Google Inc. Thursday began allowing users to re-rank and edit their search results through a new set of personalization features the company hopes will make its dominant search engine more useful. - Wall Street Journal

Google:

How to use SearchWiki

Here’s how you can rank, remove, add, and comment on search results:

• Like a certain search result?

  Click to move it to the top of the page. This result will appear at the top whenever you do the same search in the future. We’ll add this marker next to it so you’ll recognize it later.

• Don’t like a result?

  Click to remove it, and it’ll remain hidden whenever you do the same search in the future.

Today, the PCMag Digital Network, with over seven million unique monthly visitors, reaches in excess of 10 times the circulation of the print publication. - Press Release PCMAG Digital Network

At Infoswell, our philosophy is that the print edition has strategic advantages for a magazine publication.  But most publishers aren’t using the print magazine edition in a manner that leverages their full cross media capabilities.  As more and more magazine publishers choose to place web, video, and digital edition channels above their print editions, we expect to dramatically increase the custom publisher roadmaps performed by our company for the 2009 year.

Understanding that the revenue model and advertiser must have a seat at the table, and that readers are as interested as community as they are content, we will continue to help publishers find the right mix of digital offerings.

But there is a problem.  Even at your best, you realize that you are only covering a small percentage of the whole news associated with your niche.

Major cable news networks have already launched their own “you report” type of video reporting by their viewers.  Citizens are now bringing the front edge of news to the news media’s attention.  A new community funded reporting site is also launching (http://spot.us - launching this week according to Publishing 2.0) that will foster more of a journalistic approach to these hidden stories.

As a publisher, this should make you think more about how you involve your readership in the news and media process.  Social media for magazine publishers presents an opportunity to handle brand extension in a way the newspaper industry failed.

You are in the business of publishing media around the concept of a magazine.  The print magazine is only the periodic element citing the latest news in a packaged and polished presentation.  There is much more to your brand than just the print magazine.  Please don’t picture your business, your industry, or your own publication as being in the business of printing a magazine.

Scott Karp makes this great point with an emphasis on the newspaper business in his post on monetizing the internet.  [Well Done Again Scott!]

The magazine publishing business stands right behind the daily newsprint media in terms of volitility of digital change.  We let newspaper publishers take a bullet so that we might learn how to get our business model straight before it’s our turn to shine.

I recently asked a major magazine distributor agent about their disposal process for unsold newsstand copies.  While I was glad to learn that the copies not donated were indeed sent for recycling, the agent advised that she takes just about as many copies off the shelf as she is putting up in some stores.  This also cites the need for better logistics and distribution controls.  I know we could be smarter about putting magazines in the hands of the targeted readers.

Large distribution companies don’t always have the ability to control local and non-corporate strategic retail points of purchase or distribution.

Green magazine publishing should be looked at from many different angles.  The online media capabilities of a magazine present dozens of methods to publishers to extend their brand digitally and support green publishing.

When 30% of your readers prefer digital editions for either digital delivery preference or environmental reasons, publishers can’t afford to ignore this segment.

There’s not one single checklist and the custom green media package is different for each magazine brand.  This month, Folio magazine is coming out with their own Green issue.  This issue is sure to encourage magazine publishers to look at their business and take action to develop a brand extension strategy and consider other green publishing initiatives.

Open source cms software for publishers has another advantage over commercial cms in this area. First, we find that open source publisher cms tools often contain the tags, social widget, and community collaboration features ahead of when these features surface in traditional enterprise web publishing systems.

Magazine CMS Software - Open Source

Drupal is one example of a CMS that has allowed us to create very complex and custom feature sets for clients. The Drupal CMS provides us many opportunities to design a magazine website with both the style, function, and social features to support the readership, circulation development, and advertiser features requested.

While there are many other cms comparison factors we use to select a specific CMS tool for a magazine publisher’s website we have found that most of the open source cms tools now perform better than traditional commercial packages that often we harder to manage.

The good new for publishers is that they can use open source with a higher capability index and we can easily demonstrate that those that claim a higher cost of ownership for open source are not accurate or not familiar with the latest magazine cms software tools.

We gain new publisher clients that want to use innovative web technology without the high costs associated with proprietary CMS and older web publishing systems.” - David Blankenship, Infoswell Media

An integrated digital edition and publication web site a critical part of the modern publisher’s media offering.

Magazine Web Site Design Business on the Rise

The magazine website design division business continues to rise based on strong traffic to magazine publisher websites.

As advertisers are offered new digital advertising options from their publishers, they continue to invest in this channel and the direct and trackable results.

The continued increase has made many magazine publsihers realize that a web re-design is well worth the investment.

We like the focus on simple navigation, specifically the core horizontal navigation of Events, Community, Careers, and Directory resources. These top visit purpose sections help to guide both new an regular return visitors. Many publishers continue to watch the digital initiatives listings. This is a section that we feel could be developed to include additional details and images relative to the publications that have taken action to improve their brands on the web.

MPA Association Website

The MPA Press Room allows news, media, and other industry professionals to quickly access the digital assets to promote association supported events and messages.

The project by Naylor includes beyond design elements of the associations brand development.

About Naylor - Naylor provides integrated media services for associations specializing in print publications, online media, trade shows and events.

“Luxury SpaFinder Interactive will be published monthly in six languages and will immediately expand the magazine’s global circulation from 200,000 to over one half million spa lifestyle enthusiasts” Press Release

In our own magazine consulting process we insure clients are optimizing their brands across all mediums in which they have cross media content capabilities. This allows publishers to actually leverage their digital and online initiatives using the print editions, interactive website, and digital magazine editions.

The recent announcement that Walt Disney expects $1 billion in online revenue from content drives home the importance of taking the right online content strategy.

“If we’re not there, (people) will just access someone else’s content,”
- Walt Disney CEO Robert Iger

High quality content is the key to new web traffic, return website visitors, and the right online campaign options for advertisers. When this high quality magazine content is published online and properly organized and present based on an integrated web and digital strategy magazine publishers create the perfect storm for their readers and advertisers.

The realization of revenue from content has caused a major shift from the traditional publisher mindset of “always make the reader pay for the content.” Understanding the long term economic value of properly published web content is making even old school publishers re-think their position on the hundreds of articles they have tucked away “offline” in past print magazine issues.