A Step-by-step on How to Create a Digital Publication that People Love: the Who, the What and the How
Despite the rise of video and visual media platforms like Youtube, people still spend a lot of time reading. So, how lucrative is the publishing industry?
Let’s look at the most famous form of publishing, magazines, which boast worldwide revenue of $12.13 billion through advertising alone. The publishing industry is clearly still a big deal — and now spans across traditional print media to digital-only publications. Moreover, with more than eight-in-ten Americans getting news from their digital devices, there are even more reasons to consider creating a digital publication now.
But first, let’s get real; there’s already a sea of information out there. So what can you do to make your digital publication stand out amongst the crowd?
Here are four ways to do it without breaking the bank while reducing tech hassle.
1) Know Your Readers
Let’s start with baby steps!
First, you need to define the perfect niche and the right audience for your digital publication. Effective communication starts by knowing your audiences and speaking their language. It’s essential to get to know your readers to produce content they will actually want to read and bring them value — giving them good reasons to come back.
Discovering information about your readership in print publications is expensive and time-consuming. Fortunately, this is not the case for digital publications. The advantage of online publications is that you can find this information much easier with tools like Google Analytics.
Want to find out where your readers come from? Check out geo-location.
Wonder how people find out about your digital publication? Look at your traffic sources.
Want to know if a specific article has been a success or failure? Check out its traffic information, such as how much time they’ve spent reading each piece of your content you’ve published or identify articles people tend to skip.
This kind of data is priceless because it allows you to evaluate your publication performance quicker. This way, you can readjust your strategy to produce content that grabs your readers’ attention. Or, if you would like to include digital marketing or online advertising for your publication, you can aim for more targeted audiences you’d like to reach.
Apart from that, these insights on your reader base could also help to present data-driven offers to your potential advertisers. For example, a different part of your publication can have different pricing depending on their performance on a specific target audience.
Many publications either don’t know their audience or have a confused and mistaken impression of who their readers are. Now, by understanding your readers better, you’re already one step ahead.
2) Creating a Stunning Design for Your Digital Publication
True — content is king.
But don’t you want to make your digital publication stand out amongst the crowd? In this analogy, the design would be the Queen. Humans are highly visual creatures; first impressions do matter. And when it comes to your digital publication, the cover is often the first thing people would see.
The cover can determine whether someone will consider your digital publication or not, so you could say it has the potential to make or break attracting new readers. Design it to stand out from other publications and significantly impact the audience. Take your target audience’s preferences into consideration. For example, if your audience is an ambitious young entrepreneur. You can then use a successful entrepreneur figure on the cover.
Other aspects that you need to consider to make your publication visually attractive are the layout, colours, and fonts you use. The overall design that resonates well with your audience could be the main reason for them to stay and flip beyond your cover.
Once you have your dazzling cover ready, you can move on to the next step of creating your online publication: content.
3) Publish valuable and enjoyable digital magazine content for your audience
Excellent design with a great layout isn’t enough. Your digital magazine has to provide content that captures your audience’s attention and gives them reasons to stay.
In general, there are three types of content based on their purpose: entertaining, inspiring, and providing helpful information. You can choose to focus on one, but why not combine all three? Aim to provide insightful and enjoyable content to your audience.
From the first step, you have better insights into your audience. Look back at your audience list and consider what’s on their minds and interests. Then think about what you want them to know and how you need them to think, feel or do based on what you tell them.
While planning your content, decide the best means of communicating this information. One of the benefits of digital publication is combining different media types and making your content interactive and engaging. You don’t have to be stuck with text-heavy or static content. Make your content flashy yet classy.
Here is your chance to add context and impact to what you’re saying and leave them with a memorable call to action. When you think about message delivery in those terms, you’re setting up yourself and your audiences for a positive communications experience — no matter the topic you are conveying.
What if you don’t have time to write your content? You could hire a professional writer or collaborate with other content creators, as long as your digital magazine’s writing style, format and vibe are consistent. This way, it won’t confuse your audience.
Now that you have your content ready, what’s next?
4) Choose a Trusted Platform for Creating and Publishing Your Digital Publication.
Before choosing the right platform for creating and publishing your digital publication, you must consider three things. First is the cost. The second thing is its interactivity and flexibility in design. The last thing is how it can provide a great reading experience for your readers on all their devices.
Take reading a PDF magazine on mobile devices, for example. Would you want your readers to be busy squinting and pinching the screen to read your content? Probably not
At MagLoft, we believe it’s vital to provide accessible content for readers to read them well from any device. This is one of the reasons we developed our newest digital publishing solution, the Universal App, with the ability to convert PDF publication into responsive HTML easily. Then, edit this with our easy-to-use drag & drop content editor, making interactive and visually appealing content easier than ever.
Bottom-line, how much does it cost to create a digital magazine?
There is no fixed cost in creating and publishing a digital publication. You can even start for free and publish your online publication within 8 hours. For example, with Magloft’s Universal App, you can start with a free account and test it for 14 days using your own brand & domain. Then, if you like how MagLoft takes care of all the technical parts, you can focus on what matters, your content — our pricing starts from $495 per month.
Other than the platform fees, you may need to factor in hiring a professional writer if you decide not to do it in-house. As for your design, no need to worry since MagLoft has its state-of-the-art editor called TypeLoft. Universal App could be a perfect solution for publishers on a tight budget. Especially with the all-in-one features that make it easier to do marketing & monetize your content.
I’ll write about various ways digital publications can generate revenue in the next article.
For now, I hope you found value in this simple guide about how to start creating a digital magazine. It won’t be difficult as long as you have the dedication and the right digital publishing partner (Magloft, maybe?). If you’d like to read a more comprehensive guide on creating a successful digital publication, check out this complimentary 9-step Digital Publishing Blueprint.
Good luck!
