Best of Nxtbook - 12

What tactics have you used to increase the visibility of
your content?
With The Roanoker - which celebrates its 42nd year of publication
in 2016 - our print edition has always been available to paid subscribers and on local newsstands. However, our digital edition has
been made available to the public for free since its launch in January
of 2014, with the intent of increasing the accessibility of the magazine in our market and attracting more readers for ourselves and for
our valued advertisers.
When I started here as an Associate Editor nearly 11 years ago the
situation was very different. Back then our digital marketing efforts
were limited mostly to providing issue previews on our relatively
small website that were designed to encourage readers to subscribe
or purchase a copy on newsstands. But over time our websites and
digital outreach programs have grown dramatically, increasing our
ability to reach and engage with new readers in our market and allowing us to raise overall market awareness of our publications in
ways that were not possible five to ten years ago.

Has this changed over time?
Yes. As I mentioned, over the last five years all of our digital programs have grown dramatically. Most recently that change has revolved around an increased focus on our email marketing.
In recent years we were seeing that our email marketing campaigns
were doing a good job of driving traffic to our sites and spurring
interest in our content. At the same time, like many other publishers, we were cautious of becoming too dependent on social media.
Social media is incredibly powerful, and we continue to leverage it.
But we also wanted more ownership of our audience. So, last fall, we
decided to begin using our digital edition of The Roanoker as a key
tool for email collection.

e-newsletters before they view the digital edition. After they complete the form they are delivered directly to the digital archive page,
where they can then access our entire library of digital issues. These
readers also receive an email confirmation thanking them for their
interest in our magazine and providing them with a direct link to
the archive that they can bookmark in order to bypass the form on
future visits.

This edition also capitalizes on one of our most recent
features, subpages. Can you tell me a little bit about why
you chose this feature, how you're using it?
That's right. Last year, while attending an event hosted by Nxtbook
in Lancaster, I became aware of the new feature of subpages for the
first time and quickly became excited about the potential applications. While most of the examples demonstrated at that time focused on presenting a few extra pages or creating in-page slideshows
(which are also very slick applications) I immediately seized upon
the idea of using this feature in a much broader way to increase overall readability throughout an entire issue while still operating in an
enhanced-replica format.
For years digital magazine apps had offered the ability to navigate
both horizontally and vertically, and I saw the same potential to do
that with our Nxtbook digital editions using these new subpages.
Soon after I returned to my office I began working with my great
production contacts at Nxtbook to test this idea, and we quickly
arrived at a solution that allowed us to apply subpages to create
"overflow" space that we could use to increase the readability of the
digital magazine without needing to entirely re-design every individual layout.

So far that new approach has helped us collect thousands of new
email records and increase our email newsletter database by more
than ten percent in less than nine months!

By making only minor changes to the flow and size of the fonts and
using those overflow pages for the remainder of the text, we were
able to produce an instant increase in readability that makes the digital edition more comfortable to read and enjoy, whether you are on
a desktop, laptop, tablet or even on a smartphone.

How did you make this a user-friendly experience
for readers?

What do you do design-wise to be sure that your
readers don't miss the extra content that you include?

We accomplished this by presenting our online readers with a simple form positioned between the
website and our digital archives that offer
them the opportunity to opt-in to our

The subpage feature, by default, offers small gray arrows the denote
the ability to navigate vertically. In our case, we opted to turn off
that default icon and build more prominent icons into our actual
PDF files.

By making only minor changes to the flow and size of the fonts and
using those overflow pages for the remainder of the text, we were
able to produce an instant increase in readability that makes the
digital edition more comfortable to read and enjoy, whether you
are on a desktop, laptop, tablet or even on a smartphone.



Best of Nxtbook

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Best of Nxtbook

A Few Words From Michael Biggerstaff
Hands Across Lancaster
Video, Slideshow, Print View
Three Benefits Of Digital Editions
A Look Inside Digital Media Strategies
Why Valuing Creativity Is Vital To Every Business
Build Leaders Worth Following
Best of Nxtbook - Intro
Best of Nxtbook - Cover1
Best of Nxtbook - Cover2
Best of Nxtbook - A Few Words From Michael Biggerstaff
Best of Nxtbook - 2
Best of Nxtbook - 3
Best of Nxtbook - Hands Across Lancaster
Best of Nxtbook - 5
Best of Nxtbook - Video, Slideshow, Print View
Best of Nxtbook - 7
Best of Nxtbook - Three Benefits Of Digital Editions
Best of Nxtbook - 9
Best of Nxtbook - A Look Inside Digital Media Strategies
Best of Nxtbook - 11
Best of Nxtbook - 12
Best of Nxtbook - bb
Best of Nxtbook - bb
Best of Nxtbook - 13
Best of Nxtbook - Why Valuing Creativity Is Vital To Every Business
Best of Nxtbook - 15
Best of Nxtbook - 16
Best of Nxtbook - 16a
Best of Nxtbook - 18
Best of Nxtbook - 19
Best of Nxtbook - Build Leaders Worth Following
Best of Nxtbook - 21
Best of Nxtbook - 22
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Best of Nxtbook - 24
Best of Nxtbook - 25
Best of Nxtbook - Cover4
https://www.nxtbookmedia.com