A few years ago, online news subscriptions were a hot topic of conversation across the digital realm. The “pivot to paid” showed a lot of promise for journalism, presenting the opportunity for publishers to establish a direct financial relationship with readers and supplement volatile digital advertising revenue.

Summer 2019 is here and we couldn’t be more excited to usher in a new wave of bright interns to contribute to the Disqus team! Over the next ten weeks, they will be spending time learning, innovating, working hard, and of course, we’ll make time for some fun too. Here at Disqus we foster and encourage an environment filled with creativity, growth, development, and curiosity! While this group will be focusing on their respective areas of expertise, we also strive to expose them to all departments of our company.

The newest cohort of consumers is upon us. Generation Z, consisting of those born between 1995 to 2012-ish (everyone says something a little different), will make up 40% of all US consumers by next year. Forty percent! 😱 Commonly mistaken for Millenials (born between 1980 and 1994), members of Gen Z are different and come equipped with different practices and behaviors when it comes to technology and the internet. Also known as “Digital Natives,” these Gen Zers have only ever known the convenience of high-speed Internet, unlike Millennials who experienced some of the dark days of landlines, flip phones, hand-written notes, floppy disks, and perhaps the worst of all… movies not on demand.

Summer is here, and we are beyond excited to try the newest recipes and restaurants! 🍝 This week we rounded up some of our favorite Disqus food websites to help you out this summer. Whether you plan to spend the next couple of months channeling your inner foodie, cooking up the yummiest summer recipes, or dining out to the trendy new restaurant-- we’ve got you covered!

If you’re a content creator, you probably spend a significant amount of time brainstorming, researching, drafting, and publishing fresh ideas regularly. There is a small sigh of relief once the piece is officially published, but it’s not long before you are on to the next idea or project. However, you don't always need to create more content, but rather smarter content! For example, you may look at a video, eBook, or blog post and see just a single piece, but there is an opportunity to repurpose or personalize that information to create something new. You can breathe new life into old content and continue to increase value from your popular posts. By repurposing, you already have a head start on the creation process. To start, take your best performing content, including blog posts, videos, podcasts, or infographics. Once you have that, let’s consider 4 different ways that you can repurpose your content:

Collaboration is a great way to grow your audience and diversify your content. Collaborating means working with someone to produce or create something new and exciting for your audience. Whether that involves contributed writing, interviews, or guest appearances, collaborations can be a powerful tool to amplify your reach and take your business to the next level - especially for emerging publishers! 📈

The final season of Game of Thrones took the world by storm with jaw-dropping plot twists and beautifully crafted battle scenes, but the finale received mixed reviews from loyal fans. With the series now concluded, let's see what people are saying about the end of the 8 season series that stole our hearts. Warning - major SPOILERS ahead!

Virtual Q&A’s are a powerful and efficient way to create a more personal experience for your audience. A virtual Q&A is an interactive gathering that takes place on the internet, and isn’t restricted to a single location, so attendees can join and participate from anywhere in the world! 🌎 The host will typically provide an area to submit questions, which can take the form of a survey, online forum, or a commenting thread. This usually takes place before the event starts, allowing readers time to input their questions about topics the host typically covers and everything in between! Whether you’re doing a Q&A write up, video or live video, this type of virtual event allows you, or your guests, to reach your audience in a more personal and direct way. Having this particular approach to your content will also let your audience to put a face to your brand. Q&A’s provide an opportunity for digital publishers to educate their audience, foster healthy debate, and share knowledge.

In January of 2018, Facebook changed its News Feed algorithm to prioritize more “meaningful interactions” from friends and family. The algorithm doesn’t just promote posts with the most comments but rather posts with replies to comments that can propel a conversation forward. As Facebook de-emphasized content from businesses and brands, many publishers lost significant referral traffic and had to re-evaluate their strategies to maintain and grow their readership. Facebook’s algorithm change was a challenge to most publishers, but particularly difficult for the ones that relied heavily on the social media platform to distribute content and drive traffic. So, over a year later, let’s take a look at what publishers are doing to replace that lost referral traffic. Many changed their approach on Facebook and explored different social platforms for distribution, such as LinkedIn or Instagram. They also took a look within to see how they can tweak their internal strategies.

More than ever, publishers are looking for new ways to strengthen and diversify their content. Today we’ll explore how podcasts can allow them to do this. Over the last year, podcasts entered the mainstream world in a big way, with a whopping 73 million Americans - about 26% of the US population, listening every month! With podcasts being around for significantly longer than a year, it’s only natural to ask, why are they only taking off now? In this post we will walk through why publishers are investing in this form of content, as well as provide some examples of how publishers are utilizing podcasts to diversify their strategy.

When used correctly, social media can be one of the most powerful forms of marketing and one of the most effective ways to grow your audience. For publishers, social media offers an opportunity to distribute content, reach new readers, and engage with their audiences. In this post we dig into what each of these channels can do for your business and offer some goals/guidelines for each one.