LandLine Magazine leaps from print to web

Today I'm going to show you how a veteran print publisher made the leap onto the web. They had three separate websites, one for their magazine, one for their news and opinions, and one for their podcasts. Sirius XM Radio content. We combined these three websites into one main website called Landline Media. And what do we have here? Well, let's. So let's take a quick look. We have the news and opinion, which scrolls down in a traditional news fashion. We have the magazine, which has been pulled out of PDFs, which are not very searchable in Google or shareable in social media. So that now when you click into an issue, this is the August September issue, you get the COVID you get the editor's welcome, you get the news presented along with the table of contents and in a mobile, Google searchable and social sharing format. So if I click into an article, you'll see it looks like a standard webpage. And that's good because Google can index it, it can be shared, and it looks great on mobile. And you'll notice that the table of contents is always available here in the sidebar. So let's click into article number two. I read that. And article number three. Now, if you're paying attention here, you can see that I've run out of articles and it says I have to subscribe for free or login to get more. One of the things we did here is we integrated Landline media with their internal database, which runs on an AS400. We have leaky paywall connected to it via APIs, so somebody can jump in and subscribe for free. So if I hit subscribe, I hit the subscription page. And the goal here is that as they capture free subscriptions, they want to turn these free subscribers into paid members, which their parent company offers a lot of other member benefits to these independent truckers. If I am already a member, I can simply check my label, enter my account number in here, and then I'll be presented with a page that asks me to enter my email address and password and I have instant access as well. A member. Pretty cool. The other big component of their content is their daily podcast and daily radio show on Sirius xm. So their today's show is always presented here. Their top episodes change a little bit, but they're presented here. Here we have the radio host and then the archive of all the past episodes. Now, if I am logged in as a subscriber, I have a custom news feed experience available to me. So let's go back to the homepage here and the way this works and you can see it says welcome Pete test up here. And as I scroll down and I'm logged in, I get presented with this black box that says custom news just for you. If I hit this customize link, it drops down some options. Now remember, these are independent truckers and they are driving from point to point pretty regularly. And let's say I'm driving from California to Texas. I can check off California, I can check off Nevada, I can check off Texas, hit submit. And then now my custom news feed has changed. So I will see articles coming in from Texas and California and Nevada. And it's just the last five most recent articles in those geographic areas. So this serves the subscribership very well. So the truckers can get the news that they're interested in. Over 70% of their readership is on mobile. Mobile was a huge priority for Landline. And as I shrink this up and go back to the top here, you can see that some elements change the header, the logos change the, the menu changes, all the content is still presented. Even the custom content is presented on mobile once you're logged in. And as far as navigation goes, Landline decided to stick with their core content. They didn't want to confuse their readership and offer links to all their desktop links. They just don't have the real estate for it on mobile. So we have the news, we have the news by state, we have their opinion podcast and then we have their archives, both their magazine archives and their podcast archives. So if I head into their magazine archives, you can see that I can pull up, say, the current issue, I get the introduction, the editor's welcome, and then all the articles I can click into and it formats really nicely on mobile. So here we have the veteran print publisher that's bringing their print content online in a Google and social friendly fashion. They're offering free subscriptions which are now working to capture truckers that are interested in their content. Once they have those free subscriptions, they can go after the the independent trucker and sell them a membership. Pretty cool.