3 Super-Easy Ways to Use Family Features Content to Make Your Editorial Life Easier

Face it: the life of a publisher isn’t an easy one. We’ve got people pulling us in tons of different directions. The sales staff, the editorial team, advertisers, business partners, prospects, leads, our families… Where do we find time to concentrate on driving traffic and gaining a better social media following?

On the other end of the spectrum, what if you’re doing it all on your own? Cut your focus down to about 20 percent on each given area of your business and you quickly begin to realize one of those areas could be struggling in a given week. You may be just starting out, low on costs, or both. How can you make the content part of your day/week easier?

A few months ago, we announced a tech partnership with Family Features to incorporate free family-oriented content into the Community Content Engine but their content is available to anyone to use free of charge. Some publishers may gawk at the idea of using “canned content,” but today, we’ll show you three ways to use it to your advantage without sacrificing quality.

1) Weekend Filler – If you want to have a life outside of the office, you’ve got to find a way to get content up on the weekends. Some weeks, that will be no problem, with an overflow of great events, or articles to write about and promote. Other times (especially during the slow holiday season), this can be daunting and stressful. That’s why using Family Features to fill out your page on the weekends is key. Set it, forget it, collect some page views, and come back to the office on Monday fresh and ready to go!

2) As a Conversation Starter – Your social media accounts must engage the community. If they are not already doing that, it’s an uphill battle to gain the adoration and trust of your audience. Make sure you are constantly engaging in quality discussions over the topics you share with your audience (more on this in a later post). One way to do this, especially if you are just starting out, is to use Family Features content as a conversation starter. Some Family Features content is a bit light and fluffy, but there are a number of great articles to choose from that also talk about important issues for readers who may very well be in your demographics. Take this one as an example and run with it.

3) To Localize – The absolute best way to use Family Features content is to localize it for your audience. You’ll want to take a relevant topic from one of the many articles offered and consider how it relates to your readership. Next, reach out to local experts (business owners, doctors, educators, etc) for opinions. You can quickly plug quotes, business listings, events and more local information right into the article. Make sure you change your headline for better SEO on the local level. Having trouble finding sources to talk to about a given topic? Check your pool of advertisers/partners. So long as you are not directly promoting a business just for the heck of it, you can get some valuable, easy and willing content from your partners as relates to the Family Features content. Best of all, you can “throw them a bone” while not crossing the line of “church and state” we commonly hear about in the publishing industry.

What unique ways have you succeeded in using Family Features so far? Tell us in the comments.