We tried to summarize some of best practices of top publishers; tip can be useful and can help you to strengthen your reputation and bring something new and interesting to your visitors’ experience.

First, and the most important, their reputation as a publisher depends on the quality of the content, obviously, but the way they place their adverts can be as important.
If you’re choosing your way by following users’ basic needs and by meeting their requirements, you are already half way there. Although we all aware that our online life can’t stay still even for a second and thus even top publisher keep adjusting to be up to date.

Feel your content

Publishers are directly dependent from writers, original content and its delivery. Top publishers are keeping themselves aware of the latest content trends through meticulously designed researches to choose a topic and to deliver it flawless.

Top publishers are finding balance between serious articles and entertaining posts.

Never the less, it doesn’t mean they can’t mix serious content with a humor, which can be a great instrument to increase your audience; less serious content is usually shared more. But it means that they do use humor, but preparation of this kind of content is as scrupulous as it can be. This way they keeping visitor’s attention and keeping their option to go back to super serious materials without being too heavy to read.

This applies not only to articles, but to any content. Image galleries should be user friendly and accessible and all images should be referenced in order keep integrity.
The latest trend shows that video becoming more and more popular form of content. Thus most of publishers post video alongside with their traditional written format.

Feel your audience

The main way you can gain respect from you audience is not to offence it with irrelevant and inappropriate content. Readers are coming back for more experience they actually do like.
The best digital publishers stick to their area and not spreading their attention in a constant chase trying to cover everything. In the same time, you need to show controversial topics from different perspectives and not to forget to give a heads up to your visitors, informing them, that content might be harmful. Visitor will remember the publishers who will take care of him and alert him about any spoilers. Visitors can feel their ownership and importance if you provide them with more interactivity.

This can give your audience this essential feeling that it’s all about them.
You should know your audience to understand what language to speak to them. Is it extremely technical article written in a simplest language, or it just a facts and charts and more facts with no lyrics.

Enable comments

The trust between you and your users should be mutual. If you providing your audience with a content of high quality, comments from your readers won’t be a problem. Opening comment section for discussion leads to better communications, and to have plural options on controversial topic. You can collect user’s feedbacks and improve writing according to them.
Open discussion needs more attention. Obviously, with open discussions you’ll need to filter out spam and hateful messages and to monitor that discussion in comments section is within your overall approach.
Some publishers disable comments section in order to increase social media activity, but with a high quality writing users will find a way to discuss it.
Risk of spam messages can be eliminated by capthcas. And also using their social media accounts people will comment more responsible and will bring to new connections with publisher and within readers themselve.

Don’t ignore social media

Presence in social media will help you to cover bigger audience. Sometimes it’s easier to reach you content via different way than your website. Not only to keep your constant readers posted on everything is going on with your publications, but also to build deeper relationship. At the same time content on social media can’t be just a mirror of the content form the website. Every social media needs its own strategy and top publishers usually have the whole team to handle this work, but if you’re in way to the top of industry, you can primary focus on the most relevant social media for you.

For instance if your content is image based, you want to focus on Pinterest and Intagram might be the better option for you to invest your efforts, whereas a business oriented blog might be interested in LinkedIn more.

Details can be as important for visitors as content itself. Top publishers build user experience with thought out details like subscribe/unsubscribe forms, welcome screens, straightforward help section will lead to better impression. Using their best practice and taking into account this little but very important detail will help you to build your own community and a real engagement of your readers.

Check our material, how publishers are fighting with Ad blockers

Try to avoid annoying pop-ups that are forcing to like or share publications in social media. Better to focus even more on quality and this way to gain more shares.

Be responsive

It isn’t new that mobile users are taking over desktop users, so it should be new for you that your website should be as responsive as possible. Screens can vary from 5” to 20” user can prefer different devices, so your website resolution should be different in every case. But keep in mind that with higher resolution and more bandwidth users will experience more loading time, which increase your bounce rates. So keep in mind mobile users, you can’t ignore them anymore.

Advertising and Monetization

Top publishers react incredibly fast to the latest advertising trends. According to Advertising Bureau’s report video advertising is the hottest trend. Mobile advertising revenue is at its highest peak and this is just going to grow further. Learn more about ad spending numbers resulting 2015.

Publishers are adapting their monetization to fit the niche of mobile video. Which means making content responsive for any screen and exploring new ways for in-app ads growth. Mobile videos is designed usualy for mobiles only, it’s displayed vertical and can be shaky, because that’s how people also hold their phones.
It’s not a secret that publishers are dependent on their advertising revenues. And now their future depends on how quickly they can adapt to mobile video ads world.

And finally

Although, methods listed above will help to build your reputation as a publisher, you are still fully depending on your readers. Native and in-image advertising can keep your site clean and help earn valuable income. But you need to learn your limits to build long-term relationship with users and to scare them away by amount of ads.