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!