Here’s the thing about digital magazines (for associations)

You’ve got to have a strategy. It’s like any other media. Digital pubs aren’t meant to replace print pubs, just like TV wasn’t meant to replace the radio or the internet wasn’t meant to replace print (Despite the “Newspaper Death Watch” heads we read.) They are meant to be added to your communications arsenal. And for that reason, you’ve got to decide what to do with them.

Here’s a few thoughts on how digital publications can enhance your communications strategy:

1. Connect with new readers. From an association standpoint, that means attracting new members. If you hold your member publication sacred as a member benefit (and there’s no doubt you should), how can you entice potential members to become interested in your content? Maybe you offer a digital version of your publication, for a limited time, to a select list of your target members or readers? Maybe you send it to those members who have let their membership lapse, to entice them to come back (“Hey, look what you’ve been missing!”)

2. Say more. Content is plentiful—members, suppliers, staff often have items to contribute. The president of your board may have a pet project that is important to tenure that will need a medium and channel of distribution. Digital publications can allow you to go in depth on issues important to your members by creating special reports or additional issues of the publication and publishing them digitally only.

3. Find real revenue. If you think of a digital pub as a replacement for your printed piece, you run a huge risk of losing advertising revenue. More often than not, print advertisers have bought in to your pub because of the tactile experience a reader has with it. You can’t take that away, replace it with something unproven, and expect to keep generating revenue as you always have. Instead, you need to work with those advertisers on ways to enhance their print position by using the opportunities that a digital publication provides. A sponsored digital version, any rich media add on, these are ways to generate new, and real, revenue.

One final point, do you have a clear communications strategy that incorporates all media? Print, online, social media, digital, electronic? As a communications expert, you need to know what type of content to put where, and how to best present it. We know that regurgitating print content online is the kiss of death, so think about how you’re going to move readers between the mediums. If you’re not teasing from your print piece to more information online, start. And what’s more, that tease can not be “More info online at www….,” it needs to have a direct call to action: “For more of our interview with VeryImportantPerson, visit www….” Or “Comment on this article at www….”

The point is, use all of your media to talk to, and with, your readers. And think about how you’re going to do that, what your strategy will be, and how digital pubs can be a valuable part of that strategy…not just a fancy pdf with little purpose.

If you’ve had success on any of these fronts, I want to hear it.