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It Starts with a Story – The Publisher (Part IV).

Series Intro

In a series of articles, we will build the business case for VersoView. In the previous article, we took the perspective of the community. In this article, we take it one step further and we take the perspective of the publisher.

In the previous article, we stated that the reader is the key stakeholder of the VersoView ecosystem.

Who, or What is a ‘Publisher’?

It is important to understand the benefits of VersoView for publishers, given that they play a vital role within the ecosystem.

Before we examine those benefits, let’s establish who publishers are. At VersoView, we believe there are stories waiting to be shared. VersoView empowers anybody to develop a platform and share their story. Accordingly, a publisher can be anyone who produces content for an audience.

When we think of ‘publishing’ we think of the tens of thousands of magazines that parade colourfully along shelves and stands in shops across the globe, whether high street names or niche titles. All of these titles can thrive in the VersoView ecosystem, but there’s so much more. Publishers also comprise corporations, who’s ‘audience’ might be staff, shareholders and suppliers; brands, who enjoy vast B2C audiences; individuals, influencers and celebrities who have content to share or are trying to forge stronger communities to engage with, and reward them for their interactions. 

The VersoView ecosystem seeks to provide all these publishers (there are many more; events, books, agencies, etc, which we’ll save for another time) the ability to engage and reward audiences and develop thriving communities. In these communities, there is opportunity for a rich diversity of publishers, providing a range of different perspectives and different topics.

“The ground-up thinking is radical and highly complex; the output is gloriously simple.”

OpenView – Our AI Publishing Tool

The page-turner from the 90s – offering a tedious user experience – was only ever a stepping stone, but even today it’s abundant. Founders Julian and Steve’s corporate and consumer clients have hankered for something far better, but it didn’t exist – unless you had deep pockets and extra resources. Their clients, such as five-star airlines and hotels, national banks, healthcare providers and the resources sector typically have small marketing teams, with modest budgets, so adding personnel is not an option, nor is spending tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on ‘digital’ editions. Julian and Steve have built what publishers want. OpenView by VersoView.

When you first see OpenView, it’s almost a non-event. It looks like it should look, but that’s the point. This AI-driven, patent-pending process has created an output and user experience which feels reassuringly familiar, with an intuitive interface. The ground-up thinking is radical and highly complex; the output is gloriously simple.

VersoView – Growing Subscriptions

To attract and grow their reader base, the majority of publishers have two main priorities: to deliver high-quality content and a high-quality reader experience – both of which will fuel sales and subscriptions which is their lifeblood.

VersoView enables publishers to provide a seamless reading experience without having to dedicate huge amounts of time and resources.

VersoView encourages publishers to share some of their content for users to discover, rather than hiding everything behind a paywall. VersoView technology facilitates access to new, previously unreachable, audiences, utilising rich data, coupled with media profiling, funnelling previously hard to find subscribers towards their content. 

VersoView – Nurturing Communities

Publishers already have dedicated, yet isolated communities, unable to interact and engage with each other and the content they like – connected only in the publishers’ database and only get together on printed stickers that go out onto shrink-wrapped editions.

We’ll invent a title – ScubaDeep.

Readers of ScubaDeep don’t know each other, other than from the letters pages. On VersoView, subscribers are invited into a closed community, filled with other ScubaDeep readers. Now, not only can they consume their favourite magazine online through the OpenView interface, they can also comment on features, and share their experiences with other readers. Reading this month’s feature on diving in Turks & Caicos? You were there last month and can share your experiences and those photos of schools of Nassau groupers with other subscribers.

For those interactions you are rewarded with Social Tokens for your likes, and your engagement with that community. The most active and informed of ScubaDeep’s community can be upvoted by others in the community and earn higher rewards. Those same communities can also upvote or invite active and engaged users to become Moderators or Curators, earning more rewards, and NFT rewards.

The publisher is now the conduit for these like-minded souls to chat and share on a subject they love, and that’s a powerful tool for the publisher.

VersoView – Inventory

Content is King.

VersoView gives all publishers the ability to seamlessly upload, create and manage content. Corporations, brands, educational institutions, and publishers have years, even decades, of past printed material as PDFs, filled with original, rich content. VersoView has been designed to allow publishers to create huge inventories, and even to easily divide those inventories to specific audiences.

Think of your local Council, who each year produce all manner of reports, along with public-facing promotions and events, and reams of other internal compliance documents and reporting. Each of those have specific audiences – residents, small business owners, staff, key stakeholders, parks and wildlife, municipal services, etc – who can be managed on the VersoView platform and be served all, or part, of the total inventory.

Every edition of every publication will enjoy the same one-click upload and simple interface – all the while our AI learns your style of publication offering a faster, more seamless experience.

Our Discovery Tool – VersoPlus

Another unique feature of VersoView is that it offers publishers the ability to attract new readers via its AI-driven content curation. Publishers are far more likely to receive increased levels of engagement from people specifically interested in related fields, so, using anonymised data gathered about engagement and consumption behaviours, VersoView’s AI will recommend new content tailored for different reader tastes.

VersoView couples this rich, anonymised data with traditional media profiling to change that experience and serve up related content that seeks to delight the reader in a meaningful way. We call this VersoPlus.

Other Social media platforms and search engines will see that you’ve searched for ‘Arabica coffee’ then bombard your search and choices with everything coffee-related. It’s the phenomenon known as ‘My search engine ruined Christmas’, when your partner knows what you’re buying, because those ads are popping up.

VersoPlus curation allows publishers to gain new audiences based upon people who may be drawn to their content. For example, if a reader was interested in gardening, VersoPlus would recommend similar communities to you, perhaps farming and cooking, but also choices based on your media profile, which may include cruise-based holidays, interiors, financial planning and wine appreciation. This reader would then engage with this content, which will drive future related suggestions. Over time, publishers can gain high-quality readers who are genuinely interested in their content, meaning that VersoView offers a novel way to gain new readership and subscribers.

Enriched Community Engagement 

VersoView gives publishers the ability to drive engagement and empowers them to better understand what is interesting to their audience.

When examining engagement rates with print or digital push mediums (e.g. email), publishers can monitor click rates but are unable to establish how the reader felt about a piece. This means they miss out on complex demographic information and so have a limited understanding about how the reader feels about their content.

With VersoView, if a reader likes or interacts with specific parts of a publication it triggers a specific response. Publishers are able to see this and so can build a far more comprehensive picture of their readers’ behaviours, which fosters a deeper relationship between a publisher and their audience. All of this information can be used by a publisher to improve their content and better tailor it to the unique needs of readers, ultimately resulting in increased engagement rates. What style or length of articles work best for engagement, and are these the same as for converting casual readers into subscribers?

These mechanisms are strengthened by VersoView’s options of tokenized rewards. These social tokens are based on terms set by the publisher and their community. Readers can receive community-specific tokens by engaging in the community, such as with ‘likes’ or ‘discussion’. This scheme helps to ensure that publishers can reward valuable and meaningful community contributions. With these tools, publishers can help nurture dedicated communities by incentivising readers to engage in their content, creating a whole new dynamic and meaningful relationship between publisher, content and reader.

We will delve deeper into how VersoView, VersoPlus and Social Tokens richly benefit advertisers in our next edition of It Starts with a Story.

General Outro to series

VersoView positions itself at the intersection of content, communities and brands, with the VVT token at the heart of it all. In a series of articles we will build our case and explain the added value of VersoView, and the role of the VVT token, from different stakeholder perspectives:

●     General introduction (part I)

●     The Reader (part II)

●     The Community (part III)

●     The Publisher (part IV)

●     The Advertiser (part V)

●     The Content creator (part VI)

●     The Investor (part VII)

About VersoView:

VersoView is an engage-to-earn social media platform featuring meaningful tokenized rewards.

Brands, businesses, educational partners, organizations and publishers can host and engage their communities around their content and reward them with branded Social Tokens within the VersoView ecosystem.

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