12 tips for creating compelling native advertising content

What's native? Images, video, infographics, slides, and, of course, text. This compelling graphic is presented by Juicy Fruit, and runs on the home page of the Huffington Post.

Getting started? Use this report to focus your decisions, and understand how other native programs have answered the same question: How to create compelling native content. This list is informed by a Native Ad Summit presentation from David Arkin, Director of Content Strategy at Gatehouse Media, which recently launched a native design studio, the Center for Content and Design, in Austin, Texas.

1. What type of content will your agency or media offer? 

There are so many different types of content beyond mere articles, that it is helpful to select a few that your company can specialize in providing. Typically the selection is a combination of what your media company already does really well, what works best and what is in highest demand.

Our of more than 22 different kinds of native content possibilties, Arkin's team focused on several specific content types: Articles, blogs, photo galleries, video, infographics, social media posts (in bold) out of a larger list:

This is a typical list for most local advertising programs that have expanded the selection beyond mere article posts. Video and infographics are especially popular as anything more visual is also more readily shared. Formats that require more work can also command a higher price. The Quad City Times charges extra for slide shows and video posts, for example, than text articles.

2. Use both editorial newsroom standards and proactive native policies

All the native agencies we talked to stressed the importance of setting a standard that all content would meet and exceed newsroom standards. This is really a minimum standard, since customers are typically looking for engagement, not just impressions.

While Arkin's team may start a program with a business profile and Q&A if the client requires it, he advises to "goes beyond" this format to engage audiences in specific ways.

This means having a proactive theory to evaluative qualitively what "interesting" relevant information will be. Here are a couple of editorial mission statements that have informed great native programs:

The BuzzFeed Model

Buzzfeed describes its audiences as: Bored in line, bored at work and bored at home.  Editors judge content exclusively on one metric: How many times does it get shared?

The determination of which stories to assign and create on the client side of the newsroom is based on three clear factors, posted on the wall of the building. As a measure of the seriousness, an article will not be published if it does not accomplish one of these three things:

- This expresses my identity
- This made me feel "x" I want you to feel "x"
- This supports a view I already have

Examples of great headlines from Buzzfeed's team - and they are consistently good - include "17 images that prove rich kids are just like us" promoted to help launch a new TV show, "Rich Kids of Beverly Hills" and "Searching for a home in your 20's versus your 30's" promoted by Coldwell Banker.

The Gatehouse model

At Gatehouse, the overarching mission for the traditional newsroom applies also to the native writers in the Content and Design Studio, Arkin said. But native goes further to push for content that engages audiences in three ways:

a. Make readers smarter

Arken considers that content that makes readers smarter should answer  the "Water cooler question:" 

"Does this story, website, or front page make me smarter? Do I know something interesting to share?"

b. Connect emotionally

"They are more likely to share if they have laughed, cried, felt indignant...felt something."

c. Offer solutions

"Readers have always wanted something more than gloom and doom. Does this story challenge leaders to look for solutions instead of reporting problems?

To fit these three criteria, look for native content to accomplish a few key things:

• Answer a question

• Provide information

• Provide entertainment, an escape

• Touch peoples emotions

3. Content should connect with categories critical to people's everyday life

A key premise at the Content and Design Center is that content should be seasonal if possible and connect to practical everyday concerns: Food, home, health, education, auto, doing things. If the client is a landscaper, for example, the schedule might include spring growing tips (seasonal), child safety issues (emotional) and what to do with plant clippings (practical). Note that these are all "things that make you smarter" in every day life.

4. Decide what kind of content will be excluded

Often noted is the Atlantic Magazine dilemna in which were widely criticized for publishing advertorials supporting the Church of Scientology. Where will your local media draw a line around posts? Racist groups? Religious cults? Politically extreme factions? A good policy is that the native clients should not violate the overall mission of the media company.

5. Client control:  Understand the brand, but set guidelines for customer input into the articles at the story creation stage.

While all native programs do a deep dive into the needs of the advertiser's audiences,  editors maintain enough client control - or just separation -  to do a better job, than if the client was writing the stories or supervising the project. Some programs such as SpeakEasy do not allow clients to have any input into story creation.

6. Track engagement stats and share with the team

Buzzfeed has schooled the traditional newsroom on the importance of tracking "shares" as the highest indicator of engagement. Successful content marketing programs are also religious about using realtime tools like Chartbeat that allows editors and writers to see and learn from how and which articles and headlines trend.

7. Use visuals

One of the lessons learned is how much better "readers" respond to stories that are visualized. Every post should have an image attached and use of video should be added when possible. Infographics are also especially popular. Visuals of people that convey emotion is a tactic that works consistently to drive more clicks.

8. Promote content on high traffic areas

Most native ad programs run on the home page of the media site  (see examples here), reside on high traffic home pages -  either on the right rail between promotional posts and advertisers, or else in-stream with traditional news articles. Within these parameters, native ads can float through the queue with the other ads several times a day, be fixed at the top or the bottom of the queue for fixed periods of time, or a combination of the above.

The key is to provide enough traffic to the content that is allowed to "succeed" in delivering the message.

Content that is posted on search-oriented niche sites, such as weddings or dining, may need an extra boost via email or on a main page.

9. Set recommended levels for frequency of articles in a native program

Gatehouse uses a model of more than one "touch" per month with a story, typically 4 to 5 per month. All native programs in LocalMediaInsider's survey had minimums of at least four articles, or at least three months. Frequency is still key to brand lift.

10. Use numbers in headlines

The reason Buzzfeed uses so many listicles is because they work. Numbers in headlines generate twice as many pages views according to an infographic from Polar, a native platform.

11. Place ads above the fold

Ads that live above the fold, also according the Polar, get significantly higher click-throughs. One of the local native programs we talked to plans to charge more for serving above the fold at the top of the feed, rather than at the bottom or running through the feed as many programs do.

12. Know what makes "bad" content

Arkin also gave what makes "bad content: in his Native Ad Summit presentation:

• When the writers "don't take it seriously" as a "real story."

• Content is not tied into events, seasons, product launches

• Content does not have SEO and key words

• Content is not information people can use in their everyday life.

Many thanks to David Arkin for sharing much of this information at the Native Advertising Summit.

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