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If you chose to set up a companion website for your printed publication, you will soon have to face the following question: “What is the best way to link printed articles to the content available on my website?”
By thinking about a companion website, you will soon realize that it cannot be a simple copy/paste of the printed issue. Even if solutions exist to do so (see the article on page-turner softwares), they don’t really allow you to benefit from the possibilities of the Web. You cannot consider the web simply as a new way to display your magazine. The web readership and potential users want more. As a matter of fact, on the Web, you can link several articles together or to different websites and provide further information. You will be able to display more images and even videos related to your articles’ topics. From the reader’s point of view, your website will become the place to get the latest news and engaging content.
From the editor’s point of view, a website has also some advantages. You will be able to know exactly how many readers visited your site and which articles are the most attractive. Such statistics will help you get a deeper understanding of your readership and to adapt your editorial strategy. Furthermore, the technical possibilities offered by the Web 2.0 will make you easily interact with your readers. They will add comments to articles, answer surveys and it will eventually build up a real community. These benefits are priceless to you as they are harder to achieve with a printed publication.
To put it in a nutshell, your companion website will become a useful tool to build a better relationship with your readers as well as the place to provide richer information. Would you really put your traditional readership aside from such an improvement while knowing all its related benefits? Of course not! You will just have to invite your readers to visit your website for them to get more information and to take part in your community. But how? You will have to provide a link between your printed publication and its companion website… Of course, there should be general and straightfoward link on your magazine which should clearly show how to access the website. But to engage your readers, you should also provide links on each article. When a reader is interested in an article, he will be keen on accessing deeper information on this particular subject. That’s why you should provide direct links between printed articles and the related online content.
Usually, providing the web address (URL: Uniform Resource Locator) of your website is considered to be good enough. But actually, it’s not! Readers wish to have direct and simple ways to access online content rather wasting time on searching a website. What is the best way to link print and digital? Traditional URLs are not enough and alternative solutions exist. There is more it than simple links!
Stay tuned for our next article on the subject!
