How a print publication prospered by switching to online

There’s a fascinating piece over on The Media Briefing about how Computer Weekly went from print to digital:

Ending the printed magazine was, admittedly, something of a milestone, given that Computer Weekly had been around since 1966, the world’s first weekly technology magazine…

We’re pretty proud of what we’ve delivered – but that success has been built on nothing more than getting back to basics: understanding your audience, and delivering quality journalism based on context, analysis, depth and great contacts…

Editorially, we have been freed from the tyranny of chasing any hit on the website. Quality of audience is the critical factor, as it has to be in B2B. We could easily grow our readership by writing endless stories about iPads, Twitter , Facebook or Instagram; by live blogging every Apple product launch; or by crowd-pleasing rants about the angle of the bezel on the latest smartphone.

Instead, we write about the sometimes boring things that matter to our audience of IT professionals. And we write in depth – our ratio of news to long-form content is about 50:50; a few years ago it would have been nearer to 80 percent quick-hit news stories.

And guess what? When you write about things that matter to your audience, they read more articles, and they stay longer on the website, and they develop a trust that means they will give you information about their job and their employer and their purchasing intentions that allows us to monetise that relationship. And your website traffic increases.

Read the full piece about Computer Weekly here.