TOP 4 CHALLENGES FACING ONLINE PUBLISHERS

In our digital world, online publishers are gathering increasing popularity as the go-to resource for up-to-date news, trends, advice and everything in between. These online publishers’ content spans across every interest and industry, yet their business models share many of the same challenges to remain relevant and profitable.

Content Distribution

Digital publishers may not have the hassles that come with print production and delivery, however they have an entirely different challenge of how to digitally distribute their content, engage their audience and increase readership – all while facing an increasingly competitive landscape due to a very low barrier of entry.

Social media has become the news boy on the corner – shouting out headlines and getting readers’ attention.

Where print publishers were faced with the challenge of gathering loyal subscriptions and working hard to captivate the reader’s attention with just one page, the challenge for online publishers lies in distribution. With a constant stream of social media messaging and a focus on building online communities interested in consuming their content, this strategy takes a huge amount of effort and focus on audience analytics to drive content views, often requiring a team of social media specialists to execute.

Ad Revenue

Many print publications simply went out of business or moved into an entirely digital format as they could no longer convince advertisers that they offered the same meaningful impressions that can be had online.

To stay profitable, online publishers are constantly challenged with making their advertisers happy – not only with traditional display ads, but also with creative sponsored content, byline articles and videos. To further entice advertisers, online publishers find themselves digging deep into behavioural data to provide their clients with meaningful analytics to justify their advertising costs.

Search Engine Rank

Many websites live and die by their rank within Google search results – other than social media, it is the only other way that readers are able to discover content. Google itself presents the challenge, as the platform constantly reinvents its ranking algorithm and makes it hard for online publishers to keep their content “front and centre” on the popular search engine.

Publishers are meeting this challenge by focusing on fresh, timely and relevant content, enhanced with engaging visuals, including photos, videos, infographics, podcasts and ebooks. Their IT departments are also keeping a vigilant eye on changes to the search algorithms in order to communicate needed content variances to the editorial team.

Visitor Experience

This is where choosing the right network partner falls into the online publishing equation.

Whether in New York City or Paris, readers require the same quick load time of content and graphics or else they may turn to a competitor. To combat this challenge online publishers require a highly stable, robust and powerful network capable of supporting high internet traffic from all corners of the world.

Online infrastructure is critical when your entire business and reputation is reliant on it. Amongst other things, it is absolutely essential that your site has the following:

• 24/7/365 uptime

• Fast and highly reliable connectivity

• Anti-DDOS protection for security

• High bandwidth infrastructure able to cope with the highest levels of international traffic

As businesses continue to grow and traffic increases, the effect this has on network infrastructure should never be a concern. This is where having a partner who continually works to refine and optimise the network as standard is important. Digital publishers never have a day off and neither should your network partner.

Discover how BSO supports Aufeminin, one of the largest worldwide digital media groups, with their internet architecture.

BSO’s renowned service delivery and assurance teams include multilingual 24/7 support and a 24/7/365 NOC to constantly monitor and respond to real-time demands on the network.