“A few months ago,” notes this email from Erin at Capstone Communications, “I was chatting with a young alum about a story I had been asked to write about her. She asked where the piece was going to appear, and I explained that it would be both online and in the print magazine.
“She got very excited,” Erin continues. “’Oh, I didn’t know it was going to be real, too!’ she said, asking me to mail her a copy once it was published.”
Real.
That right there is the true prestige of print. As Adam Moss of NYMag.com has stated, his brand publishes a new piece of content every six minutes during working hours. And the editing process for online content is, he admits, “zero, pretty much.”
As the Erin notes, “… in the time it took the outlet to publish a single print publication, more than 3,000 stories were published online.”
Given this pace of frantic digital publishing, it’s no wonder we place a higher value on stories that appear in print publications. Only a tiny fraction of a brand’s content appears in print, and those stories are carefully created; they are more real, more thorough, more carefully crafted and curated.
“If you’re going to take the trouble to print a tiny percent of the stories your institution produces, people will value that content differently,” Erin continues. “They will see those stories as more prestigious than the significantly greater amount of content that people can find on your website.”
The power of your print material expands when you consciously populate it with your best, more innovating and creative content. It’s the classic case of quality over quantity – and what a way to showcase your brand.