Tag: trends

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I was speaking with a colleague the other day who had crossed over from the magazine industry to newspaper publishing and back, about consumer marketing trends. We noted that it will be interesting to see how lessons learned from the newspaper industry move into the magazine industry over time. Daily newspapers are both financially larger

We aim to be one of the best sources for magazine trends online, but we do it with a whole lot of help from our brothers and sisters in the industry.

Below we’ve compiled a list of the best portals, the best influencers, and the best reports on magazine trends available online. If you have more to add, please share your favorites with us in the comments.

There was a time when investors were shying away from publishing media because “journalism” is “expensive” and user-generated content is “cheap”.

But as the world changes tides and begins to preach the quality over quantity sermon, investors have begun to appreciate journalism again. It reaches specific audiences. Now, who else do we know who creates that kind of content? Why, it’s the niche publishers Mequoda has always served! Imagine!

We often hear about predictions for digital magazines; how they will grow, the revenue generation expected throughout the industry and the time frames associated with these numbers.

These predictions are important, as they help publishers better prepare for the future. What’s more interesting, however, is discovering how people who are already consuming digital magazines are enjoying their experiences.

Losing subscribers without gaining new ones is a universal fear for any subscription-based organization, and rightly so. When a decrease in active subscribers leads to an overall decline in revenue, publishers may find themselves facing uncertainty about the staying power of their product, or worse: the future of their business.

But what if we told you

If you don’t register for the next Mequoda Digital Publishing & Marketing Intensive by midnight, you’ll have to wait another year to start your journey to multiplatform publishing success.

You wouldn’t hire a lawn mower repairman to fix your car, so why do so many publishers seek the support and advice of consultants and web developers that have never worked in the publishing field? At Mequoda, we know content, and we know content marketing, because we’re a group of journalism veterans turned consultants and

The most successful subscription websites recognize the demographics that use their site the most. This way appropriate content targeting and marketing efforts can be made with alignment. Today we’re looking at subscription publishers that are targeting younger demographics, and the kinds of responses they are receiving.

B2B subscription sales are beyond the age of phone sales and the most successful subscription marketers we know are selling them online through effective pricing and copywriting strategies
Arthur C. Clark, a futurist, writer, inventor and philosopher said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” And that’s exactly how some publishers look at us when we

If you publish a variety of subscription products for a single audience, you have the makings of a super club. Super clubs are the easiest money you will ever generate because their high profit margins are driven by content you already own and an audience that already trusts you and your brand.

One thing we’ve noticed about the most successful publishers we know is that they have three major things in common. And it has nothing to do with being a household name, a ton of charisma or a rampant following on social media.

If you struggle with determining paywall pricing and strategy, you’re not alone.
Recently, Hearst has been working on a more flexible paywall pricing and strategy, and the industry is abuzz. Max Willens at Digiday describes it as “a paywall whose permeability changes depending on who’s visiting and what they’re reading.”
“The new paywall replaces a system where editors

Aggregating great content is just as valuable as creating great content

Content aggregation is often given a bad name, because it’s often done incorrectly.

The best content aggregators approach the process as the valuable art form that it is. Content aggregators recognize the web is all about content aggregation, and their work allows users to reach new depths on the subject matter they care about.

We first wrote about content aggregation in 2011. At that time, he had been researching best practices for content aggregation and strategies content aggregators should avoid.

Headlines have been brimming lately with news publishers like The New York Times, The Guardian and Wired taking back their profits with paywalls and paid content. The New York Times made 60% of last year’s revenue from subscription sales, The Guardian’s 800,000 subscribers are now accounting for more revenue than advertisers, and Wired has followed their lead by instituting a new $20 annual subscription. It’s clear that publishers are no longer afraid to charge for content, and subscription revenue goals are at the forefront. And I think there are three reasons for it.

It was a very informative 2017 for all of us search-optimized publishers. Google has recently given us some insights into how they use seo meta descriptions within search results. Thanks to their monthly Google Webmaster Hangout Videos, Google has been pulling back the curtain and letting us know how and why they use meta descriptions. They’ve even given us some tips on how to write better meta descriptions. You may even be surprised to learn how meta descriptions are used as a ranking factor for search.

Last year ended with a major push by digital publishers to position themselves differently in the digital landscape. Some acquired companies that make them relevant to a broader audience, while others changed strategies, hired new talented, or adopted new technology.

New offerings and products are often utilized by publishers working to increase numbers of digital subscribers. Today we’re looking at two publishing that have been placing added focus on their digital audience.

The millennial demographic is one publishers often wonder about. Considering millennials into an audience development plan is a great idea for publishers, and we’re now seeing some interesting evolutions in the way millennials are paying for news. Yes, you read that correctly. More millennials are subscribing to news, including print, more than we’ve seen before.

Consider the rise of talent shows on TV like America’s Got Talent and American Idol. When it comes down to it, they’re simply performing good old-fashioned market research. Why sign an unknown singer to a record label, or sign a new act to a Vegas casino, when you can see how the world responds to them first? The same method applies to content. Developing data-driven content ideas can be the difference between a homepage full of stimulating ideas, and a page full of templated headlines on the same topic.

Today we’re seeing increases in a variety of digital advertisements that some publishers have been using as part of their audience development strategy.

We begin at Media Post, which is reporting on native ad data from AdsNative. “More than half of publishers don’t believe that Google and Facebook “own” the digital advertising market. That’s one of the findings of a recent survey conducted by AdsNative, which polled its customer base of 7,500 Web and mobile publishers on the state of native advertising in Q1. The survey found that 53.9% of publishers don’t believe ad budgets are going to just a handful of players.”

The term “subscription” is a hot topic these past few weeks, especially for new age publishers and media companies like Twitter and Medium. Twitter recently sent a survey to users to ask if they’d be interested in a paid $20 subscription account that would give users access to a premium product, which all seems to boil down to having a cleaner, more curated feed through Twitter’s TweetDeck App.

“It’s more effective than direct mail and as effective as telephone – and so much less expensive.” That’s a quote from ClickZ’s latest report, Email and the Age of First-Person Marketing. While marketers were saying just three years ago that social would consume email, it’s proven to become even more powerful and celebrated during that time, especially in magazine marketing. A study by the Direct Marketing Association shows that “email campaigns conducted with house lists achieved an ROI of 30% to 32%, compared with 15% to 17% from social media, and 18% to 20% for direct mail using house lists.”

Audience development is a major umbrella term online. There are a variety of ways online publishers develop audiences online, from content partnerships and social media to email and press releases. Today we’re taking a look at the use of digital video as an audience development tool, and media brands that are engaging with it.

There’s a never-ending stream of new tools that pop up every day to help us become better web developers. We have a dashboard of tools we look to for ideas, assistance and even implementation, and it’s safe to assume that you probably do too.

Last year we discovered and shared a lot of web design tools that we use and want to pass on. In case you’re new here or missed a few, here are our favorites.

Subscription websites LinkedIn and New York Times expand; WSJ closes Google loophole
Subscription websites can be a profitable endeavor for content publishers.

We begin by looking at The New York Times, which is experiencing growth in regards to its digital audience. Subscription Insider reports, “Last Thursday The New York Times Company (NYSE: NYT) posted its fourth quarter

You might be surprised by the niche websites that top Alexa’s list of the highest ranking websites in the U.S.

A niche website is one that centers around a specific topic or area of interest. This doesn’t usually include general interest topics like news and politics, which everyone has a stake in, but more on the

Star magazine shows us how NOT to publish sponsored content in a print magazine (or anywhere)
Although it might seem like we ignore the trends of print magazines unless they’ve fallen off the map and decided to go digital, we’re still paying attention. One recently interesting bit of news about Star magazine and a complaint from

Resolve to investigate the possibility of added revenue with a club-style business model in 2017

Every publisher and subscription marketer should recommit in 2017 to customer relationship building and asset leveraging—after all, these are two things that you already have, customers and content! And one of the hottest new trends for capitalizing on your content and

Facebook Live and other live video becoming a large testing ground for brands and publishers
Live video is at the front of mind for many brands and publishers. The only question is how to use it. Sometimes it takes seeing some good examples to inspire progress within a large media company, so I’m glad that Digiday

A series of voice-focused trends are beginning to evolve within Hearst’s magazine arm
This week at Hearst, it was announced that they will be using a new Food Network persona to diversify their magazine brand by giving them their own magazine, a trend we expect will grow with more Food Network personas. Women’s Wear Daily writes:
Hearst

Statistics show that ad blocking software isn’t being used on smartphones as much as on desktops
Ad blocking software has become a challenge for publishers and digital properties using it for marketing purposes. However, it seems that the tides of the ad blocking wave may be changing in favor of marketers. Or, in the very least,

We see multiplatform publisher hirings and firings frequently as organizations continue to evolve
Our favorite multiplatform publisher hirings are ones that lead to growth and prosperity within the industry. Of course, this isn’t always the case. Some changes are made for restructuring and relaunching. Bloomberg is one organization experiencing such changes now.

It was recently announced that

It’s no Trump University, but LinkedIn is getting into publisher territory swiftly with Linkedin Learning.
In April 2015, LinkedIn bought Lynda.com for $1.5 billion and this September they launched LinkedIn Learning, a subscription website for online skills training. This course business model that they stepped into is an entirely new revenue stream for them, and a new product

Major magazine publishers are getting hip to SEO, and just in time.
A couple weeks ago, Google’s Penguin 4.0 update officially finished rolling out. Publishers who saw the biggest drops, if any, are urged to do link cleanup, as this is a big focus of Penguin.

Search Engine Land reports, “Those hit by any version of Penguin

In 2016, our clients, who we affectionately call our Gold Members, have followed the Mequoda Method using our Haven Nexus CXMS and have seen tremendous gains in traffic year over year.
Every year at our annual Gold Member Summit, we give out Rocket Awards. The Mequoda Rocket Award honors the fastest growing website among Mequoda’s Gold Member websites.

As the

This dynamic duo is turning a regional parenting publication into a booming multiplatform publishing company
The Mequoda Multiplatform Publishing Hall of Fame, founded in 2006 to recognize publishing executives at the top of their game, has now expanded to 15 members, with the induction of two new Mequoda Masters at the annual Gold Member Summit last month.

With

Monitoring the latest digital ad trends finds an effort for more transparency, an elephant in the room, and a major player making a major move
Digital ad trends are as volatile as any in the industry, with highs and lows aplenty. Ad blocking, viewability, tech concerns, juggernauts like Google and Facebook, programmatic, native … the list

Personalization, sales structure, and data-driven publishing highlight latest trends in magazine publishing strategy
Multiplatform content, audience development, and internet revenue models. Attracting and converting. That’s the crux of magazine publishing strategy – don’t make it harder than it is!

At Mequoda, we can distill all of this down to two modules: ACEM, which are the essentials, and

The companies behind the latest multiplatform media headlines include Time Inc., NatGeo, and Facebook
The beautiful thing about multiplatform media is that the possibilities for a digital publishing strategy are endless. The permutations, tactics, the experiments, the social media strategy, the products, services, vendors, successes, failures. Taken together, it makes this industry a fun way to

Ad block software continues to confound the digital publishing industry, but progress is being made as we see the results of various tactics to block ad blockers. Native ads, direct appeals, and other attempts to mitigate ad blocking programs are finding some success, but there’s no question that the issue will be sticking around for a long while.

For digital magazines, readership data holds a world of possibility within all of those numbers, clicks, and submissions of info. The problem for publishers is figuring out how exactly to draw upon it.

Online publishing strategies have grown exponentially since digital magazines have transformed the industry. It is, after all multiplatform strategy, and media companies are wise to maximize as many channels as they can, from video to white papers to podcasts to events to the online magazine library.

Branding comes into play when choosing colors for your website. Most brands stick with their main colors. However, some businesses go through an entire rebranding when they launch or relaunch their websites, causing the “color” question to be taken into serious consideration.

If you’re redesigning your website, or simply enjoy the art of color, consider these popular website color schemes and the tools that helped develop them.

Your digital magazine website is like a basketball team, always on defense and offense simultaneously.

For a basketball team, protecting the goal keys the transition to scoring success. A rebound, a steal, a turnover … each can lead to a slam dunk on the other end.

I deploy this analogy because times can be tough lately for digital magazines; ad blocking, publishing on social media, and staff challenges are coming together to compound preexisting conditions facing the industry.

Our friends at PubExec.com provide an online digital publishing forecast for next year; plus, what some magazines aren’t getting about Facebook
If there’s one thing we know about online digital publishing, it’s that the industry never stops changing for even a moment.

But we wouldn’t have it any other way, of course. And, yes, we definitely know

The latest updates about still evolving relationship between programmatic, publishers
On the eve of its programmatic publishers conference earlier this month, minOnline.com featured several articles on programmatic advertising, including a few from the point of view of agencies, marketers, and ad buyers.

As this form of revenue generation is still a work in progress for digital magazines,

Sometimes media revenue streams flow, and sometimes they dry up
How are you generating media revenue? I hope your response isn’t limited to one answer. Please, take all the time you need, and name as many sources as you can! A multiplatform publisher mustn’t put all of their eggs in one basket. Digital advertising, print sales,

We’re proud to number a nice mix of successful B2B and B2C magazines among our Mequoda Members. This reflects the potency of the niche strategy + multiplatform publishing combination – it flourishes in both habitats. That said, consumer publishing is of course a key part of digital magazines’ future, but it doesn’t have some of the hardwired advantages of B2B publishing: a steady built-in (some would say captive) audience; not nearly as much competition in most cases; and more nimble products.

The phrase online media trends can run the gamut, of course – in this day and age, it might mean anything on the internet. But we use it to mean topics of interest to digital publishers.