The Fashion Techie

The Digital Magazine Revolution – Are You Ready? Part 2 of 4

April 7th, 2010

Part 2 of 4 | Will digital magazines change the way we search the internet?

This is part 2 of a 4 part series on the evolution of digital magazines. What will the launch of digital magazines mean to us as fashion bloggers, fashion websites, brands, marketers, publicists? In Part 1 we discussed whether or not digital magazines would decrease blogs and traditional websites impact and popularity online.

In Part 2 we delve into the science of search and how digital magazines will change the way readers and customers search as well as how advertisers and marketers can evolve as a result.

From a both points of view, lets think about what search and SEO really is right now:

If you are searching…the cycle continues and the next thing you know an hour has passed,  you’ve been to a million sites, you can’t remember what sites you visited (thank God for history) and hopefully you found what you looked for. If a website has predicted your keywords through SEO and relative content they have increased their chances for their website being visited, you buying their product or reading their information, you sharing what you’ve found…

If you are a website…you are constantly looking for ways to engage visitors/consumers/readers so that they won’t leave your website and search for something else, you want them to click on your advertisements and  you want them to share your site with their social community. It’s an exhausting process that’s a mix between fortune telling, trend prediction, analytic interpretations and search engine equations.

SO, TIERRA… WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH DIGITAL MAGAZINES?

Digital magazines are predicted to decrease the need for search by providing readers and subscribers with constant content. According to a new survey, “The Case of Advertising in Interactive Digital Magazines,” by Josh Gordon</a> over 1/3 or 34.2% of interactive digital magazine readers say they search less after subscribing.

Here’s how the relationship between searchers and digital magazines look:

But wait.. search accounts for 1/2 of every online ad dollar spent. If interactive digital magazines reduce the amount of future searches made by potential customers, what will happen to online marketing and online advertising? What does this all mean?

Traditional blogs, websites, advertisers, marketers… all of us; we need to start thinking about how combine the science of search (seo, pay per click adverstising, etc.) with content. But how? The only way is to use the art of prediction. I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that trend prediction, analysis and the online research businesses is going to see a boost in the next 10 years. As digital magazines start to emerge, as blogs start to evolve to keep up and as websites become more engaging – predicting what readers and subscribers want will be key to success. It’s a simple equation:

An Increase in Engaging Content + An Increase in The Frequency of Content = Less Searching and More Time Spent On Your Site

What does the new interactive and engaging website look like? A great example of how websites and blogs are beginning to change can be seen on Glo, (http://glo.msn.com), a new women’s lifestyle, fashion, and beauty destination that launched yesterday from MSN, Hachette Filipacchi (publisher of ELLE) and BermanBraun.

However, engaging content is one thing… engaging advertising is another. We will explore that in Part 3.

This is Part 2 of a 4 Part series

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4