Best Practices When Deploying Online Content

Here are 10 tips and best practices for effectively  deploying online content.  Using some or all of these best practices will ensure you reach the biggest potential audience and maximize results.

1) Use a dedicated e-mail to launch your Publication.  Within the HTML e-mail use a Call to Action (CTA) or Hero Image when promoting the Publication.
2) Ensure a clear CTA to the Publication is being used on homepage.  It is recommended to add a CTA, preferably an image, on the home page and add a reference to the Publication in the Website header & footer.
3) Embed the Publication into your website.  This will mask and give a more memorable URL as well as give additional branding and social sharing options.  It is easy to use our API and embed the Publication into your site (all coding is done for you!) Then promote the Publications location.
4) Ensure the Publication has been fully Search Engine Optimized.  The more traffic and referrers the better the search engine rank.
5) Promote from other affiliate sites, website banners or PPC campaigns
6) Social Posts:  There are several Social Sharing options.
  

a) Use the Facebook App
b) Ensure the Viewer has Social Sharing enabled
c) Social shares can be added to HTML when using a lightbox
d) Social sharing can be added to HTML page when embedded or when embedded you can add the Wibiya toolbar
e) Talk about your content on Social Sites.  URL shortners work well when tweeting content and articles/pages can be deeplinked to when talking about content on Facebook, Linkedin and other Social Sites
f) Drive traffic using Facebook Ads


7) Add a CTA to internal company e-mail signatures that links to the Publication.
8) Promote online content within Offline content using Publication URL or QR Code. Examples might include Print material, in-store promotion, offline campaigns.
9) Subscription.  Provide an easy way for consumers to sign up and get the latest content via e-mail, alert, blog etc.
10) Blog & use an efficient Publishing Schedule.  Try and focus on solving problems or entertaining. Those are the only two reasons people go to the Internet in the first place.  Back up online presence with a consistent publishing and content delivery schedule.

Evaluate Deployment Strategy 

Tracking data over time will provide lots of feedback as to what works well and what does not.  Key metrics to evaluate deployment success can be found in the Zmags Analytics suite.

Bounce Rate:  % of visits that open and directly close the Zmag without viewing another page (bounce).
Read Through Rates (RTR):   Calculated as the percent of total visits that make it to the last page, is a sign of how engaging and relevant an entire publication is.  You can divide the number of visitors on first page by that of the last page to calculate a RTR.
Engagement Time: Time spent per page is an important element of audience engagement, showing which pages are most pop­ular with your readers/shoppers.
Period:  Understand traffic patterns – did the email you sent to your database spike your traffic?  How does web traffic fare against promotion strategy?  Which promotions worked best?
Referring Traffic:  The referring host is the domain that referred a visit to the publication.  This will track what led the end user to your Publication.  Was it a Facebook post? (Facebook will be referring host) or an e-mail (often the referrer will show none/unknown if Outlook was referrer) or maybe its your own Website domain.
Device:  Where are your end users – are they on desktop, a tablet or a mobile device.  Strong traffic on these devices might mean designing slightly different for channels or looking at the Zmags App for an offline option for viewing content on Mobiles.
 
A full overview of Analytics can be found here: http://community.zmags.com/AnalyticsGuide#1

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