Digital magazines are a lot more versatile than their print version ancestors, whether it’s from an advertising, convenience or creative standpoint.
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While many digital magazine publishers are content to make their digital magazines as replicas of their print version, publishing a digital magazine can open a publishing company up to many opportunities. Your creatives will be happy at the whole range of new tools they could use to express their message while your accountants could celebrate the possible new revenue-generating opportunities that you could take advantage of.
Aside from the new things you could do with a digital magazine, it also gives your brand a big boost compared to a regular print magazine. Being innovative would put you ahead of your competitors that stick to their old habits. In a super-competitive market such as publishing, brand perception is important especially for your advertisers. If they feel your brand is lacking compared to your competitors, then you may have a lesser cut of their advertising budget.
So let’s take a look at some innovative things you can do with a digital magazine:
1. Multimedia Content
With a digital magazine, you can insert multimedia content such as videos and sound clips to your pages. Just imagine how much richer your readers’ experience will be.
Now think about what would happen if your reader also reads your competitors’ print magazines. Already, your readers will put your magazine above your competitor’s, just because you offer them a richer reading experience.
Because digital magazines can be based on the same technology used to construct web pages, this means whatever websites are capable of, you can now implement them in your digital magazine. You can create visually-striking pages while making those pages interactive as well.
2. Live Feed
You can incorporate a live streaming feed of content within your digital magazine. Since digital magazines can be web-based, you can embed your specific RSS feed that would stream your content as they come out. You can even incorporate a Tweet feed if you want to incorporate sentiments about a certain topic.
Having a live feed in your digital magazine shatters the notion that magazines only come at a certain time, like every month. This allows your readers to enjoy content without having to wait for you to publish the next issue. It also keeps your readers engaged since they have to visit your digital magazine more often.
3. Links
If a reader sees something he or she likes in a printed magazine, they either have to access it online or make some calls. With a digital magazine, you can incorporate links within your article or magazine page.
Links can be embedded into text or images allowing your readers to access what the text or image is about. There are many possible applications of links. You can link certain phrases or words to past articles that you published. Image advertisements can be linked to your advertiser’s website or a specific landing page.
With links, your content’s effectiveness can be easily measured since you can trace how many people clicked on certain links and you can find ways to improve future articles.
4. Distribute as an app
Distributing your digital magazine through an app means your magazine will be on internationally-recognized app stores that your readers will be familiar with. It’s also another opportunity for you to be discovered by new readers.
It doesn’t matter where your readers are or if they change devices every now and then, as long as they have a smartphone and an internet connection, they can access your magazine again and again.
Having your magazine through an app also gives you opportunities to track certain metrics about your magazine app such a downloads, churn rates or how many times it’s accessed.
5. Exclusive Content
Offering a digital magazine can give print magazine publishers another channel for exclusive content and an opportunity to upsell during subscription purchases.
If you are selling subscriptions for your print magazine, you can throw in a digital magazine subscription that has exclusive (digital-only) content for a smaller added fee than if they were to take a digital subscription separately.
Exclusive content can be in the form of articles that aren’t found on your website or print magazine or even just exclusive multimedia elements of an article such as a specially produced video that complements the text article.
Conclusion
Offering a digital magazine can infuse a breath of innovation into your publishing business. Your industry is undergoing a massive transformation and innovation is the answer to keeping relevant and ahead of the game.
