Marketing Your Personal Brand With Your Own Magazine

Aren’t magazines a declining market? 

Unfortunately for traditional magazine publishers are very 'Kodak' in their mentality. So they were thinking that magazines would always be around and newsagents would always be the dominant force out there. The ones that have picked up and established a digital footprint are doing okay but the ones that just stick with the old models, they're the ones struggling.

So why are you still so passionate about magazines?

I'm absolutely loving what magazines can do for people's self-confidence and self-belief. One of my clients has gone from being a very meek quiet, unassuming business owner of an online retailer to launching her magazine and now she's a force to be reckoned with. She's doing Facebook lives as her role as editor in chief and she's reaching out and helping a community.
A well targeted magazine reaches lots of eyeballs and hence their online store that we're promoting in the magazine is getting lots of eyeballs.
Magazines have an amazing way of elevating your brand position, yourself or your business and most importantly, you own the media. So You're not paying a fortune by advertising in a magazine and you are putting the platform of a magazine together with marketing instead. You actually own the media so you're in control of the editorial content and the adverts that go in.

What is the first step you need to take to create your own magazine? 

The first step is getting really clear about to who's going to read the magazine. Before you worry about what's in the magazine and what it is going to look like, it's vital you know who your ideal reader is. Many people are very attached to the look and feel, it's a bit like giving birth to a magazine it's their own child, and don't get me wrong the magazine appearance is super important.
But we spend a lot of time with our clients working on who their avatar is, who their reader is. Because you want them to pick up the magazine and read it physically as a print magazine or to click on that link and read it online.
So the first step is to ask the question, who is this magazine for and what is going to be the content that really grabs them. It's a really crowded marketplace and you need to consider how your magazine is going to stand out and how do you get people in and then have them follow you and want to actually hear what you've got to say. 

And how do you create the content for your magazine that you know people will want to read?

In the world we are living in magazines still have a credibility associated with them. So if you were to contact an influencer in your industry or a celebrity, leader or well known identity that your ideal reader would know of and ask if they would like to feature in your magazine that's launching, and we're launching to an audience of 100000you could get those people to provide content.
We're engaging with celebrities everyday and we get about a 98 percent success rate and when we've had a couple of people
A tip here is to check the new book launches or those promoting a new program or show, because they will be keen to have the coverage. That's the other unique thing about a magazine that people don't necessarily think of. Magazines still come with a little bit of class and the style of prestige that may not necessarily associated with being featured in a blog or Facebook post or whatever it might be. Being featured in a magazine is pretty special.
The other thing you can do is join Facebook Groups where you know your readers hang out and ask them to share their stories in your magazine and follow the influencers on Instagram and other social media, so you can ask them to be featured and they will of course, create a buzz about the magazine for you. 

What leverage does having your own magazine give you? 

It's really interesting how magazines have been evolving within a business model where, as the editor and chief, you can do so much more than trying to be featured in someone else's title. For example, we are launching a magazine called Thyroid health for a client who actually owns a supplement she developed for people with Hashimoto's.
The challenge was that she's not allowed to advertise a supplement in theU.S. due to FDA laws. So what we've done is we've created Thyroid health and we're actually promoting her supplement in the magazine. We're also doing an e-book where people can get a lead magnet to recipes that are great for thyroid and promoting that in the magazine as well.
So basically first work out who the perfect customer is for the reader. Then work out who the big influencers are in this space, who's got the clout and the credibility to be able to make this magazine stand on its own two feet. In the case of Thyroid Health there was a leader in field who has a Facebook group with a million followers, so that magazine will launch to a reach of about three point three million in her target space with her target customer. 

What if your business is selling services, can magazines work for you? 

Yes of course! This is a big opportunity for coaches. For example we are working on a magazine called Youth in Business where the client runs entrepreneurial programs for teens. Having a magazine simply reinforces who are you and why people should listen to you.
It's about giving your personal brand some clout and a good reputation, because coaches are always marketing to a new audience and trying to bringing new people into their programs. Having a magazine is how you elevate yourself above the competition.
Also you can align your personal brand with leaders in the wider industry. For example Janine Allis from Boost Juice and Shark Tank is an awesome contributor here in Australia. She is well known and very well respected and when we approached her she said would contribute if we would we consider her for the front cover. We were like, oh we'll all have to run that by our editorial team! 

What if your business is very local, isn't having a magazine a bit over the top? 

Not at all! In fact it's awesome for local businesses. For example there is a real estate agent who is trying to position herself in a very noisy market place where there's something like 180 different real estate agents. She is new to the area and it's a country town which is very parochial and it would be difficult to position herself as separate from the competition.
So she has approached local 'celebrities', people like the mayor who is particular influencer (if you get invited to her lunches you're in), members of the council, local cafes and other service providers and she interviews them. Thanks to her magazine local people are now asking for her for opinion and she has closed $1.8 Million so far in sales since her first issue! 

So having your own magazine is a bit like branding by association? 

Yes, you are in fact building a community and featuring the sort of people who make readers stop and at least skim or turn the pages in the magazine. It's much better use of your marketing dollar than either buying advertising space or advertorials space in someone else's magazine. 

What about using magazines for giveaways or prizes?

Yes, that is something that works well if you have a product. For example, we once also had a Skate business and we used to target magazines that we wanted to get our skateboards featured in to get the brand to be known as a really cool brand and we knew our our customer was quite young.
So we approached a skate magazine and said to them that our recommended retail price for our skateboards was about $X dollars and we'll give you X number of skateboards in exchange for a giveaway. So you can contact the subscription manager or marketing manager to ask them about donating product in order to be featured. Just make sure you get good coverage, not just a mention though. The skate magazine gave us full page promotion and we were in ongoing issues because they were desperate for prizes. 

Creating a magazine sounds like an awful lot of hard work though? 

Yeah and I think that's the biggest myth. I mean if you can write a blog actually even if you don't you can't write a blog, but if you can come up with an idea for a blog title, like a headline, then you can create a magazine. That's what I mean by saying gone are the days where it's like a mammoth effort to build a magazine. You know there's some really simple steps you can follow.
For example, the sweet spot for a digital magazine is about 28 to 32 pages. So you don't want it to be too big because people just start flicking. You know we're as impatient as ever these days so if you go over 32 pages the engagement drops. Now that might sound like a lot of content, but let's break that down.
You've got a cover page you've got the inside front cover which is usually an ad, so that could be your lead magnet or it could be a branding advert, then you've got your table of contents page and your contributors page that features the different contributors in the magazine and then you've got your 'from the editor' which you would write saying welcome to your first issue, then you got your blog posts if you've already written them...and you're halfway there.
Then add in your contributors articles, some adverts for your events, workshops, webinars etc or even your contributors adverts, or ads from others in your industry who offer complimentary services or products. Then maybe a what's on list for upcoming events in your industry or community, or an outline of what's in the next issue, a contest or giveaway, then the inside back cover and an advert on the back. 

And could you do this yourself?

You could but if you really want credibility, especially for the front cover, you are best to get a designer to lay it up for you. It's also a good idea to get someone on Upwork to design a double page spread for you so you can at least go to the contributors with a mock-up of the magazine.. I mean you can find a magazine design that knows how to lay out a magazine and it's really easy.
If you know how to do an e-book you can do a magazine! If you get really clear on who your customer is then you can get really clear what they care about, what their problems are and what content they really want and need so you can lay it out to suit them - it's not rocket science. 

So you could use your magazine to get in front of those Key Opinion Leaders in the Marketplace who could endorse, affiliate or refer your business? 

Yes of course. Go to contributors who do different things that you who already have your customers right now, someone you are not in competition with that you could work together for mutual benefit. If you've done some work on your target avatar and have identified your key opinion leaders, the people you want to get in front of you can approach these key opinion leaders and get to know them.
There is no better way to get in touch with your key opinion leaders than to say "hey, I we'd love to have your story in our magazine... could you send us an article and photographs and your comments or we could I have an interview" (you can find a journalist on UpWork to do this for you). Then send five or six questions for them to fill in the answers along with maybe one key tip and you have contributors and influencers referring your magazine and your brand. 

What about the cover design, what should go on that? 

Don't do it yourself! Spend the money with UpWork and get a cover design done. Get your cover mocked up too. It doesn't have to be the cover you launch with, but because you are sending our emails out to your potential contributors and KOL's, having a professional cover really does give you an enormous amount of clout. If you just sending an email saying oh we're thinking about creating a magazine, you wouldn't get cut through. Magazine designers have a template that they follow pretty much, so you're using the same cut and paste the template which shouldn't cost much, but it means your magazine is more real.
We are doing this with our clients and we are getting highly credible contributors like Simon Sinek, Robin Sharma, Matt Moran, Tiff Hall etc. We're getting big celebrities and they've got huge reach and this is the other thing to think about is is to actually consider who you want your brand to be associated with. Sometimes your magazine can be a conduit for them too. For Example we just interviewed Stephanie Alexander, the beautiful Australian chef and she says a beautiful copy of her magazine will be used as her new cookbook. So you know what I would say is, think about the mix of contributors that you get.
Who are your clout partners. If you put them in your magazine you know that instantly that's going to give you enormous credibility. Another example is a magazine we just called Acupuncture Health and we had JLo on the front cover. So instantly that's going to get picked up in the waiting room at the acupuncturist because it's acupuncture help and it's got a star on the cover rather than some Zen image that's generic it looks like a stock image. People are going to wonder why is JLo on the cover, then read the article about 25 famous people who use acupuncture and she is one of them!