Using Anchor Content to Grow Audience

The internet is voracious for new content. And no matter how much you create, tomorrow is another day where you need to feed the beast. So, for many of us, we hit publish and then move on to the next piece.

But I think publishers often miss an opportunity with their anchor content. Media companies should view this as foundational. Whereas most of what is published is day-to-day information, the anchor content lasts much longer. So what matters today will likely matter in six months.

The benefit of this type of content is that it doesn’t require constant investment. Instead, you create it upfront, and then you can benefit from it for a long time. This shouldn’t be thought of as a replacement for your day-to-day content, but as its name suggest, it anchors the publication and gives it an excellent place to grow from.

Types of anchor content

Every publication will have its categories of anchor content, and I could make this piece 10x longer, and it would still not be exhaustive. However, I think there are three categories of anchor content that many publishers can work with:

1. The data tool
2. The ranking
3. The survey

Each of these has its place, and if you can figure out how to deploy them in your publication, you will be in a very good place. So, let’s jump in.

The data tool

Think about the data your team might be using regularly. With a good front end experience, that data could become a useful tool for your audience. In addition, once you build the page, you shouldn’t have to update it regularly, and, in some cases, you never have to make changes.

CoinDesk has its Bitcoin Price Index. This launched in September 2013, and since then, it has been driving a ton of traffic. It turned into the actual homepage for the media company. It took a lot of work upfront to create it, but it didn’t require much work once it was up. The team had to change which exchanges were included from time to time, but the reward far surpassed the investment.

Another example is the data tracker. I like what BioPharma Dive did recently with its BioTech IPO tracker. If you look at the tool, it’s really straightforward. But it’s a solid tool for someone interested in a quick snapshot of what’s going on.

But it doesn’t just have to be a b2b, IPO tracker. For example, if you’re in entertainment, you could have a 2022 Awards Season data tracker where you update which movies were nominated and won. If you run a site about spirits and alcohol, you could list all whiskeys by their flavors and proofs.

The point here is to have an always-on list of data that people can visit and use at their leisure.

The ranking

This is similar to the previous section, but here, you are editorializing the data described in the last section. So, if we use that alcohol example, you could create your annual “Best Vodka” ranking where you broke down which were the best ones.

Each year, you would update this with the new winners. If it became legitimate enough, you’d start to see companies competing to try and win. Maybe there’s a voting mechanism that adds a new audience engagement level.

The perfect example of this is the U.S. News & World college ranking. This holds a ton of weight in the higher education world that universities will license the use of the ranking from U.S. News & World to say that the publisher recognized them.

But for context, search “Top University” or “Top Universities.” By and large, you will see U.S. News & World in the top two spots. It’s a great driver of traffic.

The survey

This third idea uses your relationship with the audience to create your own data with surveys. But rather than just making some one-off data, you want to ask the audience year after year.

Here’s an example…

In 1998, First American ETF (S&P 500 SPDR), a completely passive investment product, was launched. If you ran a publication for financial advisors, you could have asked them whether they offered these passive ETFs to their clients versus actively traded mutual funds. I imagine the percentage would be meager.

But if you fast-forward to today and ask financial advisors, many more would say that they were pushing ETFs over actively managed mutual funds.

Each year, this would be a story that you could tell. And you could then create a simple data tool that shows the growth in ETF adoption over time. You could even create a ranking of the top ETFs according to financial advisors.

Even if you’re not looking for a trend, you can still survey them. If you asked marketers what their biggest pain point is, it’s likely different year to year. They might have said that search engine algorithmic changes were their biggest problem a decade ago, but today, it’s likely Apple Tracking Transparency (ATT) is increasing ad costs. Each year, that same survey is a story you can tell.

How you use this

There are three ways that I would look to use these tools.

First, you’re going to want your team to reference it regularly. If it’s the Biotech IPO Tracker, anytime there is a story about a new IPO, your team should be linking to it. These internal links will drive the audience to the page, but it also will start to benefit from long-term SEO. If you’re not eating your own dog food, how can you expect anyone else to?

Second, you want to pitch this out to journalists actively. When I first started covering the crypto space, I would get pitched every quarter by CB Insights with their latest research. All CB Insights did was pull data from its system and then create a simple report. But it was such a simple story to write.

Do the same thing with your surveys. If your audience says that Apple Tracking Transparency is the thing that is giving them the most heartburn, for example, that’s a data point you can share with other journalists. “According to 5,000 marketers, ATT is increasing their ad costs by 50%.” That’s a pitch that many journalists would appreciate.

Finally, you can monetize all of this. If you have anchor content that is always getting eyeballs, that can be sponsored. Or, you could co-brand the survey with a brand partner and release it annually. I’ve heard of companies advertising in the same survey for years.

The point here is that you can actually start to generate revenue from these pillars. Of course, it requires sufficient eyeballs, but if you’re creating this anchor content to be beneficial to your audience and your journalists (plus competitor journalists), it should get the traffic you need.

Like I said up top, there are plenty of other ideas you could create, and each publication will have its unique opportunities. However, I suspect that rankings and surveys are a win across the board. The data tracker might work best in the b2b world, but it depends on your creativity. Try it out and see how it helps you grow your audience over time.

Thanks for reading. Have you worked on this sort of anchor content? Hit reply or join the AMO Slack and let me know your thoughts. Have a great weekend!