Best Tech for Digital Publishers
State of Digital Publishing
A new publication and community for digital media and publishing professionals, in new media and technology.
NOTE FROM THE EDITOR
By?Andrew Kemp , Managing Editor
Let me tell you the story of how I switched from Microsoft Word to Google Docs, after using the former professionally for almost 17 years. Yes, yes, hardly earth shattering stuff, I know, but keep reading and you’ll find a nugget of insight into efficiency gains.
This might seem an odd topic to cover, but after having edited upwards of 6 million words on the former, changing text editors felt like quite the moment.
While I’d dabbled with Docs previously, I had to make the switch over once I joined SODP — it is a key component of our company’s editorial workflow after all.
I don’t want to get bogged down in a side-by-side comparison of the two platforms. What I will say is that they’re borderline indistinguishable from one another for text editing purposes; though Google Docs’ lack of program versions or license and subscription fees makes it very appealing for editors that work with freelance teams.
What I do want to talk about is the one thing missing from Google Docs that made my editing work quite miserable. But before I do, a little context is necessary.
Although I studied journalism at university, the most practical lesson in editing I ever received came after I joined the workforce. Shocking, I know.
That lesson was “mouseless editing”. I would argue that mouseless editing is as important to editors as touch typing is to writers. The process involves reducing the number of times your hand has to leave the keyboard to use the mouse. The fewer interruptions to your editing flow, the more efficient you are.
While the time gain might seem small — saving a second every 40-50 words of editing — spread this across millions of words and it adds up. For example, let’s say you only manage to save one second for every 50 words edited. Spread across 6 million words and this amounts to around one and half days of saved time — all because you didn’t have to reach for the mouse.
Keyboard shortcuts are crucial to making mouseless editing work, and this is where we return to my Docs complaint.
Moving from Word to Google Docs, I found that one of my favorite shortcuts was absent — Shift + F3. In Word, this command cycles through lower case, Sentence case and UPPER CASE.
For anybody that still looks at their keyboard while typing (this was me for the better part of a decade until I learned enough basic touch typing to be able to look up now and then), they’ll understand the pain of only noticing that Caps Lock has been hit after knocking out a large chunk of text.
With Shift + F3 on Word, this was a mild inconvenience. On Google Docs, it’s a different story altogether. This is where AnyCase App comes to the rescue.
I’ve been using the app for close to a year and it’s been a professional lifesaver. If you’re editing on Google Docs, then I highly recommend trialing this little program and its customizable, OS-wide keyboard shortcuts.
As writers, editors and publishers, it can be terribly easy to fall into a rut with our software stacks. We’ve got work to do and ignoring software niggles often seems like the best/only option at the time.
But it’s important to try to evaluate the tools of our trade whenever we can. We need to know when these products actually meet our needs, as well as when we’re simply settling for second, third or even fourth best.
This is where I’m going to plug our series of publisher-focused tech round ups. We’ve released articles diving into the best headless CMSs, digital publishing platforms and subscription management software.
Sure, you might already have a great software stack in place, but it never hurts to keep your options open.
Headless content management systems (CMS) have exploded in popularity in recent years, as brands and publishers seek greater operational flexibility.
A?study conducted in 2021 ?showed that 64% of enterprise organizations had switched to a headless approach — an almost 25% increase from 2019. Moreover, the headless CMS software market is projected to witness a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20.1% through to 2032 resulting in a?market value of $3.8 billion .
A headless CMS offers a greater level of speed, security and flexibility across digital channels, compared to more-traditional counterparts. Additionally, the ability to deliver content across multiple channels makes it a powerful option for any publisher looking to scale up.
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In this article , we discuss what a headless CMS is, how it works and review 15 of the best headless CMS products for 2022.
A Deloitte survey found that the?churn rate ?for subscription based video streaming services in the US was well over 37%. A Mckinsey report discovered that more than 71% of all customers in the US expect?personalized interactions from companies ?— a major challenge for digital publishers, which often don’t have the data analysis and propensity modeling capabilities needed to process large amounts of customer data and deliver real-time personalization.
Tracking, managing and reporting revenue have traditionally challenged many?subscription-based businesses .
The good news is that using subscription management software can help businesses, especially digital publishers, overcome these challenges.?
In this article , we review some of the best subscription management software available to businesses today.
In the era of programmatic advertising,?data management platforms ?(DMPs) are an essential tool for digital publishers, serving as data ecosystems that help shape digital ad campaigns.
Essentially, the more first party data a publisher feeds a DMP, the more audience insight on that website an advertiser has when developing their marketing budgets?
With marketing budgets on the rise once more after?2021’s dip , now’s the time for publishers to consider either signing up to their first DMP or possibly switching providers. That being said, with dozens of DMPs on the market it can be tricky selecting the right DMP.
Determining whether a DMP is the best fit comes down to both its feature set as well as the prospective client’s needs. Publishers need to factor in the cost, the accessibility of the user interface (UI), and the system performance among other parameters.
Content, once published online, rarely remains rooted to the same spot. It goes through an entire lifecycle of being published, shared, updated and — in many cases — being republished via content syndication platforms.
To a?content creator , syndicating content can be daunting. On one hand, content syndication can help achieve greater visibility and generate additional backlinks that increase traffic to the site and convince?Googlebot? that a site is reputable. On the other hand, Google penalizes duplicated content and publishers could see their content slide down the search engines results page (SERP) rankings
Despite the risks, syndicated content is still a strategy worth pursuing, given the potential audience traffic and lead generation upside, as long as publishers minimize the risk.
For those just beginning to explore this space, check out our detailed guide on?content syndication SEO ?to understand more about the process, its benefits and also its pitfalls.
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