Growing Demand Blog

You’ve probably seen our recent press release announcing the launch of Content Channels, our new content solution for publishers.  Or perhaps you saw Nat Ives’s piece in Advertising Age about our Content Channels implementation for SFGate.  And without any formal announcement, you’ve already seen the principles behind Content Channels at work on our own network of websites like eHow, LIVESTRONG.COM and Trails.com.  But how do we take the lessons we’ve learned from publishing content on our own properties and use them to create informative, engaging online experiences for partners like USA Today and Hearst?

It’s an ongoing collaborative process, one that focuses on making the Content Channels experience as seamless as possible for both the publication and its readers.  To achieve this, we work closely with our publishing partners to create real connections across several themes.

Connecting on goals:  Each Content Channels project is different, and we match the specific needs of the publisher with the strengths of Demand Media.  Whether the goal is reaching a new audience or finding new ways to engage existing ones, we work in lockstep with our partners to identify the best opportunities for their websites to benefit from the addition of our targeted, high-quality articles and videos created at scale.  Examples include the “Travel Tips” section we’ve built for USA Today, the Small Business resource center we power for the Houston Chronicle’s chron.com, or the “Home Guides” section we created for the San Francisco Chronicle’s SFGate.

Connecting on editorial:  After recommending the best topics to cover, formats to feature, and sample titles to consider, we collaborate with the publisher’s editorial team to create a detailed set of style guidelines to ensure that the content we create reflects their publication’s editorial standards.  We also work hard to replicate the distinct look and feel of the partner’s website, developing section fronts and web pages that behave just like the rest of their site.

Connecting on quality:  Because our content studio is already calibrated to deliver high-quality content, we can quickly recruit our most qualified writers and editors for each Content Channels project, selecting them from our network of over 10,000 freelancers based on subject area expertise and past performance.  And like all new content created by our studio process, every Content Channel article created is checked for plagiarism, then reviewed, edited, fact-checked and rated by our talented copy editors.  Weekly quality audits identify and remove writers or articles that aren’t meeting our rigorous standards or those of our customers, and the publisher has the power to remove any titles they don’t like.

Connecting on technology:  Our Content Channels platform is designed to snap easily into the customer’s website.  After communicating with the publisher’s IT team, we manage the technical effort and handle the hosting ourselves – allowing publishers to focus their resources on other important projects.  And our technology platform is constantly being optimized to serve up relevant, engaging content for audiences arriving via search and social.

It’s building these connections that allows us to bring the power of Demand Media’s platform to our partners’ websites so easily, and deliver the engaging, informative experiences consumers demand.

Steve Semelsberger is SVP of our Business Solutions Group.  Follow him on Twitter at @semels.