Today you’ll learn that setting up and maintaining a digital magazine is so quick and easy; you can be up-to-date every day.
Note: This is part two of an article written by Herman Vissia, phD., CEO of Byelex and developer of BuzzTalk. Click here if you missed part one.
Setting up your digital magazine
First you think of a theme or topic for your magazine. Choose a niche and make it specific. In the case of PetroPomp BV, the fictional company featured in this article series, the theme would of course be the petrochemical industry. Next think of a (descriptive) name for your magazine.
Creating content for your digital magazine
As PetroPomp BV exists for decades they have tons of content they can re-use, recycle and expand upon. When your company exists for some years this is likely to be the case for you too. Also your employees will have multiple stories to tell, customer experiences, case studies, visions and opinions about current trends in the industry etc. Often there is not enough time to write down these stories but you can hire a professional ghost writer that interviews you, your clients and your employees to create articles. As long as you’re not going to create a traditional paper magazine your costs will be limited as there are no printing or distribution costs involved.
Broaden the perspective of your digital magazine
A digital magazine makes daily updates possible, technically that is, but how will you create content on a daily basis? No worries; you don’t have to create everything yourself. In fact, a lot of the content you’ll be needing has already been created or soon will be. You’re not the only one in your industry with great content. News papers, colleagues and competitors will also publish online and may provide your readers with a different perspective on current trends. Of course you don’t republish their complete article as that would be plagiarism. Instead you summarize or quote and provide a link to the original; a practice called content curation.
Your magazine will be a win-win-win. You control the magazine and decide what’s begin published and when. Your readers will have a go-to resource for keeping up with all relevant industry news. The parties whose content is used get more views and traffic to their website. Everybody benefits!
How to find great relevant content to share
PetroPomp BV will be familiar with the top sites and blogs in their industry, but doesn’t everyone already? If you’re going to curate from the sources your readers are already reading they won’t find anything new. They will find it in one place, which is an advantage, but your magazine will be much more interesting if you can find articles that your audience won’t discover by monitoring their favorite websites or subscribing to free services such as Google Alerts.
On top of that you can add value by adding your own commentary to the stories as shown in the next picture. This is where your own point of view on the matter can be featured, but you can also use this space to provide a short summary explaining why the reader should click through to the full article.
You can increase the value of your magazine further by sharing content from websites that are outside the standard scope. Articles mentioning the petrochemical industry may appear on sources that you’re not monitoring since they are not focussing on this industry. And what about articles in different countries, in different languages. Wouldn’t it be great if you could comment on how your industry is doing in other regions? What challenges are faced? What new pumps are manufactured? Projects that are started or completed?
By finding and commenting on news from different perspectives and countries you will quickly become the go-to-resource and be valued as an expert on the subject. You name and bio will be featured in the magazine as shown in the picture below. Of course it’s also possible to have a branded magazine.
People who want to follow news and developments in the petrochemical industry will be very happy with this magazine. Not just your current customers, but everyone – including potential new customers – who is interested in this topic. They no longer have to search for on Google themselves, but get the best of the news delivered for free every day.
If your company wants to become (or remain) a thought leader, having a digital magazine is definitively a tactic to include in your plans. You can feature your own blog posts regularly in the magazine and even insert an offer every now and then.
How BuzzTalk helps
Other publishing tools exist, such as Flipboard, ScoopIt! or Summly, but BuzzTalk Reader is different as it’s powered by BuzzTalk. This means you’ll also have access to content discovery, media monitoring and analysis tools.
- You get a list of relevant national and international publications, so you don’t have to search for content to share yourself which is a huge timesaver.
- You regularly get suggestions from unexpected angles and unknown websites so that you can share surprising items.
- You get tools to filter, so that you can sort in time, by region, by language, by person, by event and much more.
- You can add your own comments, so that you can convey your views on the article, and add value to what you share.
- You can insert your own articles between curated post articles so that you attract more visitors to your website.
- You can choose whether to make the magazine public to reach a larger audience or whether you want only your own employees to access the magazine. A private magazine can then be used for internal communication.
Use BuzzTalk to power up your digital magazine »
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