Reach an untapped audience and publish your title as a digital magazine. Dean Cook looks at how you could benefit.

There has been a lot said in the industry about digital magazines replacing print over recent years, but, in all honesty, we have only found digital publications only complement printed matter and vice versa. It not only reaches potential readers through social media marketing but from search-engine queries too.

However, a digital magazine published online needs to be produced differently. For example, simulating a multi-paginated A4 magazine through a small screen of most devices can quickly turn off potential readers. We look into the reasons why in this article.

If applied correctly, a digital-based publication can exercise digital broadcast channels to reach a broader audience. In turn, it aids as a marketing tool to help promote your brand and the premium printed publication within your publishing armoury.

Okay, not everyone has a decent-sized tablet, but it can be notoriously tricky to navigate your way through an A4-sized magazine on a screen the size of, well, a smartphone.

Is my magazine free to readers?

If you aren’t already offering some free content to your audience, then the digital format is a great platform to help reel in readers. It would help to exercise a digital medium to complement the printed counterpart sharing it across social media, emails and, of course, your website. Adding links to other websites, embedding video, or even providing access to podcasts etc., will add value and a richer experience for your readers, and your advertisers too. 

Is my magazine a paid-for title?

Subscribers can pay the cover price to read the magazine online or download a copy for reading later, however, we have found the response from the reader using this method to subscribe is low. Readers generally favour to read premium content in a magazine delivered by post.

Look for opportunities 

Digital reader behaviour statistics reveal a low-attention span when reading content online. So to match this, a limited-paginated variant of your title can be published instead. As a marketing tool broadcasted through social media channels and email subscribers, its main objective is to signpost potential readers to subscribe to the printed publication. 

For ease, and to keep your costs down, you could repurpose previously published content and reformat, and optimise it for small screen viewing. 

With the digital publication available to read online, contact your advertisers to see if they would be prepared to reshare valuable related content directly to their customers. For any advertiser, it is a value-added service showcasing wealth of quality content which can be shared at little or no cost to them in time or money. Each time it is reshared, it is doing more than just reaching an untapped market.

However, there's nothing like affiliation with a reputable brand but you could explore revenue opportunities too while bolstering relationships with advertisers by offering to provide a tailor-made digital magazine. For example, you could include the advertiser's logo and a banner ad on the cover and swap internal advertising with theirs — of course, all hyperlinked to web pages, podcasts and videos for a deeper experience for the reader. You could even republish one of their product reviews with ease.

Today, publications should offer more than just ad space, and to create a digital variant is a cost-effective and flexible way to exercise that need.

What digital magazine solution should I use?

Having explored various accessible digital magazine options over the years, we have embraced Issuu’s solution because of ease of use for the reader, it works on all devices and operating systems, and, more importantly – unlike some other providers – it enables your magazine’s content available to search engines. In addition, we can layer it with interactivity and page navigation too.

The moment the magazine has finished processing, we can supply you with a short link for sharing on social media and email. Finally, providing you with HTML code enables your magazine to appear seamlessly on your website.

Give yourself, your company and your magazine the additional publishing power it deserves. 

Would you like to know more? Why not drop us a line.