Hello,

We're trying to resolve an internal debate on what works best for clients when it comes to putting re-purposed print content online.

Say, for example, you publish a magazine for a client that has a solid readership (25k per issue) and you wanted to put that content online, to encourage comments/interaction as well as the primary goal of driving more sales for the client on their main website/offline. Would it be best to:

> keep the magazine brand recognition intact and publish that content as mymagazine.com

or

> integrate the content into the existing website as part of myclient.com/opinion

or

> try a best of both worlds approach and integrate the magazine brand as a sub section of each site e.g. myclient.com/mymagazine

I have a feeling that the answer to this is "it depends on the situation" but I'd be interested to hear what you think.

Cheers,

Darren

SEO will suffer if you publish just as an online magazine, but its much quicker and easier to get an online magazine up and running.

Has there been any analysis whether the online version would cannibalise print magazine sales? Advertising revenues for print are higher than online. This might be avoided by having the internet version password protected, but would make it harder to generate discussion

hi, Darren, how are you?

I've actually done this - albeit only for one company.

We did the 'hybrid' first & then moved to a standalone.

To make it successful, the 'standalone' needed a lot more ongoing work than the hybrid, was harder to sell ads on, and left the paper version feeling a bit pointless.

For ease, I'd start with the hybrid. The one caveat is - in your case - I'd guess it would be far easier to sell & produce the standalone version, than deal with the ownership wrangles & technical barriers of a hybrid?

hope something there helps!

dan

Hi Interesting thread. 4th option is to create a clear migration strategy to focus online to grow revenue and readership

Sounds like there is more you could do with the mag content online to augment and extend value to both advertisers and readership. They may want more than a series of forums or comments threads. Do some market research/focus groups to get a sense of their information requirements online and where you might also support workflow and customer experience.

Also sounds like you need to leverage offline brand strength to drive sales to commercial services online.

It sounds like a really interesting project in a similar market to myself.

Robert

There's definitely more we can (and will) be doing.

Robert - I think that's a very sensible approach and one that we will be taking on our future projects in terms of focus groups. I think it's very much dependant on the situation/client so researching client desires and customer base for them is the only way as opposed to a one solution fits all approach.

Sean - interesting idea, I can see it working in some sectors but not many, it may be too off putting to non web savvy users. I think that if you view the digital platform as a value add - i.e. publish the full article in the offline material, reproduce that online but also add for instance a vodcast of a round table of experts you have quoted in the article, then as long as you mention the value add as a leader in the offline platform then you could be on to a winner.

Cheers,

Darren