Setting Up a Blog to Support a Print Magazine
Reader Question:
I’m interested in establishing a blog for the magazine I work for. The magazine deals with local government in Ireland and is sent to people within the relevant sector. I’d like to increase its profile and one way I’m looking at that is by creating a blog relevant to the magazine.
I don’t anticipate any problems setting up the page and telling people about the magazine etc but my query is about giving people access to articles we run in the magazine.
What I envisage is providing a paragraph or two that introduces the article and then I’d like people to be able to read it in its original format — as a colour PDF document that runs over a few pages. Is that a relatively simple task? Also, would I have concerns about space? Would certain blogs only allow me so much space to work with and with relatively large PDF files being used in my blog space, would that create problems?
Brandon’s Response:
Hello, and thanks for writing. To be honest, that sounds like a lot of work — which sort of defeats the “easy publishing” benefits of a blog. If I were in your situation, I would use the blog for original content. I’ve seen a lot of print magazines do this, and it makes sense. Instead of duplicating the print mag’s content online, you could use the blog as source of additional information relevant to the magazine. You could also feature the current and past issues of the magazine and encourage people to sign up / subscribe.
The most important thing is to devise a strategy that supports your business and publishing goals. You can also make the blog do what you want it to do, from a technical perspective. So I would figure out what tie-in strategy makes the most sense, and then build the blog around that strategy.
If you host the blog on your own website domain (generally what I recommend), your storage capacity would only be limited by your current hosting situation. And you could add storage space as needed. For what you’re trying to do, I would recommend adding the blog to your current website, or setting up a separate website domain for it.
I hope that helps you out some. Good luck.
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March 31, 2009 2:32 pm