Meredith has a longstanding relationship with Pinterest, with brands such as Allrecipes investing in creating pins for the platform since at least 2012. Since Meredith acquired Time Inc. in November 2017, that relationship has deepened.
In the fall of 2018, Meredith launched a dedicated Pinterest team, where several employees exclusively work on creating content for Pinterest across the media company’s publications, said Lorraine Goldberg, director of social strategy at Meredith. (A Meredith spokesperson declined to provide the specific number but said the team is sizable.)
Meredith’s Pinterest team currently creates pins for AllRecipes, EatingWell, Travel+Leisure, Better Homes and Gardens, Southern Living, Parents, Shape, Health, InStyle, Martha Stewart Living and Martha Stewart Weddings. These accounts have more than 12 million followers and drive 200 million impressions per month.
Across these accounts, Meredith’s Pinterest team strategizes what to pin and how to pin it. For what to pin, they think not only about trending topics on the publication’s individual sites but also what’s popular on Pinterest. One of RealSimple’s recent popular pins is a simple drawing of a paintbrush and paint bucket with text that reads, “5 Paint Colors That Actually Help Your Home Look Cleaner.” The pin links to a RealSimple article with the same headline and had about 3,000 saves.
Goldberg said the team considers Pinterest’s long-tail effect, where they may not create winter holiday content in the summer for Instagram but they do for Pinterest. Allrecipes, which has 658,000 followers and more than 10 million monthly viewers of its Pinterest account, actively maintains a Pinterest board about Christmas cookies, not just about summer recipe ideas.
To strategize content, Meredith’s Pinterest team speaks with Pinterest’s team at least weekly. Goldberg said some of their recent conversations have focused on how to invest more in video on Pinterest. Meredith has garnered about 143 million video views on Pinterest, with some individual videos reaching more than 1 million views since October 2018. For example, a pin about a DIY fire pit from Better Homes and Gardens received 10.9 million views and about 228,000 saves.
One reason Meredith formed a Pinterest team is that it was looking to diversify its social strategy following the Facebook news feed changes in early 2018, Goldberg said. Additionally, Pinterest’s audience and their intentions align with many of Meredith’s publications.
“There’s a natural fit. Pinterest users want to find a recipe, or they’re moving into their first apartment, or first home or they’re having a baby — all those lifestyle moments especially of female consumers — it was a really good place for us,” Goldberg said.
Not all publishers are as committed to Pinterest as Meredith is. In a May 2019 Digiday+ survey of 179 publishing executives, only 39 said they actively used Pinterest to distribute content — making Pinterest the least widely used platform in the survey. For publishers actively using Pinterest, the platform meets different objectives, with 48% saying their primary goal with Pinterest is brand awareness and growing audience and 48% saying Pinterest drives referral traffic. The remaining 4% said Pinterest generates direct revenue.
For Meredith, Pinterest is beneficial for both brand awareness and referral traffic. Over the last year, Meredith’s impressions and engagement on Pinterest have grown between 200% to 400%, and referral traffic from Pinterest is up about 17%, Goldberg said.
“We definitely focus on how do we grow impressions and engagement on Pinterest, and we focus on translating that to traffic. We’re deeply committed to Pinterest. In terms of volume of traffic, it’s among our top three with strong year-over-year growth. We’re looking at ways to grow and expand our Pinterest presence and traffic across our brands,” Goldberg said.
In July (after the fiscal year), Meredith’s Pinterest team plans to invest in more publications in the portfolio, including Food & Wine, CookingLight, Myrecipes, Entertainment Weekly and HelloGiggles.
“We’ve seen a nice rebound in Facebook traffic, but we want to diversify the pie because we see opportunity. Pinterest has a strong, engaged audience in tandem with our engaged audience. We see good potential there,” Goldberg said.
The post With dedicated team, Meredith has doubled Pinterest impressions in the past year appeared first on Digiday.
JVZoo Member Review
There is no argue that selling digital products is the most profitable way. Yes, you heard that right!
When you think about it, you don’t need a storage to stock your products, no need for staff for manual labor, and you can even sell them while your asleep. This is definitely the most convenient way as far as we know.
Nevertheless, most of the marketers fail in some areas like creating their own membership sites and getting multiple applications to work together. Each of these plays an important role if you want to have a successful product launch.
That’s why I’m here to recommend this… Introducing JVZoo Member!
This is the only membership platform that combines all 6 essential services under 1 roof: Page Building, Hosting, Polls, Surveys, Memberships & User Tracking. Amazing, right?
Wanna know more? Let’s go check this review!
Features and Benefits
JVZoo Member addresses 5 major problems:
PROBLEM 1 -Memberships Platforms are Notoriously Hard to Setup & Integrate
Most solutions require more than one plugin or software to get going.
You have to create and configure multiple membership levels, deal with permissions and have to test each level to ensure users can access what they’ve just purchased.
Not to mention if you want specific features like drip feed content – that’s even more headaches. Then, of course, you have to integrate your product with a payment gateway or marketplace which is no picnic.
PROBLEM 2- You Need Separate Products To Create Pages and Secure Product Access
It’s super important to have a professional looking members area which is easy to navigate and gives users the best customer experience.
But, with most membership platforms or WordPress based solutions, you will need one solution to build these pages and another to deliver your content – that’s crazy. Worse still, these applications need to work together, free of bugs which is often the biggest problem.
PROBLEM 3- Hosting Pages, Website Security & Maintenance Is Too Complicated For Most
As a new vendor you have to navigate your way through hundreds of hosting plans, figure out site & server security & that’s even before you get started.
Then, of course, you have to make sure your membership software & page builders all work together – that’s 3 separate support desks to deal with when things go wrong.
PROBLEM 4- No Marketing Tools to Help Vendors Accelerate Their Growth
Most membership platforms are missing the basic things like customers satisfaction surveys and User Quizzes to Test what they learned.
There’s no automatic cross selling of your other products in the members area, which is the most obvious & easiest way to drive more sales.
Other platforms make you build this manually – which crazy & inefficient use of your time.
PROBLEM 5- No In-house Page Builder that Works Perfectly With Your Application
The reality of using any kind of membership system is that you have to find a page builder that helps you create slick looking content works with your membership software & creates members areas that are congruent with your sales pages.
All too often, Sales Pages & Members Areas are designed by two different applications.
How Does It Work?
You can start selling Products in less than 15 minutes and in JUST 3 Steps.
Step 1: Select & Edit Your Sales Pages & Members AREA Template
Step 2: Add Your Own Videos & Downloads
Step 3: Select JVZoo for our seamless integration to handle your payment processing
Demo Video:
Conclusion
There you have it! If you want to sell your digital products much easier, I would highly recommend that you start this now. You won’t find any membership platform like this one. Click the Buy Button NOW and get your 1st digital product live in minutes!
Tube Rank Machine Review – Rank Videos Faster & Get Free Traffic from Youtube
Still uploading awesome YouTube videos but did not get a lot of traffic?
I know the struggle too. It is super difficult to gain lots of traffic if your videos do not rank higher in Google. Do you know why? It is because YouTube is somehow a little brother of Google. Google loves to rank YouTube videos first before any website.
Now, if you want to go into the process like boosting your rank in Google and YouTube, there are a lot of parts you need to consider. I know and you know for a fact that it takes a tremendous effort to get it done.
But what if this can be done in just one click? Of course, it would be amazing. And today, we’ll make that happen.
Introducing Tube Rank Machine!
It is a 7 in one software that helps you rank your videos higher on YouTube and Google. Amazing, right?
Wanna know more? Let’s go check this review!
Features
Front End – FEATURES
– Fully Web Based App that helps you rank videos higher in Google and Youtube for Unlimited Videos.
– Video Title Generator to get best titles for your videos.
– Video Description Generator takes the guess work out of writing a complex description for your videos.
– Video Tag Generator gives 500+ Tags for your videos.
– Build Backlinks for your videos in 1-CLICK.
– FULLY AUTOPILOT – submit a new video & easily build 50 to 100 backlinks built to it within the next 48hrs.
– *new* Video Rank Checker Tool
– *new* Keyword Generator Tool
– *new* Trending Videos Finder Tool
– No manual work required at all.
– No more expensive outsourcing.
OTO1 PRO Version Features
– All the Features of the Front End Version PLUS…
– Video Spy Tool – spy on the top videos in your niche.
– Advanced Backlink Builder for videos.
– Website Backlink builder – lets you build backlinks for any kind of website or webpage, not just videos.
– Build 5 different types of backlinks.
– Get 5000 BONUS backlink credits
– Export SEO backlink report to PDF & view online.
– Keyword research Tool built in to help you with backlink anchor texts powered by Youtube, Google & Bing.
– Create DAILY automated backlink campaigns that create 30 links per day for 30 days…etc. Set & Forget.
Download Tube Rank Machine now!
How Does It Work?
This is software does a lot of automation. That means this is super easy to use. Let’s check this video below:
Good Points
- Can be used to unlimited videos
- User friendly
- Save a lot of your time
- Responsive Technical Support
Bad Points
- Need fast internet connection
- Need to contact support desk if there is any question
- Price will go up from time to time
Conclusion
Be comfortable now in uploading your awesome YouTube videos! Gain lost and lots of traffic like you’ve never had. GET Your copy of Tube Rank Machine Here!
What clients expect from their PPC agency
Keep clients happy with in-person meetings and short, frequent check-ins. It is as critical to a healthy relationship as delivering the numbers they want.
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
Manifestation Miracle Review
The very title ‘Manifestation Miracle’ should give you a good idea about what this book is all about. If you said the ‘law of attraction’, you’d be absolutely right… but this book is about way more than that.
Written by Heather Matthews, this guide is about changing your life totally. Most law of attraction books are written in a way to make you think that it’s a shortcut. They want you to believe that you can get anything you want just by sitting on a couch and picturing your desires in your head.
This is where most people go wrong and never see their desires manifest into reality. Manifestation Miracle puts the action into the law of attraction and shows you what you need to do. Visualization is only half the equation.
This book is an online bestseller with thousands of copies sold and a long list of very happy customers. Let’s take a closer look and see if it’s right for you.
The Good Points:
1) Weighting in at 159 pages, this is a detailed book that’s comprehensive and yet, easy to read and understand. The book itself has a positive and uplifting tone that makes you believe that miracles are well-within your reach… and they are.
There’s no fluff in this guide. It’s straight to the point and gives you all the tools and tips you need.
2) Hate reading? No problem. You’re provided with an audio recording of the guide. You can listen to it while on the go, and still reap the rewards.
3) The honesty in this guide is unparalleled. While most books in this niche promise you wealth and riches beyond your wildest dreams with zero effort, Heather was truthful and avoided such hype.
She even mentioned that there is work involved. You’ll need to follow the 
exercises in the Manifestation Miracle, and you’ll also need to put in the effort where required. The law of attraction will NOT work for lazy people.
4) If you have questions, you can always email their support. Unlike most law of attraction books that you buy off the shelf and you’re left to fend on your own, you can get after-purchase guidance and help here. Fantastic.
5) The Manifestation Miracle will work for anyone. Your age, race, gender, etc. do not matter. The law of attraction is a universal law, and the methods in this guide will help anyone who uses them wisely.
6) This program is broken down into 5 parts, each of which deals with a specific component that must be done right to see results. That makes for much easier learning, and you’ll be much more likely to see results.
In the first part of Manifestation Miracle you’ll discover how the law of attraction works. In the second part, you’ll need to ask yourself what you really want. Being focused and knowing what you want is crucial. If you don’t know where you’re going, you’re not going to get there.
The third part will show you how to inject emotion and desire when visualizing. It all boils down to how you feel. The law of attraction works only when your heart is in it.
In part 4, you’ll learn how to expect the miracles to show up ‘anytime now’… it’s about walking in faith. If you believe it, you’ll see it.
In the last part, you’ll learn how to make the law of attraction a habit. This will ensure that you live the life of your dreams… and get most of what you ask for.
The Bad Points:
1) Faith requires practice. We live in a cynical and skeptical world. We want instant results, but the law of attraction works on its own time. So, you’ll need patience and persistence to manifest your desires.
2) Visualizing alone is not enough. You’ll need to act as and when you get hunches. Fortune favors the bold and even the word ‘attraction’ has the word action in it. You MUST take the required actions.
3) You can only get this product online. Once you download it, you can print it out for easy reference. A slight hassle… but not a deal breaker.
Should You Get It?
If you wish to see miracles in your life, this book can help you manifest them. It doesn’t matter if you want better health, more wealth, or a happy relationship. The principles in this guide will help you to bring your desires to reality.
What’s important is that you combine the correct techniques with a positive attitude and a mindset where you believe it before you see it. Once you master the methods taught in Manifestation Miracle, your life will change right before your eyes.
It’s affordable, has tons of positive reviews and is even covered by a money-back guarantee. So, you really do not have anything to lose – but you do have a lot to gain.
Give Manifestation Miracle a try. It has been proven to deliver results. You’ll thank yourself in future for taking this step. The life you want is within your reach.
WP Social Contact Review – Get More Leads from Your Website Using This
Have you tried filling out a contact form on a website? Boring, right?
I know. Everyone hates it.
Most of the viewers or customers are impatient when it comes to getting a reply. They want quick and interactive conversations nowadays. That is why most of the marketers lose customers because they’re still using this old method.
Today, what I’m about to show you will change everything.
We know for a fact that social media is the new revolution this days. Sadly, some websites did not take advantage of this, and they’re still using the old method of filling out a contact form. Well, that ends now.
Introducing WP Social Contact!
This is the perfect software to help your customers to easily contact you through your social media accounts in just one click. Awesome, right?
Wanna know more? Let’s go read this review!
Features
FE Features
- WordPress Compatible- Essential WordPress Plugin for Every Single Blog and WordPress Site
- Integrate Social Media Accounts- Adds 20+ Social Ways for visitors and customers to reach you faster!
- Floating Box Feature- A dialog box will be displayed in the right corner of your website.
PRO Features
- ADDS 3 EXTRA Popup Types – to your contact button popup and show amazing colorful icons and HYBRID popup with built in contact form + social links.
- Add HTML Content to Popups / Optin Forms – Now you can add any kind of html content or optin form code to your popups and change call to action of your contact buttons too.
- Customize Color Scheme of Your Popup – Completely change the color scheme of your popup and make it match your site or stand out for more attention.
- Animated Browser TAB TITLE – for extra attention grabbing makes visitors come back to your site even if they have browsed away to another page.
Personalize Your Popup with Text & Your Picture / Brand Logo.
- Change Call to Action For Post/Page/Category to show a different call to action text based on what part of your site the visitor is on – amazing feature!
- AUTO POPUP with Notification Sound – Make your popup automatically OPEN after a few seconds so the visitor really sees it and also pops up with a little notification sound so its hard to ignore.
- 15+ Animations for Your Contact Button – Makes your contact button appear in style and fly onto your page so its hard to miss & makes your site look cool.
- Attention Grabbers + Loops – Now you can make your contact button grab more attention with 10 different types of looped animated attention grabbing effects.
Download WP Social Contact now!
How Does It Work?
You don’t need technical skills to use this. This is super easy. You can check this video as a walk-through:
Good Points
- Will make your sites more appealing to customers/viewers
- User friendly
- Can be customized
- Responsive Technical Support
Bad Points
- For WordPress users only
- Need stable internet connection
- Need to contact support desk if you have questions
Conclusion
Still wanna use that old form for your customers/viewers? I know you can do more that. GET Your copy of WP Social Contact Here!
Samsung Ostrich: Do What You Can’t
For me, this was perhaps the best TVC of 2017. Samsung’s Ostrich. An icon of their #DoWhatYouCan’t campaign, plus the fact it won multiple Cannes Lions, this TVC made a dramatic twist in showcasing how VR can transport you to other worlds in an instant, in a seemingly realistic way. With this film, Samsung took […]
12 Awesome Video Tools for Content Marketers
Every year sees video leech more and more web traffic from other content types. As of 2018, worldwide internet users watched in excess of 500 million hours of content on YouTube every day. We collectively upload as much video content online, every 30 days, as all of the major American television networks have put out, combined, in the past three decades.
As of 2018, worldwide internet users watched in excess of 500 million hours of content on YouTube every day.
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But what does this mean for you, fellow content marketer? Some 64% of customers make a purchase after watching branded video content — and social media video content inspires 12-times as many shares as image- and text-based posts combined. Plus, the brain processes video up to 60,000 times faster than it does text, which means the right clip could help you make a more emotional connection with potential customers.
64% of customers make a purchase after watching branded video content.
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For these reasons, content marketers need to “up” their game when it comes to video — and to do that, they need the best tools they can find. From generating ideas to designing and deploying video content, here are 12 incredibly useful video tools your team can use to generate interest, broaden your audience and create tons of new brand converts, starting today.
Video Tool #1: Splasheo
Splasheo is a crowd favorite here at C&C. This is an easy-to-use tool that content marketers can use to “frame” their videos for a bigger visual impact.
Why is this important? For a start, it’s because most uploaded videos are shorter than two minutes. Videos longer than this — and even some that are shorter — need a bit of help when it comes to keeping your audience’s attention. Splasheo helps out by making it simple to add punchy, professional-looking, attention-grabbing captions that add visual interest (and additional information) and keep your audience glued to short and long videos alike.
Video Tool #2: Wistia
Wistia is far more than a video customization tool — it’s a whole channel customization tool. It’s a great ally for any brand that hosts a variety of video content natively on their website. For content marketing teams who are tired of the same old embeddable video players, Wistia is great for turning the viewing process into a branded experience in its own right.
Users can choose custom thumbnails and colors, easily add logos and branding, and strategically place calls to action on a stream of your own video content that has none of the competitor’s videos and none of the usual YouTube clutter. It’s also easy to integrate with marketing and analytics platforms, which saves you time. If you see a video on the C&C blog and it’s not hosted in YouTube, it’s hosted in Wistia.
Video Tool #3: Camtasia & SnagIt from TechSmith
There are many reasons why brand ambassadors and content marketers might want to record what’s happening on their screen and then share it with the world. Maybe you want to present a demo of a piece of software, create a video tutorial, or create a webinar or training video. Whatever the case, Camtasia is a user-friendly app for Windows and macOS that makes it easy to capture and polish your screen capture for a wide audience.
Camtasia helps you organize screen footage, webcam footage or both, and then offers a suite of editing tools such as effects, transitions, music, title cards, animations, captions and more. You can add interactivity with quizzes and other forms of audience participation — perfect for holding your viewers’ attention.
SnagIt is another tool from TechSmith for capturing and editing footage from your screen. SnagIt easily integrates with services from Google and Microsoft to save you time if you plan to export your video to presentations or documents.
C&C team members are big fans of TechSmith products, and when you see a video on the C&C website, it’s likely been edited in Camtasia or SnagIt.
Video Tool #4: Vidyard
There are three main pieces to Vidyard — video hosting, screen recording and sharing, and video personalization. The hosting feature provides customizability for your player plus deep analytics tools so you can better know your audience.
For content marketers, the video personalization feature might be the most exciting. Closing a sale is all about creating an emotional connection with your audience, and what better way to do it than incorporating their name, their company’s name or other personal details? Vidyard makes it easy to put together personalized offers for many prospects at once. Doing so could help you improve conversion and retention, build a more passionate audience and improve the quality of your sales calls.
Video Tool #5: PlaceIt
Sometimes it just doesn’t make sense, financial or otherwise, to start your content marketing project from scratch. That’s where PlaceIt comes in. Billed as the internet’s largest repository of visual templates, the platform caters to those designing t-shirts, banners, book covers and, of course, many different kinds of videos.
For video, PlaceIt offers several hundred templates that can provide inspiration, concepts for storyboarding, or the raw materials you need to create professional-looking footage extremely quickly.
Video Tool #6: Wirecast
From Experian to Nissan to Nestle, the list of brands crushing it with live video grows longer by the day. In 2016, live streaming was already a $30 billion industry — and since it’s only going to get bigger, now’s the time to get your foot in the door.
Wirecast helps out by turning your computer into a television station. Maybe you have brand representatives at a panel discussion or lecture, or you want to give viewers a look behind the scenes at your operation. Whatever the case, Wirecast is a great tool for seamlessly recording live events, adding transitions and effects on the fly, and streaming them directly to Facebook, Twitter and other platforms.
Video Tool #7: Videoshop
If you want a full-featured video editing tool that gets proven results, you can stop looking. Videoshop was Samsung’s weapon of choice when they rolled out a video-based campaign for a new set of multi-room speakers. After two weeks of running their ads, Samsung noted strong performance along a variety of key metrics — including 2 million views in total, a 50% jump in online brand searches, and 14% more on-site conversions.
So the question is — Why does Videoshop work so well? First, this iOS and Android app make it easy to create different versions of the same video. That makes it great for A/B testing. Furthermore, Videoshop offers a huge variety of filters and transitions along with easy editing tools for adding text, slow or fast motion, animations, voice-overs and more. When you’re done, it takes just a moment to send your finished work to Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and other platforms.
Video Tool #8. Magisto
Magisto takes a different approach to video editing. By using smart algorithms, this tool plucks out your best photographs and most interesting video clips and assembles them into an exciting, well-crafted piece of video content. You can add a cherry on top with your choice of musical selection, themes and effects.
As content marketers know, editing together a piece of content that keeps the audience’s interest can be an arduous task. Magisto takes the heavy lifting off your hands and makes it simple to create brand-new interpretations of existing footage and photos. It also supports cross-channel marketing thanks to easy exporting and analytics tools. Samsung, Mitsubishi and Zappos have all used and raved about the app — so give it a spin for yourself.
Video Tool #9: Promolta
You know a lot of legwork goes into video creation. But the act of promoting your video, and actually getting it in front of receptive eyeballs, might take just as much dedication. Promolta is one option for greatly reducing the effort involved.
Promolta is a self-service advertising tool that integrates with YouTube. The process is simple — you provide a link to the YouTube video you want more traction on, and Promolta pushes that video out to a trusted network of more than 10,000 websites, blogs, apps and social channels. One of many success stories is Canadian musician Bill Gottfried, whose video for “Psychopathic Traffic” jumped from a couple of hundred views to close to 90,000 after a helping hand from Promolta.
Video Tool #10: Stacker
Stacker is another promotion tool for video-minded marketers that’s worth consideration. There’s a good chance your campaigns are active on a variety of social media websites, and Stacker is a great way to publish your posts on all of them at once. More than that, it takes the hassle out of timing your posts according to your geographical target areas. You can easily set the desired day, and time of day, and let the tool do the rest.
Even more impressively, Stacker assembles all the comments and messages your content receives and places them in a universal inbox. No more hopping from site to site to respond to fans, customers and prospective converts. It also generates reports on the performance of your videos to help you further fine-tune the best time to reach out to each audience and see which videos get the most attention.
Video Tool #11: Canva
While most content marketers might use Canva primarily for graphic design, C&C’s community manager Christin Kardos is a fan of its animation features, too.
According to Kardos, “Canva can render your static designs as GIFs and videos. And here at C&C, we actually use it that way sometimes, ourselves. You can make things move and talk with very little time investment.”
Video Tool #12: Animoto
Another popular tool on the C&C team, Animoto is a drag-and-drop video marker for creating powerful, professional videos. C&C consulting co-lead Zontee Hou loves the platform. She says, “Animoto makes it so easy to turn still photos and text into a compelling video that’s perfect for the way people consume videos on social media (in short bursts and with the sound off).”
Time to Capture a Worldwide Audience
By now, you’re probably itching to get started on your own video productions to take your marketing efforts to the next level. Each of the tools we mentioned is intuitive and accessible — and ready to help you capture the attention of a worldwide audience. So what are you waiting for?
The post 12 Awesome Video Tools for Content Marketers appeared first on Convince and Convert: Social Media Consulting and Content Marketing Consulting.
Why The Wall Street Journal limited commenting to paying subscribers
The Wall Street Journal has introduced a new comments strategy in order to drive a higher quality of debate on its site and improve the experience for subscribers.
Since last month, the publisher has reduced how many articles it opens for comments and put them all behind a paywall — a strategy that’s starting to pay off. The publisher has claimed a higher number of subscribers now reading and writing comments, from a broader demographic than previously.
The Dow Jones publisher introduced a number of changes last month: the first, making commenting for paying members only. Previously, all articles were open for comments by default, but that has now tightened to around 30 major news stories and opinion pieces, roughly 40% of daily output depending on the news cycle. These stories that are open for audience posts are clearly marked. Conversations from each audience post-enabled article are kicked off with a question from the journalist.
The number of people reading the comments has increased by 5%, according to the publisher, though it wouldn’t reveal from what base. The number of people posting, liking or replying has also gone up more than 5%. Meanwhile, the people who comment are younger and more female-skewed than before, although it wouldn’t share specific numbers.
“Broadly speaking, in the news business, we need to understand what the audience likes to do and reflect that,” said Louise Story, WSJ editor of newsroom strategy. “You have a public that really likes to participate in the conversation. They are looking for a more thoughtful place. That was the opportunity we saw. We’re increasingly focusing on our members — two-way interaction with our audience — and what that means.”
Publishers like The New York Times and The Financial Times have encouraged more debate on their own platforms to improve the experience for paying readers. Subscribers who get value from reading and posting comments tend to view more articles and return more regularly, a clear indicator they are less likely to churn. The Wall Street Journal currently has 2.6 million members; 1.8 million of those are paid digital-only subscribers, according to PwC figures supplied by the publisher.
Improving comment sections can also help inform and shape future story ideas. Enough interaction and debate on a story shows there’s more to be written. Last week, a story about the College Board’s plans to give “adversity scores” to students had over 2,000 comments. This led to another story on students that get extra time to take the SAT, which had over 800 comments and included reader polls to feed into further reporting. This article outlined the results. In the summer, the Journal plans to roll out video and audio posts that display conversations. Story stressed this is the first step in focusing on building community between paying members and journalists and between the members themselves.
The new strategy introduced in April was the results of five months of research that the Journal embarked on in November. The process proved a number of hypotheses: There’s a much bigger audience that wants to contribute than those who do. Of those who are heavy commenters, a small percentage don’t tend to read the whole article before voicing their views. Heavy commenters also tend to reply to others rather than posting original comments. This cohort has a higher frequency of breaching the Journal’s community guidelines, which prevent abusive posts.
Over the last month, The Wall Street Journal made further tweaks based on audience feedback. It has lengthened the time that people can comment on stories from 48 hours to four days because people reading in print, which is sometimes published a few days later than online, found that by the time they read the story the commenting function had closed.
When people submit a thought-provoking comment the publisher highlights the post and shares it on its social accounts and in its newsletters. The Journal’s daily newsletter, The 10-Point, links to the audience conversation about a story have had higher click-through rates than the story itself, according to the publisher.
The team moderating the comments, now called the audience voice team, has grown from three part-timers to six full-time staff since November. Two more hires are on the way. All have editorial backgrounds. The goal, said Story, is to scout for interesting and newsworthy stories rather than act as gatekeepers.
Like most publishers, The Wall Street Journal uses a combination of technology and human moderation to ensure people don’t break community guidelines and veer into unpleasant comments. The quality has improved because now every audience post begins with a question from a journalist. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the number of times a user flags an inappropriate post has reduced partly because the Journal also incentivizes thoughtful posts by highlighting them.
“That carrot increases the quality,” said Story. “We’re feeding this back into reporting. It is better when we include the audience. Stories that are more interesting and relevant to journalists mean the audience is also more invested and more likely to stay.”
The post Why The Wall Street Journal limited commenting to paying subscribers appeared first on Digiday.
My Shed Plans Review
Product Description:
The thought of building a shed can be intimidating. After all, most people have no idea how to plan it all out and where to even start. How much material will you need? What wood will you use? What are the dimensions?
So many questions, and so few answers. Very often despite wanting to build their shed, many people end up hiring a someone to do it for them. They end up paying more than they need to and the workmanship is nothing to write home about.
Over the past couple of years, Ryan Henderson’s My Shed Plans has seen its popularity skyrocket. Many people have bought it and built their own sheds with the plans in it.
Not only does it cost a fraction of what you’d pay someone else, but you also have the bragging rights that you built your own shed. Ryan is a professional woodworker with twenty years of experience.
He knew exactly what people would need to build their own shed and has given it to them in his bestselling product. We were so impressed that we decided to take a closer look at My Shed Plans and this is what we discovered…
The Good Points:
1) The biggest selling point of this product is the massive size of the collection. There’s something for everyone here. Over and above that, this product is an online bestseller with thousands of copies sold and has positive reviews from satisfied customers. This is excellent social proof that the product delivers.
2) Building a shed can seem like a monumental task. However, if you have basic woodworking skills, all you’ll need are detailed plans. The good news is that the schematic blueprints included in this package are straightforward and detailed. However, they’re easy to understand and follow.
It’s crucial to have concise instructions. The details with the plans have dispense with technical jargon and kept things simple for most people to follow.
3) One common problem many people face when doing woodworking or starting on a new shed is that they buy more material than they need. It’s very easy to overestimate how much material to buy. You may end up buying too much and wasting your money and whatever extra material you buy.
This will not happen here because each project in My Shed Plans is 
accompanied by a material list. So, you just need to follow that, and you’ll be fine.
4) The garage plans, bonuses and DWG/CAD illustrations not only gives you an idea of what the final project will look like, but it’ll make your life easier. It’s these little things that makes this product head and shoulders above the rest.
5) The product is covered by a 100% money-back guarantee. You can test it out for 60 days and if it doesn’t satisfy you, you can always get a refund.
6) This product over delivers in every area. For the amount of plans you get, the price is amazingly low. If you’re in the shed building business, My Shed Plans will probably be the best investment you ever make.
The Bad Points:
1) With a selection this large, picking a plan out of the lot can be challenging. You’re spoiled for choice and this can make some people indecisive. It may be tempting to hastily skim through the plans and pick one without proper consideration.
So, take your time and choose wisely. Factor in the costs, time it will take, your skill level and the amount of space you’ll need for the shed before choosing a plan.
2) You can only purchase this product online.
Should You Get It?
If you plan on building a shed, then it’s a definite “Yes!”
The product is a collection of 12,000 plans. Imagine that! Twelve thousand… you’ll never find another product with this much variety. The plans, illustrations and specifications are all there.
This is one of those products where you don’t need to think twice about buying it. Get it and start building a beautiful shed today.
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