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!