Putting a digital magazine on your website can be a smart move, which benefits both the magazine and the website – but only if it’s done in an effective manner. To help readers with this, we’ve come up with three good tips to embed a digital magazine in a website.
And in order to help you going digital, we’ve written a complete guide on how to create a digital magazine:
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Make sure the website clearly advertises the magazine
We realize that this tip should be utterly obvious, but there are still a lot of sites out there which fail to do this. In fact, there are some sites out there, which give the impression that they’re actually trying to hide the presence of their digital magazine.
Make sure that when you embed a digital magazine in a website, the magazine is always mentioned on all key pages and the site map and that the relevant link is always kept up to date.
If you’re charging for access to your magazine, consider letting potential customers have access to some back issues for free or, at the very least, some sample articles. They may be impressed by the content of your website but could want a little more reassurance before they part with their cash for even a single issue, let alone a subscription. Likewise, if you’re taking payment, make sure the payment process is smooth (and secure).
Tease your content wherever you can, but do your best to avoid duplicating it
On a similar note, if you make the effort to embed a digital magazine in a website, then be prepared to devote at least as much effort to promoting it across your digital platforms. You probably already have an e-mail newsletter for your website (if not then make it a priority to start one) and you’re probably already active on at least one social media platform (ditto).
The key to generating interest in your digital magazine is to promote it with valuable content for the relevant platform, without going into the realm of hard sell. This concept may sound complicated, but actually, most of the time it just takes a bit of common sense and is probably best illustrated with a couple of examples.
Let’s say you use Instagram. Instead of just posting a picture of your latest magazine cover, get a tablet (or smartphone) and have the screen show the cover of your latest issue. Then integrate this into an overall picture, which is original to Instagram. That way you’re still letting your followers see what you want them to see, but are adding content to pique their interest further and avoid the post looking like a straightforward advert.
Likewise, when you send out your e-mail newsletter, you could include a short article on a topic which is covered in greater depth in your magazine and then refer them to the latest issue for more information. In either case, but particularly on social media, remember to acknowledge feedback and thank users for providing it. If possible give an indication of when you’ll act on it or an explanation of why you’re unable to do so at this point in time.
Bundles can make for publishing joy
The concept of bundling is nothing new, mobile phone companies, in particular, are experts at it. In fact, it’s nothing particularly new to publishing, but it can still do wonders for a publisher’s bottom line.
The most obvious use of bundling is getting extra value out of content which has already been published. As your magazine continues to run, you are going to build up an archive of published issues.
Per point one, you’re probably going to want to use some of this content to attract new subscribers, however, if you’ve maintained a consistently high standard of content, then you should be just fine giving them access to the very oldest editions. It’s irrelevant if the information contained in them is out of date, potential customers just need to see what you can do.
Keep your more recent editions to be able to offer new subscribers the option to purchase a bundle of back issues for a small extra fee. Alternatively, you could finesse this strategy further by collating articles into topical groups and republishing them as stand-alone “special issues”.
For example, say your run a lifestyle publication, which includes home care, recipes, fashion, beauty tips and health information. You could certainly combine the recipes together and perhaps add a bit of extra content as an extra inducement.
Obviously, you will want to be honest about the fact that this is previously-published content, but there is still a good chance that you will get some sales even from existing subscribers. These sorts of issues are also ideal for offering out to non-subscribers with whom you have content, e.g. your e-mail list and social media following.
Moving the first steps into the digital word can be tough. For a complete guide on how to go digital, don’t forget to download our ebook:
