Digital Publishing Tricks That Drive Success

• Tweet
• Buffer

So you want to be a big success in digital publishing? Good for you. And good luck trying to navigate all of the twists and turns of the ever-changing publishing landscape. Here are a few of my favorite tricks that will keep you ahead of the game.

1. Make a content consumption calendar. This is simple to do. Start with your average day. Write down everything you do during the day and why you did it. From here, make a content consumption calendar. For example, wake up, roll over, check email. Why? It's a fast way to get a quick glimpse of what happened or will be happening. It sets the agenda for the morning. The calendar entry for this would be: 6 a.m.: mobile scan of content. This effort helps you understand when people will engage, buy, or browse your content. Your editorial and marketing will change (for the better) as a result.
2. Know your audience. Your content strategy should be different based on the audience you are speaking to. You probably already know your print audience and your web audience. But do you know your Twitter and Facebook audiences? A favorite resource of mine is: http://www.knowyourfollowers.com. It provides a pretty awesome overview of your brand's social pull.
3. Overlay your interactive assets onto your editorial. Just because you haven't created a fully interactive publication yet doesn't mean you don't have one. Chances are you have incredible video and photo footage already. You just need to overlay it onto your content. At my company, many publishers use our ZINIO FUSION™ tool to do this. But there are a variety of ways to bring this to life. Robb Report had great success when leading with this interactive asset as a lead-in to its digital magazine.
4. Create infographics to share your content. Another favorite site of mine is http://www.visual.ly. It has built an infographic creator that makes your data and content insight look incredible to anyone. The press loves infographics and so do most consumers. You can have lots of fun with this site.
5. Play off of consumer engagement videos on YouTube. I have to give a shout-out to the media team at LBI for this tip. With video content being so widely viewed, your brand can have big leaps forward by creating ads that sit on topical content. I don't mean the boring brand ads we are used to, or the hardcore direct ads we all use; I mean the topically relevant ads we all appreciate. For example, a video of a cat on a Roomba on YouTube means millions are hooked. Why not run an ad on it that says "Another cat video huh? How about reading a great magazine instead?"

These are just a few of my favorites. I'd love to hear what works for you, or if you garner any success out of integrating these. Good luck!