With the advent of digital technology, online magazines are becoming increasingly popular. Digital publishing tools can make these magazines more interactive and attractive to readers. In this article, we will explore some ideas to enrich your online magazine with digital publishing platforms like Calameo.
Add internal links
Adding internal links is a great way to allow your readers to easily navigate through your online magazine. Internal links can be used to redirect readers to related articles, product pages or even specific sections of the magazine. This allows readers to spend more time exploring your online magazine while easily accessing everything that interests them.
Add external links
External links are another great way to enrich your online magazine. By adding links to relevant articles from other sources, you can help your readers better understand the topic you are covering. In addition, it can also help your online magazine gain credibility and build reader loyalty.
Insert media
Adding media is a great way to increase the visual impact of your online magazine. By adding images, videos and other types of media, you can make your online magazine more appealing to readers. In addition, using media can help reinforce the ideas you present in your online magazine.
Add an audio track
Adding an audio track is another way to enrich your online magazine. This can be especially useful if you cover topics related to music or audio. By adding an audio track, you can give your readers a more immersive and interactive experience.
Insert shopping links
Shopping links are a great way to monetize your online magazine. By adding links to relevant products, you can help your readers find products they might want to buy. Plus, it can also help generate revenue for your online magazine.
Personalize the viewer
Personalizing the viewer allows you to put it in the image of your brand, to put forward your graphic charter and to ensure a visual continuity with your site and your other contents. A perfect feature to offer a recognizable content that only looks like you.
Create a table of contents
Adding a table of contents is a great way to help your readers easily navigate through your online magazine. By organizing your content into clearly defined sections and adding a table of contents, you can help your readers quickly find the information they are looking for.
Conclusion
By using digital publishing tools to enrich your online magazine, you can provide a more interactive and immersive reading experience for your readers. By adding internal and external links, media, audio tracks, shopping links, viewer customization, and a table of contents, you can help your readers explore your content more easily and better understand the topics you cover. Ultimately, this can help your online magazine gain credibility and build reader loyalty.
If you have important content to share online, then you need a digital publishing strategy. This can be a part of larger business plan or as simple as a set of guidelines. Not sure where to get started? Our simple checklist will help you develop your digital publishing strategy, no matter what you want to achieve.
Define your goals
First,
think about the objectives you have for your content. Don’t rush this step—it’s the most essential information you’ll need to establish your
strategy. Because the rest will follow from here, take some time to define your
digital publishing goals.
These might
include:
Improving your site’s SEO
Building your business’s brand
Communicating with colleagues
Generating leads
Sharing sales material with prospects
Above all, make sure to prioritize. It’s normal to have multiple goals, but challenging to accomplish them all at once. Be honest with yourself about your top objectives and remember that different types of content can have different purposes.
Choose your channels
Now that you have a clear idea of your goals, you can select the channels that you will use to publish your digital content. Maintaining an active presence on as many channels as possible is a good idea. However, keep your priorities in mind and focus on the channels that match your most important goals.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Social media channels can be a great fit for sharing content that builds your business’s brand. Research which kinds of content perform best on the platforms that interest you. For example, Twitter is often associated with content related to news, while compelling visuals are a must for Instagram.
BLOG
A blog is a key channel for content aimed at improving your site’s SEO and generating leads. What’s more, blogs are now easy to set up and manage. If you’re starting from scratch, figure out the blogging platform that best meets your needs. If you already have a blog, do a quick audit to see the content that is succeeding and where there’s room for improvement.
LONG-FORM CONTENT
Some types of more complex content may not make sense to publish as a simple blog article. This is especially true for sales material, like a prospectus or brochure, and internal communications material, like an employee handbook. Because this content tends to be longer and have more striking graphics, it should be available to share from an intranet or digital publishing platform.
Create a production schedule
Once you have decided on the channels that work best for your goals, it’s time to create a production schedule for your digital content. Make a list of the subjects that you will cover and plan the frequency and format of your publishing. In other words, decide how often you want to publish to each of your channels and what kinds of content you will create.
Most importantly, be realistic about how much you will be able to publish on the channels that you will use. Don’t forget that some content is faster to produce than others. For example, a blog post won’t take as much time to write as a white paper. But when in doubt, pick quality over quantity. Publishing less is a smart strategy if your content is interesting, well-written and attractive.
Determine promotion needs
Even amazing content can benefit from an extra push to connect with your online audience. Although you’ve already chosen the right channels for your goals, other channels still offer great opportunities for promoting your content. You could post a link to your most recent blog article on your social media channels and reach new followers. Or you could embed long-form content on your blog for readers to discover. In addition, email newsletters and paid advertisements are two popular options to consider.
For each type of content on your production schedule, select at least one way that you will use to distribute it.
Decide measurement metrics
Analyzing the impact of your content is a critical step to develop your digital publishing strategy. Before you start hitting that Post button, look at the goals you defined at beginning of this checklist. To know whether you achieve them, you’ll need to establish which data points will be most relevant.
For instance, you may want to measure how many times your content has been downloaded. This may tell you whether it is appealing to readers and allowing you to communicate successfully with colleagues, prospects or leads. With other metrics, such as the number of pages viewed or the conversion rate, you can begin to evaluate the effectiveness of your approach.
Gather data regularly and note the patterns that emerge. As you continue to develop your digital publishing strategy, use these insights to adapt your content and keep moving toward your goals.
Ready to develop your approach to online content? We’ve outlined all the essential steps in one handy digital publishing strategy checklist. Download your copy now and start making the most out of your content.
Have you ever wanted to start your own magazine? We here at Calaméo did—way back at the beginning of last year, when we had the idea to create our CALAMEO Magazine. Since that first issue was released in February 2019 we’ve learned a lot about how to start a magazine from scratch. For example, what you’ll need to get organized, get creating and get out there.
Keep reading to find our complete guide to start your own magazine, plus three great reasons to opt for digital distribution.
Big-Picture Planning
The first and most important step when you start a magazine is to decide on your subject matter. Maybe there’s an idea you’re passionate about and want to share with others. Or maybe you’re part of a group interested in exploring new ways to communicate. No matter where you’re coming from, take a few minutes to write down the main topic for your magazine. Some possible topics are:
A
hobby or activity, like birding
A
place or institution, like a town or local museum
An
industry, like higher education
An
organization or association, like a sports club or charity
A
business or institution, like your company
For example, we decided right away that CALAMEO Magazine would be about the digital publishing sector as well as about our company. We wanted to give readers a deeper look at Calaméo’s history, people and news. But we also knew that we wanted to provide insight into the digital publishing world and analyze key trends.
Once you’ve defined your subject, it’s time to consider the goals you have for your magazine. These can be business goals, such as selling advertisements or making new contacts. They might also include personal goals like challenging yourself creatively and growing a collaborative community. In other words, write down the reasons why you want to start a magazine. This will help you focus on what’s most valuable and, a little farther down the road, help you evaluate your success.
Finally, think about the scope of your project. Some magazines come out once a week and have hundreds of employees; some magazines only put out one issue every six months. Here at Calaméo, we chose to make four issues of CALAMEO Magazine during our first year of publication. How many times would you ideally like to publish this year to work toward your goals? Pick a number before you move on to planning the actual content of your magazine.
Building Your Team
Now the fun part of how to start a magazine begins! That’s right—it’s the “getting the team together” stage of the project. The size of your team can vary depending on the resources that are available for your magazine. But even limited resources don’t mean you’ll have to sacrifice on quality. At a minimum, you should count on filling three primary roles: Editor, Lead writer and Designer.
Each of these three roles comes with a different responsibility that is essential to creating your magazine.
The Editor is in charge of decision-making. He or she has final say on the topics to cover, assigning stories and approving design.
The Lead writer is generally asked to produce the text content of the magazine, including features, interviews and opinion pieces.
And last but not least, the Designer creates the finished publication. This can involve making page templates, developing a graphic identity for your magazine and illustrating its content.
Finding collaborators to help you start a magazine can mean getting creative. For instance, you may want to put out a call for volunteers, either within your organization or your community. If you have a budget, you can get in touch with freelance writers and designers on platforms like Behance and Fiverr. On the other hand, if you plan to be your own designer, the templates available in sites like Canva allow you to handle basic graphics and layout.
Inside this Issue
After you’ve
assembled your core team, it’s time to work on the first issue of your magazine! Above all, you’ll want to think carefully about the way your content is structured. That’s because you can use this same structure in every issue of your magazine. As a result, you’ll save yourself time and the stress of making such fundamental decisions for each new release.
Begin with your ideas for the main rubrics, or categories, of content that you would like to feature in your magazine. Be careful not to confuse content categories with actual, specific stories that you might already have in mind! For example, our CALAMEO Magazine has nine rubrics: our Editors’ Note, a table of contents, Stats, News, Highlights, Interview, Tips and Editors’ Picks. While the subjects change from issue to issue, the structure stays the same.
With your magazine’s rubrics figured out, the Editor can begin to assign topics to your contributors. Your Lead writer should take on the most important stories, but you can consider asking additional writers and creators to contribute content or even ask for submissions. (Just make sure to explain the topic well enough to receive relevant responses!) Meanwhile, discuss the upcoming issue and its subjects with your Designer so that he or she can prepare layouts and other graphic elements.
Now all that’s left is to set some deadlines! The Editor of your magazine should let everyone else involved in its creation know when their content is due. Plus, the Lead writer and Designer will need a schedule for completing the layout, making edits, finalizing the publication and the planned release date. Stick to your schedule as closely as possible and voilà—the first issue of your magazine is done!
Getting to Readers
There are still a few more choices to make before you get your publication in front of readers. Perhaps the most crucial question when you decide to start a magazine is whether to publish in print, online or both. In the past, print was the only option for new projects and came with lots of built-in costs, from paper to postage. However, it’s now both easy and common for magazines to be available in a digital format.
Besides the lower costs associated with online publication, digital magazines can benefit from incorporating interactive content. You can add links to other websites to cite sources, promote products and events or support advertisers. Spice up your stories with videos from YouTube, audio tracks or even GIFs. Thanks to digital publishing platforms like Calaméo, it only takes a few minutes to make your magazine fully interactive online.
Plus, a digital magazine offers you key information about your readership that print distribution can’t match. Instead of relying on the number of printed copies you’ve ordered, you can effortlessly access analytics showing how many views your magazine is receiving online. (And if you need further details about how readers interact with your content, advanced statistics can provide insights.) This data will help you evaluate the progress you’re making toward your goals as you create the next issues of your new magazine!
We hope that this practical guide to how to start a magazine has given you the right tools for taking on such an exciting project. We loved creating CALAMEO Magazine and are happy to announce that a brand-new issue will be coming your way this spring. Ready to try out publishing your own digital magazine? Join Calaméo today and publish for free.
