Live blog monetization is a new, reliable way to add a revenue stream to your news website. Pay attention if increasing advertising revenue is a priority for your business model. We’ll show why and how live blogging is powerful.
Who Is Live Blogging For?
The first live blogs were run by major news organizations like newspapers and TV networks. Today, blog owners, video content creators, and others can use a live blog. This monetization feature on your website makes growing fan engagement much easier.
Live blogging has an advantage over relying on third-party platforms like Facebook Live, Instagram Live, or YouTube. When you publish original content on your website with a live blog, your audience will have a compelling reason to keep coming back. When your audience spends time on your website instead of your Facebook page, you’ll see several benefits.
Live Blog Monetization: Why Use Arena?
There are multiple ways to add a live blog to your digital publishing platform. With all your choices, there are several good reasons to use Arena.
- Simple, Fast Installation
Do you have a breaking news style opportunity right now? You can install Arena Live Blog and be up and running in minutes. Arena is fast and easy to use, so you can start generating advertising revenue quickly.
- Google AdSense Integration
Google AdSense is one of the most popular methods to generate advertising revenue. Arena has a built-in integration so that you can earn more AdSense revenue from your live blog. If you rely on AdSense today, Arena Live Blog will help you earn even more from Google.
- Conversion Cards Expands Revenue Beyond Ads
Earning revenue from ads is powerful. What if your business model includes more than ads? For example, media brands often want to get more paid subscribers. Other companies are interested in lead generation and driving purchases.
We know companies want advertising revenue, leads, and sales. That’s why we build Conversion Cards. Adding a Conversion Card to your live blog makes it easy to generate leads, get more subscribers, and sell more products. You can pick and choose when to use Conversion Cards on your publishing platform.
- Attract More Organic Traffic From Search Engines
Unlike a conventional blog post, a live blog makes it easy to create and post new updates. Some of the most successful live blogs are updated every 5-10 minutes where there is breaking news or exciting developments. Those frequent updates send a positive signal to search engines like Google that your website has up-to-date content. You are likely to get more traffic if you are posting quality content that helps people. As your traffic grows, you’ll get more advertising revenue and opportunities to grow your conversions.
Advertising Revenue Vs. Other Revenue Streams
Adding an additional revenue stream is important because it is simple and easy. Your website displays the ad, and you get paid. In contrast, selling digital products, managing affiliate programs, or shipping physical products is much more difficult. Without live blog monetization, your live stream content might excite people, but what if your audience isn’t in the mood to buy? When you have advertising in place, the online event will still bring in revenue.
No rule says you have to choose between advertising revenue and selling products. Many media brands sell physical products, and subscriptions and generate advertising revenue. For example, the New York Times and the BBC.
Running A Live Blog On Your Website Vs. Relying On Social Media
Adding a live blog to your website adds tremendous value to your business. While installing Arena only takes a matter of minutes, there is a learning curve if you are used to social media platforms like Instagram Stories, Facebook Shops, and Facebook Gaming. It’s natural for business owners, publishers and marketers to use their business profiles on social platforms especially when you have a large following.
Relying on a third-party platform exclusively to grow your audience engagement has significant challenges. For example, when you run an event on a social media website you will not get the same depth of information for your customer data platform. That lack of data means it is much more difficult to build a relationship with your audience, follow up or get conversions.
When you have live blog monetization in place, you have more options. For example, your live blog can augment a virtual event with a video streaming platform. This means you could run a virtual conference with a live stream video presentation. However, search engines (and people!) don’t always like to use video exclusively. By augmenting your virtual events with a live blog, you can pull in more organic traffic.
Three Ways To Boost Live Blog Monetization This Month
Once you have your live blog installed and configured, how exactly do you use it to drive more advertising revenue? Start with these five ideas to grow your advertising revenue in the next 30 days.
1) Celebrate Company News With A Live Blog
Company news – especially product releases – is prime material for a live blog. Just think about the excitement that comes with Google and Apple’s annual conferences. While new products are great to highlight, that is not your only option. Other types of company news such as an expansion to a new country or new integrations can also work well for a live blog.
2) Augment A Virtual Event or Conference With A Live Blog
Look through your events and marketing calendar for the next few weeks. Is your company offering any digital events, virtual conferences or other experiences for your audience? If the answer is yes, add a live blog to drive engagement up further.
Imagine you are running a one-day virtual event for your customers. Some attendees might attend the morning sessions while others may only show up for the keynote. By adding a live blog to the experience, you can provide key quotes, summaries and commentary on each part of the virtual event. That means your audience can learn and engage with the event content if they prefer to read over viewing video. After the event ends, the live blog will continue to help you attract organic search traffic to your website.
By the way, your live blog can help to increase live event engagement if you offer access replays to your audience. The excitement of seeing a live blog updated continuously during an event wouldn’t be available when viewing a recording. If there are other incentives to attend live (e.g. a promo code), you may be able to lift live engagement further.
3) Offer “Piggy Back” Live Blog Coverage
What if your company has no company news or virtual events coming up in the next month or so? In that case, there are still opportunities to run a compelling live blog but it does require a bit more creativity.
Take a few minutes to brainstorm with your team about what your audience is currently interested in, excited by or worried about. For example, a live blog experience in August or September might connect to the “back to school” season or the start of the football season. If there are breaking news stories that excite your audience, consider running a live blog about those events on your website.
This approach isn’t limited to consumer audiences either. Let’s say your goal is to connect with investors interested in up-to-the-minute coverage. In that case, look for economic announcements like the monthly jobs report released by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. Every month, there is significant coverage of this announcement. Your organization might decide to offer a short live blog session when the jobs report comes out. Help investors explore the implications such as which industries are growing and which parts of the country are struggling. If this live blog is a hit with your audience, you could transform it into an ongoing series and build a highly engaged audience.
Unlike the first two ways of using a live blog, providing commentary and coverage of an event may not be suitable for every company. It’s a natural fit for media companies, especially those with a specialized focus (e.g. banking news or tech news). It can also work with other types of companies. Keep in mind that it may be more difficult to get conversions or sales. When you have a live blog about company news like new product announcements, customers will have their credit cards to buy to some degree. In contrast, a person looking for general news coverage might not be in a spending mindset so generating direct revenue might be more difficult.
Live Blog Monetization: Where To Go From Here?
Live blog monetization is one of the best ways to engage your audience, grow advertising revenue and build your brand. Unlike running an event on a social media platform, you have the opportunity to collect rich customer data. That’s critically important as we move into the cookieless future. Learn more about live blog here.
