YouTube video by Pete Ericson (Zine 101) demonstrating how Lynchburg College magazine uses web-based issues (article-per-page, organized by issue) to improve Google search visibility, social sharing, and mobile readability. The presenter contrasts this approach with PDFs and flipbooks, shows the site’s current and archived issues, and notes potential app integration via the Issuem plugin and Unipress platform.
Chapters
Hi, I'm Pete from Zine 101. And in this video we're going to look at how Lynchburg College magazine uses web based issues to attract Google traffic, social sharing and how it looks great on mobile devices. Now, as a traditional issue based publisher, putting up PDFs on their site produced no traction for Lynchburg. PDFs and flipbooks don't rank in Google Search and they don't tend to get shared in social media. They're quick and easy to upload, but they really create a barrier for readability and discoverability online today. What is a web issue? Well, a web issue is a series of articles that are organized by issue. The articles are just what you would find on the New York Times or any other big news site, but they're organized for your workflow by issue. And if we look at the Lynchburg College magazine on their homepage, this is the current issue, this is the latest issue. They have their features articles at the top. If you scroll down, you'll see the rest of the articles show up below. And if I click into an article, I can read it in all its glory. It looks great on mobile, it's findable in Google search and very much shareable on social media. Now the magic happens with the archives. Each time Lynchburg publishes an issue, it becomes the current issue and lives on the homepage. All the other past issues live on the past issues page or archive page. I can go in here and load up a back issue like this Rhino issue and it'll display all the articles that were published in that issue in one convenient spot. If you're a news publisher or blogger, consider creating special issues. Lynchburg uses our issue and plugin to create their web issues. And as a blogger you could migrate your articles into issues and create like a best of 2017 or Christmas issue or any other themed issue that you can use promotionally to attract more readership. Now let's talk a little bit about Google search. I mentioned that these articles get found in search. So let's take a look at how this works. There's a chapel that was upgraded on campus. Now let's say I'm looking for information about it. It's called the SN do. I probably butchered that name Chapel and I know it was upgraded. So I'm looking for information about it. And you see once I dump it into Google, here comes the article right from the magazine in the number one spot. Now when I click the link, it takes me straight to the article. It bypasses the home page and I can read about this chapel, I can watch the video, etc. And then if I'm ready to explore more, I can pull up the current issue or go over and explore the past issues. So this is the power of a web based article. It attracts Google search. You can share this article socially and it looks great on mobile. So let's take a look at mobile. What I'm going to do here is I'm going to drag over my phone so you can see what's going on here. Make sure it's sized up appropriately. And there, there's the homepage or the current issue for the magazine. I can scroll down and load up the rest of the articles. Looks great, right? I can tap into any article and read it. And Again, remember, over 50% of your readership are on their phones reading this way and you need to have your articles presented in this fashion or you're just going to lose readership. Now speaking of mobile, Lynchburg could publish iOS and Android apps very easily in the future through our Unipress app platform. Our issuim plugin connects directly to the app so that when they would take an issue live on the web, the apps are automatically updated with the new issue, giving them true one click publishing. And it's all done through WordPress. Very simple, very fast. If you're considering moving to web based issue publishing, why not try issuem for free by heading over to zine101.com and subscribing to our YouTube channel.
