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A Mr. Magazine™ Musing
Almost every magazine and magazine media company today has a Chief Content Officer and Chief Revenue Officer. I think those media companies need to have a Chief Experience Maker instead.
Don’t misunderstand me, content is important. I will venture to say revenue is even more important.
However, if you are in, and plan to stay in, the magazine media business, you will need to, without delay, appoint a Chief Experience Maker.
What role does the Chief Experience Maker play?
Here are my 7 steps to change from a content provider to an experience maker:
Step 1: Know your audience
Let me be clear: really know your audience. We live in the digital age; that means the audience data is at your fingertips. Study the data, make it priority number one. Find out everything and anything about the audience your brand is going to engage with and carry on a long-lasting relationship. Audience first means your audience is your customers. Customers always want to be heard, whether right or wrong, so study and analyze the data. Experience makers are matchmakers.
Step 2: Humanize your magazine media brand
Your brand needs to be much more than ink on paper or pixels on a screen. Your brand needs to be humanized, i.e., having the magic touch that changes the brand to a living breathing human being. If your brand is a human being, who will it be? What type of person will it be? Determine the voice, the values, and the vision that person has in mind. People engage with people. It will make the experience much easier to start, continue and last for a good amount of time.
Step 3: Create and curate habitual addictive content
… that is edited, vetted, and presented in a time and energy-saving manner. This is where the editor, a good editor, is needed to combine the creation with the curation. As I always advise my clients and anyone else who is willing to listen, “If your audience can find the information on Google, that piece of information does not belong in your magazine media.”
Step 4: Focus on what I call the MVP of the magazine media business
Meet and exceed the audience expectation, validate all the information, and preview the near future to them. Achieving that expectation through creating and curating will help you take a step in the right direction of becoming an experience maker.
Step 5: Make sure that your content is relevant to the audience
… necessary to the audience, and on top of it all, sufficient to the audience. Your audience should not need another brand or platform to finish, fulfill, or lose themselves in that experience. No one would enjoy a movie if you keep asking them every few minutes to change from theater 1 to theater 3 and then back to 1 or 4.
Once the aforementioned steps are secured, you can start with …
Step 6: Dating your audience
No relationship or experience exists in vacuum, and in order to start an experience or a relationship, you need to think about it as if you are dating. Start with one date, then another, and once the relationship develops, you are ready now for your engagement, and long-lasting partnership. The experience-making is just starting.
Step 7: What is an experience without a dash of luck?
Well, you always need that dash of luck in any relationship and in any experience. So, here’s some good luck wishes to you and yours. We look forward to a great magazine media experience-making business that only the Chief Experience Maker can deliver. Are you ready?
So, what are you waiting for?
Go for it, you can easily be the Chief Experience Maker. Good luck!
Samir “Mr. Magazine™” Husni
Director of Magazine Innovation Center,
University of Mississippi
Original content republished with kind permission.
