Like most marketers, Joe Lazauskas of Contently has platform on the brain.
“Lately, it seems like I only talk about platforms,” he writes in “Why Print Still Matters.”
“Facebook Live… LinkedIn Instant Articles… Google AMP… Chat bots! A new ‘platform’ for content gets dressed in hype every week. (Platforms, in layman’s terms, are really just new places to publish.) As an editor today, your job is to milk them for all they’re worth,” he explains.
As editor-in-chief of an enterprise software provider, it’s not surprising that he dreams in multi-channel. He recalls how he schemed to remix a viral Reddit post for other platforms, saying “We could easily turn it into a quiz, but the covers would also make for great standalone posts on Instagram. A countdown-style Facebook video might make sense. Hell, we could even make a SlideShare.
“This train of thought shows how my brain thinks about media, which is pretty interesting since one of our most effective platforms isn’t connected to the internet at all,” he states.
That platform is print, specifically their magazine Content Quarterly, which won the 2016 Digiday Content Marketing Award for Best Brand Publication.
“This new reality-based print platform is the real deal.” Joe Lazauskas
“If you want to convince someone that you’re committed to quality and craft, why not just put the proof in their hands?” he asks. He notes that the magazine, which the sales force brings to every meeting, quite literally touches every deal.
“We gave out copies of our ‘Finance Edition’ Quarterly to the attendees of LinkedIn FinanceConnect last year, and that alone directly influenced 13 new deals, paying for the cost of the magazine and then some,” Lazauskas notes. “Basically, it’s the first giant art project I’ve worked on that makes a ton of money. This new reality-based print platform is the real deal.”
“So when you’re spending your morning, like me, Snapchatting your team with thoughts about your new micro-publishing strategy on Medium, I encourage you to remember the benefits of print too. If you’re selling a product—especially a B2B product—the ROI can be ridiculously high. The boxes they ship in also make great cat toys,” he concludes.