With so many choices for readers in a saturated media landscape, audience loyalty can be elusive and fleeting.
All it takes is a few bad encounters and a few bad wake-up calls to drive readers away.
Like noticing GenAI is doing all the writing, reading news content that thinks only globally, or websites compromising user privacy and data.
Here are five strategies publishers today should use for digital audience development and keeping those readers from bouncing elsewhere.
1. Don’t let AI do all the talking—that said, it has its place in content creation
In today’s AI-saturated landscape, making sure content has the human touch is essential for audience development and loyalty.
According to a Forbes article citing a Nielsen study, 55% of respondents “feel uncomfortable on websites that rely heavily on AI-generated articles and stories,” “The distrust deepens further, with nearly half (48%) reporting they do not trust brands advertising on such sites.”
Further, in that same study, six in 10 respondents reported being able to detect AI-generated content, often resulting in “negative sentiment.” Key tell-tale signs: generic, repetitive, and impersonal content, unvarying sentence length, etc.
Look at the subscriber backlash Sports Illustrated faced when it was revealed that the publisher had used AI to generate articles under fake bylines. In AI’s wake, an entire industry has sprung up to detect AI-generated content, from cheating on school essays to marcom teams appropriating competitors’ messaging, including tools like Scribbr, Quillbot, and Copyleaks.
Would labeling content as AI-generated in part help alleviate reader suspicions at this point? Probably not, now that the AI genie is out of the bottle.
From evoking authenticity and emotion to sharing cultural nuance and aligning with a brand voice, we humans still have the edge over AI, for now. Readers are more likely to engage with content that they know is crafted by humans who know their needs and interests, leading to more meaningful and lasting connections.
“AI is a fantastic tool, but there’s a real danger of becoming so enamored of its capabilities that we let AI replace our creative writing, our human voice, and our thoughts,” says Jim Eagar of the Original Mac Guy. “Use it to enhance your creative writing and human expression, but not replace it.”
A good illustration of that is an AI-based tool like the Parse.ly Content Helper. It can save writers time, effort, and creative grunt work by offering performance-driven suggestions for headlines, article excerpts, and links to related stories.
2. Invest in your owned channels—pulling back investments in third-party platforms
In a post-platform world, your site—more than any other channel—is your brand.
“Treat the homepage as a product for your most engaged audience segments, not an afterthought,” rang the message at WordPress VIP’s recent Media Product Forum.
Indexing on your own turf—your site, self-produced and self-hosted podcasts and videos, and customer newsletters—has increasingly become a go-to strategy for digital publishers to build engagement and audience loyalty
Why is that?
Relying on those owned channels, instead of volatile and unpredictable third-party platforms like Google search and X, gives publishers more reliability and control over curating, tailoring, and nurturing consistent and high-quality brand experiences for loyalists.
Weaning yourself from third-party dependency is a surer approach to future-proofing a business than hoping and praying that ever-changing algorithms shift in your favor to bring loyal audiences.
Or that platforms like X find their way out of being in a perpetual state of disruption.
“Build an experience for an audience that makes them seek you out,” says WordPress VIP CTO Brian Alvey. “Skip all the gatekeepers that steal your content, steal your audience. Give people a reason to come straight to you and love you.”
3. Focus on connecting with local audiences to boost global presence
Publishers hoping to expand their global reach should deepen their connection with readers and enhance loyalty by meeting audiences where they are with content they care about.
The challenge, however, lies in ensuring that international readers, especially those in regions like Europe, Africa, and Asia, aren’t overshadowed by a dominant U.S. audience or news coverage.
“Think globally, act locally,” goes the old grassroots advice. For digital media looking to expand reach and audience loyalty, this might be refashioned as “Publish globally, talk locally.”
It’s no secret readers everywhere want to feel seen, heard, and valued. That means developing strategies (such as geographical segmentation) that resonate across different regions to reach more people with stories that matter to them.
This can be done by leveraging tools like Parse.ly Analytics’ geo-segmentation, which provides insights into regional audience preferences, allowing publishers to tailor stories that align with local interests.
With those insights, publishers can also highlight top stories on regional homepages, newsletters, and mobile alerts. This helps strike the right balance between local and global news, attracting new readers and keeping existing ones engaged with relevant content.
4. Optimize for loyalty metrics when focusing on audience retention
Customer lifetime value (CLV) is the total revenue you can expect from a single customer throughout their lifetime with your business. Focusing on retention means longer lifetimes for your customers and higher CLV.
To do that, publishers should do what they’re best at: content. In fact, 59% of organizations we surveyed for our Content Matters 2024 Report cited retaining existing customers as their No. 1 way they drive revenue through content.
But to create content that retains customers, newsrooms need to understand not only which traffic is from a loyal audience but also which content is most likely to make someone a loyal reader or customer.
Giving everyone in the newsroom access to analytics tools and loyalty metrics like engaged time and recirculation rate—along with a view into the preferences of subscribers versus non-subscribers—will help them do just that. Best of all, it will get everyone pulling in the same direction—the direction of your audience’s preferences.
Armed with data, journalists can fine-tune their content, writing and sharing stories with readers that resonate with every word. Further, analytics can validate longtime “gut instinct” approaches and experiments when publishing stories, letting real numbers prove (or disapprove) what could only be guessed at in the past.
Such a data-driven approach ensures that content stays fresh and engaging, boosting retention and audience loyalty by keeping audiences satisfied and returning for more.
5. Secure your website and infrastructure—rather than paying the price
At the point of connection, before users hand over personal data or click to read an article, how will they know it’s safe to do so?
Data breaches and compromised personal data are the bane of websites. They damage brand and reputation and erode user trust.
To secure reader loyalty, the world’s biggest media brands are increasingly turning to technology platforms that take a multi-layered security approach, hardening their infrastructure to ward off DDoS attacks, unauthorized access, and other risks.
This includes enterprise-grade vulnerability management, network security, edge protection, continuous security monitoring, granular access controls, SSL/TLS encryption, and code scanning, among other protections.
Securing against risk, however, is only part of the technology story for media brands. Website downtime and latency also stain audience loyalty. On their biggest traffic days, like covering U.S. Presidential elections or pop culture icons, their infrastructure and security are stress-tested to the max. Having a platform that’s not only secure but performant, auto-scaling to meet the demand, is critical to fostering loyalty in age of so much media choice.
After all, no publisher wants to make headline news for the wrong reason.
A blueprint for digital audience development
“Customer satisfaction is worthless. Customer loyalty is priceless.”
—Author and sales motivator Jeffrey Gitomer
Audience development success will come from readers who trust what you say. But only if they recognize your content is genuinely human and satisfies their interests and needs.
To get there, double down on understanding those interests and needs by optimizing for loyalty metrics, segmenting audiences, and securing your web property. And not being afraid to let AI do some of the creative grunt work.
