Amanda MacArthur

Research Director & Managing Editor

Amanda is responsible for all the articles you read on the Mequoda Daily portal and every email newsletter delivered to your inbox from us. She is also our in-house social media expert and would love to chat with you over on @Mequoda. She has worked with Mequoda for almost a decade, helping to evolve the Mequoda Method through research, testing and developing new best practices in digital publishing, editorial strategy, email marketing and audience development. Amanda is a co-author of our four digital publishing handbooks.

Co-authored handbooks:

The Organic Audience Development Strategy Handbook

The Subscription Website Publishing Handbook

The Digital Magazine Publishing Handbook

The Multiplatform Publishing Strategy Handbook

Contact Amanda:

Contact Amanda via email at amanda (at) mequoda (dot) com, @amaaanda, LinkedIn, and Google+.

Articles by Amanda MacArthur

What Is Audience Development?

Audience Development Strategy

What Is Audience Development?

Imagine you own a landscaping company. You cut lawns, trim shrubs, design landscapes and you even shovel in the winter. Now imagine you throw a dinner party where your brother brings

Multiplatform Publishing Strategy

Audience Development in the Age of Digital Video

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.

Multiplatform Publishing Strategy

Acquisitions Allow Multiplatform Publishers to Move in Different Directions

We see many acquisitions in the media industry. Multiplatform publishers look for the best opportunities to evolve, expand, and reach their audiences where their audiences are. Today we look at

Audience Development Strategy

10 Email Call To Action Ideas For Your Magazine Website

Most publishers are only using one or two of these email call to action ideas for building an email list to sell more magazines Did you know that by pairing unproductive

Audience Development Strategy

How to Track and Increase Email Revenue

Increase email revenue by determining your ideal revenue per subscriber, and then using service journalism to keep them on a path toward monetization A Mequoda online publishing and marketing system measures

The 9 Best Places to Use Good Keywords in Articles

Audience Development Strategy

The 9 Best Places to Use Good Keywords in Articles

Choosing good keywords and using them correctly is more than a strategy, it's a lifeline for your investment in content and can keep traffic flowing indefinitely. When you're in the business

Audience Development Strategy

3 Subject Line Templates That Boost Email Open Rates

Email copywriting is a fine art. You can spend hours writing an elaborate salesletter or in-depth article that never gets read, simply because someone threw a half-thought-out subject line on

Audience Development Strategy

How to Make SEO-Friendly Mobile Interstitial Ads

How to make highly converting Floaters, pop-ups and mobile interstitial ads SEO-friendly As you probably know, earlier this month, Google told publishers everywhere that they would begin penalizing them for pop-ups

Audience Development Strategy

How to Write a SEO-Friendly URL in 8 Steps

8 steps for writing and structuring a SEO-friendly URL that is easy to read by humans and search engines I'll bet you didn't know there were so many types of URLs. Vanity

Audience Development Strategy

How to Conduct an Interview: Questions and Strategies

Actionable audience development steps to make your next interview article filled with engaging content Conducting interviews are a great way to produce content for your blog, website and publications. People love

Audience Development Strategy

7 Audience Development Resolutions for 2017

Intent, alignment, and engagement take the stage in 2017 for audience development professionals I don't know about you, but I'm eager to see how audience development changes in 2017. Over the

10 Email Template Testing Ideas You Can Use Today

Audience Development Strategy

10 Email Template Testing Ideas You Can Use Today

Improve open, click-through, and conversion rates with these email template testing ideas Even our best-performing emails tend to drop in engagement rates over time. In fact, every time we change email

Mequoda’s Top Audience Development Posts of 2016

Audience Development Strategy

Mequoda’s Top Audience Development Posts of 2016

Our top-read audience development posts of last year show an interest in subject lines and the power of email newsletters. Despite the rise of social networks, most publishers we know still

Audience Development Strategy

Social Media for Magazines: How to Build an Email List Out of Highly Engaged Users

Social media users are highly engaged – but if you want to master social media for magazines, you must approach each network differently Most publishers we've talked to say social media

The Best Place to Put an Email Call to Action in a Daily Newsletter

Multiplatform Publishing Strategy

The Best Place to Put an Email Call to Action in a Daily Newsletter

Are people finding and clicking on your email call to action, or is your click-through rate dwindling? The Dalai Lama said, "In order to carry a positive action we must develop

Audience Development Strategy

Freemium Strategy: 10 Steps for Refreshing a Freemium During an SEO Slump

Search engine optimization is kind of a game, right? It's an important game – a necessary one for any publisher – but mostly it's just us trying to play by

How to Promote Content on Unlikely Social Platforms

Audience Development Strategy

How to Promote Content on Unlikely Social Platforms

How to promote content on three tricky social platforms that publishers want to love Every once in awhile one of our clients asks us how they can leverage platforms like Instagram,

Audience Development Strategy

How Google’s Approach to Combating Fake News Could Affect Real Publishers

How will Google alter their algorithm to combat fake news in the future, and how will it affect the rest of us? I'm going to assume that you're not one of

Are You Spending Your Audience Development Time in the Right Places?

Audience Development Strategy

Are You Spending Your Audience Development Time in the Right Places?

How to listen to the data from your audience development efforts and move forward The inability to see the forest for the trees means that the detail of leaves, pinecones and the immensity

The Anatomy of an OFIE: How Smart Publishers Collect Emails

Audience Development Strategy

The Anatomy of an OFIE: How Smart Publishers Collect Emails

If you've ever been to one of our events, or you just got dropped on your head when you landed on one of our articles, you've probably seen the acronym

How to Save Money By Focusing on Evergreen Content

Audience Development Strategy

How to Save Money By Focusing on Evergreen Content

If you teach editors to write evergreen content, you'll have a larger, more useful catalog down the road. A friend of mine works at MIT developing interactive online courses, and one

OFIE

Affectionately called OFIEs, "Order Forms in Editorial" are embedded subscription forms that appear on webpages and, indeed, are very much entitled to the respect, consideration, and perhaps even affection of

How to Make Accelerated Mobile Pages For Better SEO

Audience Development Strategy

How to Make Accelerated Mobile Pages For Better SEO

As more users go mobile, these tips for making accelerated mobile pages will keep your posts at the top of search results Page speed is at the top of everyone's minds

Audience Development Strategy

Social is Superficial: The Real Reasons Why Social Posts Aren’t Performing For You

Social posts with links need to be strong in three areas: image, article title, and description. If you nail the trifecta, your posts will get more reach, shares, and traffic. An

Audience Development Strategy

35 Steps for Building an Email List With Freemiums

Call it what you want, but here at Mequoda we've assigned the title Rapid Conversion Landing Page to a landing page that collects an email address and offers a free

The 7 Mequoda Audience Development Models

Audience Development Strategy

The 7 Mequoda Audience Development Models

These audience development models create marketing-qualified leads through freemiums that build larger, more monetizable email lists “Audience development” is one of those terms that many people instinctively understand, but usually underestimate.

12 Ways to Convert Website Visitors into Email Subscribers

Audience Development Strategy

12 Ways to Convert Website Visitors into Email Subscribers

The very successful publishers that we always turn to when evaluating our best practices have used some or all of the following strategies to convert website visitors into email subscribers.

Audience Development Strategy

How to Use Direct Mail as an Audience Development Channel

How to use direct mail campaigns as an audience development tool that builds email lists and primes email subscribers to become paying magazine subscribers Direct mail is a traditional marketing channel

How to Use Paid Advertising as an Audience Development Channel

Audience Development Strategy

How to Use Paid Advertising as an Audience Development Channel

Audience development is one of those terms that many people instinctively understand, but usually underestimate Although media professionals have worked in audience development for years, most have not bothered to define all the things

Using Retail as an Audience Development Channel

Audience Development Strategy

Using Retail as an Audience Development Channel

Retail can be used to boost your audience development efforts, because newsstands come with their own marketplaces There are seven major Audience Development models we have identified: search, social, syndication, email,

Audience Development Strategy

Email: The Single Most Important Audience Development Tool

Every successful niche publisher we know uses email as the central resource of their audience development toolbox As you know, our clients are some of the most incredible before/after examples of

Audience Development Strategy

Social: An Easy-to-Follow Audience Development Program for Content Marketing

Every publisher should develop an audience development program specifically for social that stretches throughout the year Previously, the only purpose of building an audience was to sell print subscriptions. Now, publishers

Mequoda’s latest Magazine Reader Study shows print magazine consumption down 2% year over year, with digital magazine readership up nearly 14%

September 1, 2016 – BOSTON — The 2016 Mequoda American Magazine Reader Study & Handbook, conducted in Q2 2016, one year after their 2015 study, polled 3,241 US adults with

Search: An Audience Development Model Every Publisher Must Respect

Audience Development Strategy

Search: An Audience Development Model Every Publisher Must Respect

If your audience development strategy doesn't incorporate search, you're not thinking of the long term When you are a Mequoda publisher, the goal of audience development is to get people on

Audience Development Strategy

Two Sales Letter Landing Page Copywriting Models

How to use anxiety in your sales letter landing page copywriting Someone once reduced all human motivation to the simple pleasure/pain principle. “You either want something you don’t have, or you have

8 Things to Do In Boston When You Join Us at the Mequoda Intensive This Fall

Multiplatform Publishing Strategy

8 Things to Do In Boston When You Join Us at the Mequoda Intensive This Fall

Learn how to double and triple your revenues while riding the duck boats, or taking in a show, shopping in Quincy Market, and eating at world-class restaurants in Boston, Massachusetts Fall

7 Types of Freemiums Publishers Give Away to Build an Email List

Audience Development Strategy

7 Types of Freemiums Publishers Give Away to Build an Email List

Build an email list by creating free downloads that fit the content theme you are already selling Freemiums have become the ultimate way to build an email list. The difference in

Audience Development Strategy

How Google Has Altered Your Keyword Universe

If you maintain a keyword universe like we do for our clients, you may want to follow our lead on this update Mequoda is built on a structure of best practices. Best

Audience Development Strategy

How to Master the 5 Major Search & Social Algorithms

The social algorithm ecosystem is becoming just as important to watch and analyze as search algorithms Have you ever had someone in your life who asks you to do something, but

It’s Your Last Chance to Attend Our Digital Magazine Publishing Workshop

Digital Magazine Publishing

It’s Your Last Chance to Attend Our Digital Magazine Publishing Workshop

If you're not there, your competitors will be. Registration for our upcoming one-day Digital Magazine Publishing Workshop on August 2 closes today. If you miss it, what do you plan to do instead to grow

Audience Development Strategy

How Will Bots for Magazines Change Publishing?

Voice commands for search and bots for magazines – why niche publishers should prepare for the new wave of data consumption Beyond the latest trend of kids walking into telephone poles

Audience Development Strategy

How to Write a Special Report Title, the Mequoda Way

Like the best email subject lines, report titles should be short and sweet In today’s multiplatform publishing world, there’s no such thing as standing still. So when data starts whispering “change”

$200 Savings Ends Today on Our Digital Magazine Workshop

Digital Magazine Publishing

$200 Savings Ends Today on Our Digital Magazine Workshop

Please hurry! Your Early Bird price ends at midnight tonight Your chance to exercise frugality in attending our one-day Digital Magazine Publishing Workshop ends at midnight tonight. Perhaps you noted our earlier emails

Audience Development Strategy

How to Write Compelling SEO Headlines That Don’t Put People to Sleep

Searchers will snooze right through your listing in Google if you don't pep up boring old SEO headlines SEO doesn't need to be the killer of headlines, but those who adore

Audience Development Strategy

Creative Video Ideas Publishers Are Using That You Can Too

We're surrounded by a goldmine of creative video ideas in magazine publishing – which one will inspire you? I sit here writing this as I just finished watching six videos in

10 Ways You Can Be a Better Magazine Marketer in 10 Days

Audience Development Strategy

10 Ways You Can Be a Better Magazine Marketer in 10 Days

When your magazine marketing job gets boring, that means your customers are probably just as bored. Pep up your magazine marketer game in 10 days! Being a magazine marketer is fun,

How to Pitch a Press Release and Stand Out From the PR Firehose

Audience Development Strategy

How to Pitch a Press Release and Stand Out From the PR Firehose

For a very long time PR was pretty straightforward, and for many publishers, highly automated. The guidelines for how to pitch a press release started with writing your press release,

3 Content Marketing Hacks You Can Benefit From Immediately

Audience Development Strategy

3 Content Marketing Hacks You Can Benefit From Immediately

I don't know about you, but the world's a'changing when it comes to audience development. For a while, I felt like we were so ahead of the curve at Mequoda

Good Keywords Aren’t Obvious: The One Thing You Should Do Before You Optimize

Audience Development Strategy

Good Keywords Aren’t Obvious: The One Thing You Should Do Before You Optimize

Google's kind of the king of mixed messages. They tell publishers not to optimize, and to "just write great content" but their team says that yes, in fact, good keywords

Audience Development Strategy

How We’re Recycling Marketing Campaigns at Mequoda (And That One Time We Lost Revenue When We Stopped)

How we're seeing a larger return on our marketing investment by recycling marketing campaigns across platforms When I first started working at Mequoda almost 10 years ago, we wrote a lot

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