Breaking the Rules with Association Publishing

In this new golden age for magazines, one category is proving that they can compete on a level with the best of them.

Becky Peterson, writing in Folio, reported last month on two of their Eddie & Ozzie award winners, Architect and Cheese. Both are industry association magazines at heart that have found the key to engaging with a much wider audience on social media.

“Written for members of the American Institute of Architects, Architect knows how to cover architecture for architects,” Peterson writes. “The challenge for Chelsea Blahut, content producer and Instagram manager at the magazine, is finding a voice that resonates outside of the 80,000-member print audience of industry insiders.”

They are doing so by leveraging their vast vault of stunning architectural visuals, which are working to engage thousands of new Instagram followers on their B2B account and driving traffic to the website.

Meanwhile Cheese – with the awesome tagline “Grate. Pair. Share.” – parlays the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board’s social media presence into a lifestyle content machine.

“While the magazine never diverges from its mission of promoting the uses of Wisconsin milk products, it promotes the products in a way that provides utility to both the client and the consumer. This likely explains the magazine’s four-million unique impressions per issue,” Peterson notes.

What’s fantastic about each of these titles is the creative use of storytelling and quality content to reach past the industry barriers and engage with real people. This is brand publishing at its finest, and a great example of making it rain with an association magazine.