Retailers have stores, store-in-stores, catalogs and websites to push their wares out to the buying public. It’s called having multiple channels.
Publishers, too, have (or should have) mulitiple methods of distribution. Here is one of the best, most-succinct explanations why:


“With the Internet, with YouTube, with TiVo, with cable TV, people are selective viewers now. There may be a group of people in Washington who watch ‘Nightline’, ‘The Daily Show’, the ‘Tonight Show’, ‘Good Morning America’, and ‘Meet the Press’, and they see Obama five times. Most people in America see him once at most . . .
People approach their news consumption the way they approach their iPod: you download the songs you like and listen to them when you want to listen to them. That infects our strategy in where the President goes and where he doesn’t.” --Dan Pfeiffer, White House communications director, quoted in “Non-Stop News” by Ken Auletta, The New Yorker, Jan. 25, 2010

B-to-B publishers of print magazines added websites long ago and more recently are using these other methods of information distribution:

  • Blogs 
  • E-newsletters
  • Twitter accounts
  • Facebook fan pages
  • YouTube
  • Flickr albums
  •   Trade shows and conferences

Most of these new media outlets are in the hands of the editorial side. I know editors who feel they are being redundant when they post the same information in five places. These editors need to re-read Pfeiffer’s point. We in the business might consume multiple media, but our audiences do not. Updating magazine articles, websites, blogs and photo albums is extra work (and sometimes tedious), but communicating through multiple channels is the nature of publishing today. You have to be there (everywhere).


One more important point: while all of these new media outlets are ideal for the editorial side of a publishing outfit, each has value for the business side, too.


Publishers, sales staff and the marketing department must do their own blogging, Twittering, newsletter writing and YouTube posting.  Yes, the business side can repeat the info the editors are pumping out, but sales and marketing folk have different messages, different information and different contacts (or followers). They need to be using these new media tools themselves. Don’t know how to get started? Give me a call. We’ll talk.