Why Having an Integrated Publishing System Matters More Than Ever

Today, more than ever, the lines between traditionally-defined media channels are being blurred. Television-, radio-, print-, and web-based companies are increasingly delivering their content across channels in order to reach audiences wherever they are: mobile devices, desktops, browsing the web, digital apps, YouTube, and social media, to name a few.

What does this mean for media companies? Of course, many things. But perhaps most importantly, it means that competition for eyeballs is fiercer than it has ever been. For example, while it is no doubt true that television and print media companies have always been indirect competitors, the permeation of cross-channel content strategies has brought these companies into more direct competition. Companies such as CNN and The New York Times now often appear side-by-side in Google's search index, along with Twitter and Facebook news feeds.

For traditional media companies, the process of figuring out how to manage all of these seemingly disparate channels is chaotic, but necessary. PixelEdge provides a platform for managing all of your media channels via an integrated and easy-to-use interface. With one click, publishers can deliver a new video, article, or audio track to their website, social media channels, and YouTube channel. They can also see analytics to determine how their content performs on each of these channels. Best of all, clients who use our platform do not need any technical expertise.

If you are struggling to figure out how to keep up with the rapidly-changing media landscape, and perhaps find these changes to be daunting, get in touch with us to learn more about how we can help. Our platform is easy-to-use, powerful, and affordable, and we'd love to put it to work for you.

Audience Engagement in the Digital Age

If you're a publisher looking to engage with your audience and monetize your content, you have by now probably realized that social media is a critical channel. At PixelEdge, we provide a powerful platform for engaging with your audience digitally via apps, websites, and social media. We have tools for analyzing engagement with your posts, targeting posts to specific users, and even tracking social media trends and generating automated posts designed to engage your audience. This is one aspect of our platform that makes it a powerful tool for growing your media brand and engaging with your users.

Take a look at this article, published in last week's Economist, which addresses the importance of social media.

The Big Myth About Magazines

If you're familiar with the all the recent doom and gloom in the magazine publishing industry, you'll know that most prognostications focus on one central 'fact': print magazines are disappearing. Most who make such claims do so with little evidence and plenty of faulty assumptions. Sure, the industry is changing - circulation is down at many magazines and publishers are struggling to figure out how they'll respond to new trends in advertising and monetization. But to reason that this precludes the eventual disappearance of print magazines is misguided. In what follows, I'll discuss a few challenges facing the magazine industry, and how these challenges can be overcome.

1. Increased Competition from Digital Publishers is Poaching Traditional Magazine Readers

In the old days, if you wanted to become a publisher you'd need a printing press, paper, ink, a distributor, a design team, and relationships with advertisers among other things. To put it concisely, becoming a publisher was hard. Now, all you need is a keyboard. The rise of online media has led to increased competition in the publishing space. Readers expect content that is up to the minute, free, and easily accessible. Magazine publishers must determine how their publications can fit into this new paradigm. This does not mean they must get rid of their print editions, but it does mean that they'll need to get creative about the other ways they offer content to readers. Having a comprehensive digital strategy is a necessity both for engaging with readers and for promoting content across platforms.

2. The Glut of Content Providers Makes Brand Recognition Increasingly Difficult

Scrolling through Facebook or Twitter, you'll likely come across more headlines than you could ever hope to recall. I often find myself struggling to recall who published articles that I have recently read. If you're a publisher trying to determine how to make your brand stand out, this presents a challenge. Brand recognition is important for generating loyal, engaged readers. How can you accomplish this in a day and age when there are seemingly more publishers than there are stars in the sky? It starts by creating memorable brand experiences that span platforms. In short, your print content should complement your digital content, and vice-versa. As humans, we often create patterns to help us remember things; it's why advertisers sometimes insert jingles at the end of commercials and why the earliest humans invented constellations to help them observe the night sky. A million individual stars in the sky are largely indistinguishable. Some might shine more brightly than others, but even these can be lost or forgotten. But when these stars are ordered into constellations? Now you've got something people can remember. Similarly, publishers should think of their brands as constellations, and each platform should connect to the others in memorable, meaningful ways.

PixelEdge is your turnkey solution for digital magazine publishing. Our digital apps come with full support, maintenance, guidance, and content-delivery. To you, this means that you don't have to devote any of your own resources and at a fraction of what it would cost elsewhere. Find us on the web at www.pixeledge.io, or email us at info@pixeledge.io today!

Scaleable App Development: Why Flexibility is Key

Finding top-quality app developers is hard. Harder is finding an app developer that has the vision for the long-term health of your digital app. In app development (as in most business ventures) once you get far enough into the process you start to realize that many of your original assumptions were wrong. It might take a month for you to get to this point. It might take a year. Heck, it might even take ten. What's important is that when you get to this point, you should have the capability and flexibility to adapt and move forward.

I've spoken with a few people who have told me a bit about their experiences with custom developers. There seems to be a common theme: they spend months developing a flashy app with a feature set to put Inspector Gadget to shame. Upon completion of development they finally release it to the major app stores and everyone goes happily on their way. After a few months of usage analysis, these folks find that 10% of their app's features aren't being used and another 30% are being used in ways they hadn't anticipated. Furthermore, their research shows them that apps similar to theirs are having success using features they hadn't originally thought of. Where do you go from here?

Well, you could do nothing. But this option will inevitably lead to your app fading into obsolescence. You could pay your original developers a premium to release a new version of your app with the changes that you need. Or, you could save by going to a cheaper developer who doesn't have familiarity with your app or the underlying architecture, resulting in a less-than-seamless transition from one app version to the next. And I haven't even mentioned routine bug fixes and security updates that your app will also undoubtedly need. You see, the problem with outsourcing app development is that project-based developers are not invested in the long-run. Thus, any maintenance or changes that you need are bound to be expensive and time consuming.

PixelEdge overcomes this problem by offering clients turnkey app development and management services for all stages of their app projects. Since our fixed monthly pricing doesn't adjust when your app requires updates, we approach each project with a long-term vision that is flexible and comprehensive. Meanwhile, you don't have to sink large upfront costs and you get all the support and technical expertise you need at every step along the way. So, if you're looking into app development and don't have the resources to do it in-house, keep PixelEdge in mind. We've got solutions for projects of all shapes and sizes, and we save your organization time and money in the long-run.

Magazines Should Start Segmenting Readers by Location

Now, before you say "I don't produce enough content to target my readers by location," consider this: there are hundreds, if not thousands of local businesses that would kill to have direct access to your readers.

Here's an example: Let's say you publish a fishing magazine. If I'm the owner of the local bait shop, I'd love to know who's nearby and reading your content. Better yet, I'd like to reach directly out to those people whenever I want to advertise a special deal or promotion. So I go to you, the publisher of the Fishing Magazine app, and I say 'Hey, can you send a notification to all of your readers in a 30 mile radius, letting them know that I'm having a 20% off sale today?'

But this is just the tip of the iceberg. Let's say Joe is one of your readers, and he tends to read more articles about fly fishing. Bob, on the other hand, reads more about rock fishing. So instead of sending out one blast notification on my behalf, you can send one notification to Joe that advertises deals on fly rods and another notification to Bob that advertises umbrella rigs.

There are many more possibilities, but here's the key takeaway: the more niche your audience, the better. Local businesses don't have huge marketing budgets or the ability to sponsor content that will drive consumers to their storefronts or websites in droves. What they do have is the desire to directly target the high-value, niche consumers that your magazine has access to. With an app, you can help them do just that.

This sort of advertising relationship represents a potentially new paradigm in the way we monetize digital magazines. So the next time you're wondering how you can increase your ROI, you might want to think about segmenting your readers by location.

PixelEdge is your turnkey solution for digital magazine publishing. Our digital apps come with full support, maintenance, guidance, and content-delivery. To you, this means that you don't have to devote any of your own resources and at a fraction of what it would cost elsewhere. Find us on the web at www.pixeledge.io, or email us at info@pixeledge.io today!

Shakeup Your Digital Magazine Publishing in the New Year

Are you looking to reinvigorate the way you deliver content to your readers this year? Here are a few suggestions you can use to take your digital magazine publishing to the next level.

1. Take advantage of micropayments

A micropayment is a financial transaction involving a very small sum of money and usually one that occurs online. Tablets and smartphones now come equipped with numerous mechanisms that allow readers to securely make micropayments, meaning you can target consumers where they spend the majority of their time: on handheld devices. The PixelEdge app platform allows you to tap into PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Wallet, and similar services to make payment submission as seamless and convenient as possible for your readers. This means that you can deliver monetized a la carte content to your readers. A few novel ideas are to charge readers based on the amount of time they'll spend accessing your content, solicit donations from your readers after they've enjoyed an article, and sell products or related content.

2. Reward loyal readers and those who promote your content

If you're looking for novel ways to increase cpm or improve content promotion, you might consider rewarding readers for viewing ads or sharing content. You can even allow them to choose which types of ads they would like to see and interact with. There are numerous ways to reward them, such as giving them access to premium content, providing coupons, or paying them actual money. All of this is made very simple with a digital magazine app.

3. Personalize content for specific readers

One of the critical advantages of using an app in digital magazine publishing is that you can personalize the experience for your readers. Allow your readers to choose which types of content they'd like to see, and deliver this content to them regularly. Politico, for example, delivers two pieces of personalized content to its member readers each day. When crafting a brand universe, it is important to give readers reasons to continually engage with your content. A digital app can be an important piece to this strategy, allowing you to deliver highly targeted, personalized content to your loyal readers on a frequent basis.

4. Create a reading experience that transcends the written word

Digital magazine publishing is not the same as print magazine publishing. Your digital content shouldn't be the same as your print content either. Spice things up by adding interactive charts, graphs, images, video and audio. Connect with readers on social media, allow them to interact with your brand through forums, blogs, and comments sections. User-generated content is on the rise, and if you effectively allow readers to interact with your brand they will feel a stronger connection to your content, which increases the value of your brand overall.

PixelEdge is your turnkey solution for digital magazine publishing. Our digital apps come with full support, maintenance, guidance, and content-delivery. To you, this means that you don't have to devote any of your own resources and at a fraction of what it would cost elsewhere. Find us on the web at www.pixeledge.io, or email us at info@pixeledge.io today!