Why online is better than print
When I started Her Business magazine back in 1995, websites weren’t around; we didn’t even have email.
By 2002 we had a website that gave us a presence online and automated a lot of processes; readers could subscribe online or change their address, which saved us lots of time. For awhile I couldn’t really see other benefits of being online.
Though by then I’d begun to discover blogging and began to play with the typepad platform. A whole new world opened up – I could do my own publishing online (without a web developer or designer) and that was beyond exciting.
Over the years my passion for media has moved away from print media to online media – and here’s why;
- The trees – think of the trees (say no more)
- The carbon footprint; each magazine has to be delivered to you (or your store) in some way; by road, air or sea.
- We can archive content online. Whereas your old magazine pile just takes up a load of space.
- Searching content is fast, accurate and easy online. Offline – you have to spend (frustrated) hours flicking through hundreds of copies of magazines looking for that article you KNOW you read somewhere.
- Online you can usually leave a comment for the post author (unless it’s Seth Godin), and they could even email you back, you could even make a connection with them. In the print days there was no way to get hold of an author, to get in front of them and say I agree/ disagree – high profile authors were unreachable.
- The instant-ness. Send me a press release for my print magazine (it’s bi-monthly as in every second month) and it has to arrive at least a month before publication to get through the process of content selection, editing, laying out, proofing, prepress, printing and distribution and postal strikes and un-returned phone calls and everything else in between. It takes ages before you see your news in print – and by then it’s OLD news. Chances are your news could be void because of the economy collapse, swineflu or a local disaster. Send me something for online publication and it’ll probably be up by sunset. Cool eh? Same goes for advertisers and they LOVE that. They can tailor their advertising for what’s important right now. (For a fabulous example of reacting to this real time decision making, watch this Advertising Age video on Vail Resorts CEO Rob Katz explain why they’re shifting 80 percent ad spend away from print to online advertising and social media.)
- You get to tell your story (how you want). I remember all the women in business writing, emailing, calling us, wanting their story included in our magazine – but we never had enough pages to include everyone’s business success story. Now you don’t have to wait for someone to print your story; you can go publish it yourself on your blog (Or if you’re really committed print your book, or ebook, on lulu). I so love that.
- Online is cheaper (sometimes). Printing and distribution is really expensive. I used to believe to get ahead in this world I needed to own a printing company. That’s changed now. Now I can create a blog (for free) – and it’s there for the whole world to read (though of course you have to get them to find it to read it, but still…). You don’t have to be a big company to do PR; to get noticed, followed, fanned, commented on, connected to, friended. Today getting noticed is about outsmarting not outspending anymore – and that’s pretty damn exciting for small innovative companies with passionate people power rather than spending power.
- The reach. We’d print a magazine and send it to you if you subscribed or maybe you’d stumble across it in a retail outlet somewhere in our distribution area. We put content online now and you could be sitting in your office in Tasmania at midnight and search for something; stumble across a link, see a mention somewhere – and you’d find us. I love that too. (And then you can still subscribe to us.)
- Because of devices like the Kindle and the Sony reader we can take our blog reading on the bus, to the beach, in the bath. So now even the portability and readability factor of magazines that set them apart (and ahead of) online media has been trumped.
And I bet there’s heaps more reasons why online media is leading the way…. (for readers, publishers and marketers).
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I’m passionate about social media – I founded the online community entrepreneurette in 2006 and flokka, the blog network in 2008, after a decade and a half in magazine publishing. A typical ‘maven’ I love to share what I’m learning, researching and implementing - as well as what’s working for my clients, my students and my network members, in the worlds of social media and business in general. I’m Fiona Powell and this is my blog. 
