PUBLISHING Q&A

WHAT IS FLIPBOARD AND WHY SHOULD I CREATE AN ACCOUNT?

Flipboard is used by millions of people every day to discover and share stories. Working with publishers around the world, we help content creators reach new readers who are passionate and engaged in the topics they cover.

 

Flipboard is free to everyone. You start by signing -up to get a Flipboard Profile. When you look at your profile, you’ll see “Create a Magazine” — Flipboard Magazines can be an extension of your website, a place where you can share stories, videos and images that link back to your website. By creating a Flipboard Magazine and consistently adding your content, you are reaching a new audience around the world, directing more traffic to your website, utilizing our tools to package and promote content and sharing stories with our engaged global audience.  

HOW DO I GET MY PUBLICATION ON FLIPBOARD?

If you’re a publisher, create a Publisher Account here!  If you already have a profile but it is not a Publisher Account, log into your account on the web and go to the settings drop down to upgrade.

When you sign up for a Publisher Account, we will ask you to add an avatar and description and then submit an RSS feed for our review. Before your RSS feed is added to the account and made public, we will review the content to ensure it meets our RSS Guidelines and other technical aspects.

We suggest creating separate accounts for each title or international edition.

Once you are on Flipboard and have a consistent flow of content coming into your profile, you should begin seeing referral traffic from Flipboard to your website. When a user clicks on one of your articles in Flipboard, we direct them back to your website to read the story or view the video.

WHAT ARE FLIPBOARD MAGAZINES?

Magazines are packages or collections of your content that you can create from your Flipboard Profile. Magazines can either be powered by RSS feeds or you can manually add content from anywhere on the web by using our Chrome extension or bookmarklet.

We suggest creating magazines for each of the major sections on your website and adding RSS feeds to these to create a constant flow of traffic. But magazines can be hand-curated as well, featuring seasonal stories, event coverage and industry editorial packages (this is great for adding archival content). For example, a publication that focuses on technology may create a magazine filled with coverage on wearables or venture capital.

Magazines can be promoted on your social media, in the footer of your articles and email newsletters, and featured by our editorial team if it’s a good fit. People do not have to have Flipboard to read your magazines, they are free and accessible from any Internet connected device.

To manage your magazines, go to your Publisher Profile, hover over the magazine and select “Edit.” Here you can change the name, add a description, make the magazine private (so you can curate before you make it live), change the cover image, and add or remove RSS feeds.

HOW DO I ADD AN RSS FEED AND HOW DO I ENSURE MY CONTENT EXTRACTS CORRECTLY?

In order to add an RSS feed to your profile you must have a Publisher Account. If you don’t already have a Flipboard Account, go here to create a Publisher Account. If you already have a Flipboard Account, but it is not a Publisher Account, log in to your account on the web and go to the settings drop down to upgrade.

Once you have a Flipboard Publisher Account, on your profile page you’ll be able to submit an RSS feed. Before submitting your RSS feeds for approval, please ensure that you’ve followed our RSS Guidelines. When reviewing your feeds, we take into consideration the quality of the content you are including as well as the way it is rendering on Flipboard.

The best way to add RSS content is to make a Flipboard Magazine for each topic your publication covers. This will help organize your profile, making it easier for your readers to follow the channels they are most interested in. If all RSS feeds are added to one magazine, it can make the magazine seem unfocused.

You have complete control over the articles you share in your profile and magazines on Flipboard – whether it’s through the RSS feed you provide us or when you are manually curating magazines.

HOW IS MY CONTENT SURFACED ON FLIPBOARD?

Once your content is on Flipboard, our topics engine indexes your articles with multiple topic tags. These topic tags ensure that the right people are seeing your stories and that they are being picked up in related smart magazines and feeds throughout Flipboard. While we do take into consideration the topics tags you assign to your articles, the tags that are assigned by our topics engine will give you the broadest reach.

HOW CAN I GAIN FOLLOWERS AND PROMOTE MY PROFILE?

The more you engage with and promote your Flipboard Profile, the more you will get out of your presence.

Add the Flipboard Follow and Share social buttons to your website to increase followers and encourage your readers to share your content with their followers on Flipboard. Go here for more information on how to add these links to your website.

Start manually curating magazines (in addition to your magazines with RSS feeds) to package content around an event, theme or editorial package. A Flipboard Magazine is a great way to package and resurface older content. Installing our Chrome extension or bookmarklet makes curating from anywhere on the web a lot easier. You can then promote this magazine on your social channels and on your site with our Flipboard Magazine Widget. People do not need to have Flipboard to read your magazines, so feel free to share them in all your normal channels.

Encourage your writers to create Flipboard Accounts, curate their own stories, interact with and contribute to your publisher profile, write comments, and promote their Flipboard Profiles on other social media platforms (e.g., Follow my stories on Flipboard). All of this will help raise the reach of your stories on Flipboard—and drive more traffic in the process.

HOW SHOULD I ORGANIZE MY PROFILE?

Your profile should be a mix of magazines powered by RSS feeds, to ensure all of your content is being shared on Flipboard, and manually curated magazines that can be used to package content for promotion.

To start, submit RSS feeds for the major topics your publication covers, such as, sports, news, travel, or if you only cover one topic you can divide your magazines out by smaller subtopics. The more content you share on Flipboard the better!

Collaborate with your editorial team on any events, series of articles, projects, or issues they are focusing on this year. This content can then be added to magazines using our Chrome extension or bookmarklet and can easily be promoted on social media.

HOW BIG IS FLIPBOARD?

Since Flipboard’s launch in 2010, our base has grown to more than 100 million monthly active and highly-engaged users from all corners of the globe. We are in 196 countries localized in 20+ languages and free to everyone. People use Flipboard on all devices — from tablets to phones to PCs.

WHAT IS FLIPBOARD’S AUDIENCE LIKE?

Flipboard’s readership breaks down to approximately one-third Millennial, one-third Gen-X, and one-third Boomer, and is split pretty evenly between Male and Female. Our users are influential, curious, and affluent readers who invest in themselves by learning more about what they love.

HOW DO I SEE TRAFFIC FROM FLIPBOARD?

If you share articles from sites you manage, the traffic directs back to your website from Flipboard and is captured in the same analytics tool that you currently use to measure your website traffic. This data will come in as a referral under “Flipboard.” Because we are directing traffic back to your site, there is no need to set up Comscore or Google Analytics with Flipboard.

If our system detects AMP pages we will display the AMP version of an article over your mobile site. Please keep this in mind when checking your referral traffic.

WE’VE BEEN GETTING TRAFFIC FROM FLIPBOARD BUT DON’T HAVE A PROFILE. HOW IS THIS HAPPENING?

You are receiving referral traffic most likely because Flipboard functions like a web browser. If another Flipboard user shared articles from your website in their Flipboard Magazine, using our “flip it” bookmark, then you may be seeing traffic from people reading those stories.

ARE THERE ANY MONETIZATION/REVENUE PROGRAMS?

Currently your property would receive referral traffic from Flipboard, which you are free to monetize on your own site. We will be updating this space as we continue to build out our revenue programs. Stay tuned!

How do I contact Flipboard about promoting my content?

Feel free to reach out to ContentPartnerships@fipboard.com for promoted content opportunities on Flipboard.

HOW MUCH DOES IT COST?

Flipboard is free for everyone to use! There is no charge for displaying content, curating, or becoming a publisher on Flipboard.

WHAT IF I CAN’T LOG IN FOR SOME REASON?

Your account is associated with the email address used to create it. Please send an email to publisher_support@flipboard.com from that email address.

Please note: Each profile on Flipboard can only be associated with one email address; meaning, users can’t use the same email address to create multiple Flipboard Accounts.

I CAN’T FLIP CONTENT FROM MY WEBSITE, WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?

Your website may be blocking Flipboard in your robots.txt file. Make sure that your website and feed domain’s robots.txt allows the user-agents “Flipboard” or “FlipboardProxy” to crawl your content. More information can be found here.

I HAVE A PAYWALL, CAN I ADD THIS CONTENT TO FLIPBOARD OR INTEGRATE IT SOMEHOW?

Paywalls limit the amount of publisher-specific content a person can read on Flipboard without a paid subscription.

As a partner, we direct to your website so we cannot integrate with your subscription service, and users will be prompted to log in once they get to your mobile site. Because of this, we request that if you have a paywall you provide us with feeds that contain your free content only.