15 products to contemplate while creating a content marketing strategy
One of my favorite sessions at the Mequoda Summit Boston 2010 was Leveraging Magazine Content with Philip Charles-Pierre of Guideposts, Eric Hellweg of Harvard Business Review Online and Holly Klingel of Sunset Magazine. All of these panelists gave detailed information on how they have further developed their brands through modern technology and savvy publishing techniques.
Philip began the session by discussing the importance of having a focused and aligned website. Beyond that he stressed honing in on a golden idea within content because it provided engagement that can be replicated in various formats.
Philip’s five products for leveraging magazine content are:
-Free E-Books – Build these based on popular topics from magazines. These E-Books are great for introducing people to the content you provide and can incorporate terms that are highly searched.
-PDF Versions – These work well with older editions that have content still relevant today.
-E-Reader Apps – Dedicated, savvy audience members will be asking for your content in a portable, media-rich format in the new publishing era. Design the app with your audience in mind and give them a product that they can really feel and connect with.
-Special Interest Publications – An example of a special interest publication (SIP) from Guideposts is The Joys of Christmas 2010. This content was based around a theme and designed perfectly for gift giving.
-Personalization Tools – The goal here should be to get content to your audience in whatever way they want it. Guideposts does this by offering personalized books and cards full of inspirational content.
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Eric Hellweg, the editor of Harvard Business Review Online started his part of the presentation by discussing the importance of commercially-minded editors who align their content with core concepts and ideas that resonate with the publication.
Eric’s five products for leveraging magazine content are:
-Website – A website is working to introduce the magazine to people. Think expansively about what you are showing and how you’re doing it.
-iPhone and iPad Apps – Harvard Business Review sells hundreds of thousands of apps for their publication because they understand their audience and reach them in the correct manner.
-Social Media – Eric put this one quite poetically by saying, “Technology has caught up to the campfire – people can share stories and hear one another”. That statement sums it up well. Social media is technology’s way of creating interaction between human beings. It can lead to strong, valuable relationships.
-Video and Audio Podcasts – Content doesn’t have to always be written. Multimedia platforms resonate with technology-loving crowds. HBR must know this as they receive 50,000 audio podcast downloads each week.
-Email newsletters – These create ways of educating audiences and selling products to thousands of recipients.
Holly Klingel, the VP Circulation Director of Sunset Magazine concluded the presentation by discussing the modern methods used by a 110 year old publication.
-Sunset Travel Guides – These guides provide increased recognition and enthusiasm for content, and readers give great feedback on them as they make travel content easier to find.
-Events – Sunset’s events are massive with around 20,000 people. Yours don’t have to be that big, but keep an eye on repeat sponsorships from year to year and incremental advertising revenue.
-Sunset Wine Club – As a continuity product, it can be hard to maintain, but clubs help to reinforce brand leadership and core competencies.
-Sunset Books – Sunset has goals of broadening and reinforcing the brand by offering books. They have found these successes since the books sell outside of the west more than the magazine does.
-Sunset Travel Blog – With their blog, Sunset was looking to increase traffic, inbound links and subscribers. They went from 10,000 views a month to 186,000. It appears the blog’s strategy has worked.
There you have it folks, 15 valuable ways of creating products based around your magazine content. These models can be tweaked and adapted to fit your publication specifically. I hope this information was as valuable to you as it was for me.
And for more information on content marketing for your products, join Don Nicholas during this upcoming round of Content Marketing 2010 Seminars. Discover more information on Content Marketing 2010 Seminars including dates, locations and registration now.
