Why magazines?

If you’re considering launching or re-launching a magazine, you’re not crazy. despite the latest posts from Magazine Death Pool, there’s still plenty of room for magazines to succeed. You just have to focus.

No one should launch a national, general interest print magazine today (… unless they have millions to throw away, in which case I recommend a 100-foot yacht instead. With a crew. Docked in Monaco. Please call us.).

But a smaller, more focused, niche magazine created for your particular audience is a fantastic idea. Here’s why:

We’ve worked on several association magazines in the past, and each time we’ve identified a few ways to save a little money on production, whether it be different paper, a new vendor, renegotiating the contracts, etc. Each time we approached association leadership with our money-saving ideas, they said, “Oh, it’s okay if the magazine costs a little money. Everyone tell us it’s the number-one benefit of membership, so we know it’s going to be expensive.”

Of course, we convinced them to save the money anyway, but the more we engaged with the members/readers, the more we saw this to be true. They loved their magazine. It gave them a connection to the organization that nothing else did. It kept them informed of issues in their industry and made them feel like part of a larger community.

That’s the power of magazines. This applies to associations but it also applies to any business, nonprofit, or organization that wants to build and maintain strong relationships with its audience. And it doesn’t have to be in print. We’ve learned you can achieve many of the same community-building characteristics of print magazines in a digital format.

1. Thoughtful, compelling design you can’t achieve on the Web (save The Daily Beast, which looks really nice though still a bit overwhelming). You don’t just achieve this with a nice photo on the left and some white space and copy on the right. You draw the reader in with art and copy here and there that makes them stop and take a look. This sounds cheesy, but you really want each page to surprise and delight. Or shock and disturb. Emotion is the point.

2. Anticipation of the next issue. Website content is updated constantly and available to anyone. Magazine content comes periodically – you have to wait for it – and then is only available to you and your community. It’s a very personal experience, reading a magazine, which is why the great ones demand your full attention.

3. Carefully chosen content that an editor believes will resonate with the readers. A reader might expect coverage of a popular topic, but an editor includes stories readers didn’t know they were dying to read.

4. Sharable. This is a new one, actually. Yes, you could pass your print magazine on to a friend, and then maybe another friend. But a digital magazine can be shared on Facebook with all 400 of your friends and their friends and more. Just send them the link. Oh, the possibilities.

PS: Don’t just take my word for it. See this post from Rex Hammock, founder of Hammock Custom Publishing and a recognized thought leader in all this “magazines are dying” panic.

“It’s not magazines that need saving.” http://www.rexblog.com/2009/10/07/20031