5 types of blog posts that come from magazine content
Even when you publish a monthly magazine, it can still be hard to come up with content when you’re posting blogs daily – even several times day. Magazine content management can certainly be a struggle. The good news is that you do have content which has already been paid for, edited and published. The even better news is that you can repurpose it in a variety of ways.
1. Article Post
What’s easier than taking exactly what was written in the magazine and posting it online? Not much, right? Here are a few bullet points outlining how other publishers are doing it:
- SEO. They may alter the headline and copy a little bit to make room for SEO. A big archive of articles is great, but who’s going to care if nobody can find them?
- Attribution. They tell you the name of the magazine it came from and sometimes even include the issue, date and page numbers.
- Byline. If the original article had an author, then the byline on the blog goes to the same author. If your blogs don’t include a dedicated byline, you can add the original author in the same place you note the issue.
Guideposts is one of the many publishers who repurpose magazine content in this fashion:
The difference between an article review, and the first method (just posting the exact article) is like comparing Twitter to Email. You let loose a little on Twitter and are a little more casual, whereas your email newsletters are probably a little more buttoned up.
Article reviews bring new life to the original article. They touch on the most important and interesting parts of the original printed article and make a new blog post from them.
In this example from Glamour, they’ve taken a concept that was featured in their magazine and went real-world with it, using photos to demonstrate the technique they’ve explained. No models, no fancy flash photography, just a more casual approach to an interesting topic. They also tell you exactly what article they’re talking about, right in the blog title.
3. Issue Review
What is an Editor’s Letter anyway? Why it’s an issue review! And there’s no reason why you can’t repurpose this type of content onto your blog to get everyone jazzed up about the current, or future issues.
In this example by Budget Travel, they’re talking about their 10th anniversary issue, where they are proudly reflecting upon the process of creating an issue that was entirely user generated – from the photos, to the article, to the magazine cover.
4. Issue Excerpt
A little more specific than an Issue Review is the Issue Excerpt, which grabs bits and pieces from the magazine and turns them into a single blog post. You can grab content verbatim (with appropriate credit to the original editor) or contruct into more of a bulleted list of key points.
For example, People had an issue that covered the “Best and Worst of 2010”. The article that they wrote, and the corresponding little web app gave web readers a little piece of what they could expect in the issue.
In the article, they have bullet points that shout out several of the stars highlighted. The additional web app simply offers an archive of everyone who was listed in the magazine. The article promotes both the issue, and the web app for non-subscribers.
5. Interview Outtakes
One of the most popular methods of repurposing magazine content in the industry today is highlighting the “outtakes” as a way to promote the printed, more elaborate article.
In this example from The Artist’s Magazine, Richard McKinley provides blog-length fodder that ends up promoting a full interview in the magazine. It’s dubbed Richard McKinley Interview Outtakes, but it’s actually quite an informative and robust article all on its own.
Have you found even more ways to turn magazine articles into blogs? Please do share in the comments!
