through the search results. Considering this, you will need to make sure your content is visible in search engines . This can be achieved by creating content that is SEO friendly.

Stumbling upon information out of sheer luck is rare. You need to build a proven strategy that ensures your readers don’t just stumble upon your content – it is there to be found.

We’ll break this down further below.

Information seeking behavior

readers information seeking behavior magloft universal app

The internet as we know it today is a massive place with millions of websites containing a plethora of information. 

According to a study conducted in 2019, a good proportion of internet users navigate the web to actively seek new information. Additionally, the majority of these activities were conducted through their mobile phone. However, passive information acquisition seems to be something that is growing as a trend. The study reveals that – as the internet developed – obtaining information from notifications also contributes to a user’s information-seeking activities.

Several factors will influence a person’s information-seeking behavior. Someone who is in dire need of a new job will search diligently. While another person looking to purchase a gift for their family might only be browsing casually.

Fun fact: did you know that Google has 4.3 billion users worldwide?

Considering that most people discover information by entering certain keywords and phrases to search engines (i.e. Google), you should optimize your content to be SEO- friendly. This increases the odds of people discovering your content via Google search.

The ranking of your content on the Google search engine result page (SERP) has a big impact on the number of clicks you can receive; on average, links that rank on the first page on a Google search result receive more than twice the clicks compared to the second-ranked link. Aiming to get your content to rank as high as you can in those search result pages is not an easy feat, but this is a highly rewarding measure that you can take to ensure that your content is searchable by humans and search engines alike.

This is where Universal App comes in!

Universal App is built based on the need of publishers to be discovered, to be found online. It is completely SEO friendly, so whatever content you put up will always be searchable and ranking on search engines. Amazing, right?

Be bold and be found

readers using social media magloft blog universal app

The ever-growing popularity of social media such means that growing your online publications can take shorter time compared to before. Not only they help you reach a broad audience, they also provide you with analytics. Analytics help you track the traffic and engagement generated by your posts.

Each social media platform has different demographics. This means that you will need to tailor your posts to suit each platform; for example, infographics and images might attract more users on Instagram than on Facebook. The timing of your posts should be considered as well; you’d want to reach your audience where they’ll be very likely to see and interact with your content.

Other than social media, there are several other go-to platforms for content consumption such as Medium, Quora, and Youtube. What’s nice about these platforms is that they rank well on search engines. Any content that you publish through these is likely to be on the first few pages of a Google search result.

How to get discovered?

To reach as many people as possible, it’s important to diversify your content by leveraging each of these platforms. However, that does not necessarily mean that you have to create a specific piece of content for them; this is where content repurposing comes in. 

Once you have published your content, it’s a good idea to collect reviews for them. These reviews will help you maintain your best practices and improve in other areas. Find comments about your articles on social media and reach out to your subscribers for their opinion. When you do find a happy reader, ask them if they have feedback about your publication.

Lastly, consider collaborating with other online platforms, promoting through online advertisement, and reaching out through email marketing. You can learn more about it in our article here.

Stay in touch with your readers

stay in touch with your readers magloft universal app blog

Now that you got the attention of your readers, you’d want them to keep coming back from time to time, or check out any other publications that you might have. There are ways to achieve this without being intrusive – the key is to know your audience and the best way to reach them.

We have touched on this briefly in our article – What Do Your Readers Expect from Your Digital Publication?

Emails

While slowly declining in popularity, are still the way to go for most people these days. Email contacts are still a nice marketing commodity – which you can always collect by using lead magnets, like what we do with our Universal App opt-in feature.

Lead Magnet

A lead magnet offers your readers value upfront in exchange for their information, such as their email address. This can be a piece of content, such as a free article, or newsletters.

With these contacts in your arsenal, monthly newsletters & weekly digest emails can be a good way to keep your readers updated without cluttering their inboxes. This frequency is enough to keep them apprised of recent news, while not too often to the point of disrupting their daily routine.

In-App Notifications & Push Notifications

You can also use in-app notifications to display messages while they are browsing the app, but, design them in a way that does not disrupt someone’s reading experience. Another popular way is by leveraging push notifications. Push notifications are becoming increasingly favored, especially by a younger audience.

Push notifications are the perfect alternative to emails as they only reach  users who have opted in to have them enabled, thus guaranteeing that your announcement reaches the willing target audience.

If your readers are an avid bunch who would love to check an article as soon as it is published, this is also the best way to get their attention – which is why we made it possible for you to use push notifications 

However, these are not the only way to keep in touch with your readers. If you have a large enough audience, you can consider a poll to get their opinion on which method would be their preferred way of getting updated on new articles or publications.

Conclusion

Let’s recap – why would you want to get in touch with your readers? To keep them engaged with your content and have them come back for more – or better, tell their peers about it!

How do you keep in touch with your readers? One way is by utilizing information-seeking tendencies that people have. Make sure that your content is searchable on the internet and ranking on search engines results – this will make it easier for your existing or potential readers to engage with you.

Another way is by leveraging the power of social media. The love that people have for social media has made it easier for publishers such as yourself to market your content. All you need is to tweak your existing content to best suit the various platforms, and you’re all set. The other thing about social media platforms is they’re also SEO friendly – which is a bonus!

Now that you’re engaging with your readers, you will need a different strategy to keep them around. This time, try reaching out to them directly. Email is still a popular medium, but other alternatives are increasingly popular such as push notifications – which Universal App supports!

If you’d like to know more about how Universal App can help you reach these goals – reach out to us at support@magloft.com

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