The 10 biggest mistakes most of us make with our magazines…
Your magazine, or some version of it, has been around for years. Alumni, members, or constituents gave it pretty high marks, judging from letters and reader surveys. But lately you’ve been sailing against some stiff winds: Paper shortages. Mailing costs. Staffing challenges. And, most of all, the fact that everyone is getting their information from their phones.
The obvious solutions: Reduce frequency. Go entirely online. Or eliminate the magazine altogether. But are these the right solutions for you? Having led redesigns of more than a dozen magazines, and as a content consultant for education and nonprofit institutions as well as corporations and government agencies, I’m seeing some common mistakes. Not to mention missed opportunities.
Even if you’ve already made a course correction, it’s crucial to take another look at your content strategy. See if you’re making one or more of these mistakes.
Mistake: Going entirely digital
Why this is a mistake: Few people will read your content unless you pair it with a robust social strategy. In which case, why not skip the magazine and focus on social?
Solution: Keep some degree of paper.
Digital content certainly can work. The New York Times and Wall Street Journal make massive profits with their digital subscriptions. Conde Nast magazines such as Wired and the New Yorker have successfully gone digital. Yes, they all have paper versions as well. But all would do just fine if their paper editions vanished altogether. The problem is, these outfits are an exception to a harsh rule. Very few if any institutions have developed an online strategy that matches the power of paper.
Why? Two main reasons:
1. People prefer paper. Ebook sales have been steadily climbing for years, while paper book sales are up. When a reader wants to spend time with a publication, she likes to hold the physical paper in her hand, free of wifi and battery issues. While this holds true more of older readers, readers in general want paper. In a later post, I’ll suggest a way to use this desire to your advantage, even while paper and mailing costs soar.
2. Online is for search and social. Serendipitous content, where a reader encounters irresistible content that she hasn’t looked for and doesn’t expect, hardly exists for most online users. Social apps convey more and more of what the user is already seeing. And Google, obviously, is for search. A magazine is a gift in the mail, eminently flippable.
This doesn’t mean going back to the old days of frequent magazines. Instead, think about what a magazine used to be for, and how it can be used today. See the next mistake.
Mistake: Using the magazine to send news
Solutions: Narrative nonfiction, and how-to “service” material.
Traditionally, alumni magazines existed to bring the hottest news of alma mater while giving the micronews of classmates in the class notes section. When I edited the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine in the late eighties and early nineties, I fought to pack in as many class notes as possible, and even dedicated a special issue to the greatest class notes of all time. But in the era of Facebook and Linked In, how necessary is it to convey news of classmates?
Okay, so most magazines have moved on, focusing instead on news of the institution and campus. Great, but many of your most loyal constituents have the attitude of Garth in “Wayne’s World”: “We fear change.” And news tends to be all about change.
One big answer lies in compelling storytelling—narrative nonfiction—that conveys conflict and dilemma with irresistible characters. A story-oriented magazine can also serve as the ideas hub for your larger content ecosystem. A great magazine story deserves a good video or trailer. (I’ll be writing about video in a future post.)
A second way to make your magazine a desired medium is “service,” or how-to material. Faculty, alumni, and even students are experts in an astonishing variety of subjects, from cooking to self-care to software.
What’s the purpose of these pieces? To serve what magazines have been really about from day one: community. An institutional magazine is a tie that binds the institution to its members. Our job is to make those members feel welcome and desired and part of something larger and more meaningful. Stories and service can help get you there.
Mistake: Using the magazine for sales or stewardship
Solutions: Ghostwriting, books, and videos.
Sure, publishing a fawning portrait of a wealthy donor can be good stewardship. (Though once I had a client who insisted on a cover story of a rich alum before any gift. The alum followed up with paltry sum and hasn’t given since.) The problem is, magazines aren’t very good at extracting money out of individuals, and they’re a crude way of rewarding donors.
Advancement professionals should be the first to understand why. What fundraiser would cold-call a prospect and say, “Yo, how about giving us some money?” And she knows better ways to thank a donor and cultivate a continuing relationship. “Using a general-interest magazine for a thank you letter is a crude way to do stewardship,” says Dorothy Behlen Heinrichs, director of patient and family giving at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. “You might as well do it with skywriting.” (Full disclosure: Dorothy happens to be my wife.)
Magazines work best to bring in your least connected constituents. These same constituents tend to be turned off by covers of rich people. “Hey, loser,” the covers imply. “Good luck getting yourself on this cover!”
Actually, you can use your magazine for stewardship. Instead of writing about your donor, let the donor write instead. Get her thoughts on her greatest passion—preferably one related to the gift. Don’t ask her to write it herself; instead, propose a collaboration with a professional ghostwriter. (A later post will tell how. Or, if you’re impatient, get in touch.)
Alternatively, you can create a book. In a later post, I’ll show you how to create a book that turns your donor into a published author, or that celebrates him through a book about their passion. And them.
Mistake: Relying on reader surveys
Solution: Hold informal focus groups instead.
When I was editorial director of a group of newsstand magazines, I had a $300,000 budget to study reader behavior and preferences. While learning a lot about how people read, I came to have deep respect for the expertise of a top market-research firm. One of the biggest lessons: People who volunteer to fill out a survey are among your least reliable respondents. You need to “ground-truth” their attitudes by aggressively pursuing your more reluctant readers.
Institutional surveys are no different. Alumni who respond to magazine surveys tend to be your most loyal and enthusiastic. They love everything about alma mater, especially the traditions they remember from their era. They tend to overvalue your content and lead you in the wrong directions for what to cover.
Instead, conduct focus groups with randomly selected constituents representing the full spectrum of ages, ethnicities, genders, and backgrounds. They can be done remotely or on campus. A later post will show how.
Mistake: Redesigning before reformatting
Solution: Think edit before design.
Assuming you’ve kept your magazine. After a while, the looks of it have started to seem stale. Or you find you’re not winning awards. The first thing you do is to turn to a designer—either putting out an RFP to design firms, bringing in a design consultant, or asking your inhouse talent to do the job.
The result is a more modern typeface, more white space, and better use of photography and art. Good for you. But the odds of your meeting your goals—increasing reader passion, winning awards—aren’t that great.
The top designers know that, when it comes to redesigning a magazine, they bring in editorial talent first. Luke Hayman, a Pentagram partner and former art director at Travel & Leisure and New York magazines, comes to me whenever he gets a request to redesign a magazine. I interview stakeholders, hold a staff retreat, work out online strategies, and suggest alternate page plans (“flatplans” in the jargon) for optional navigation and maximal reader time. Luke then creates the perfect design both for paper and web. Other leading designers have done the same. The moral: think edit first, then design.