From the Editor @ Centered on Taiwan.
I have opinions about this but not based on facts, based on only impressions. As a contributing writer to the magazine, it was a great pleasure to work with the editors, staff and publishing team on this magazine.
Undoubtedly, the magazine has developed a great body of work that could have done really well online, but that was never published online (except latterly as PDFs). The sad reality is that PDFs stink for SEO, always have.
For readability on handheld devices, PDFs are even worse. The current iteration on the website is an unholy compromise of fixed scale PDFs with little or no zoom capability (on a mobile) and text-based articles with poor SEO, worse layout.
I have no access to their stats, so I can’t say for sure. But the poor overall structure of their content makes it feel that it is a magazine with a website haphazardly tacked on, like a loose cover on a shed with no roof when the gale is approaching. It ain’t gonna do much after the rain arrives.
I gently asked an editor a few years ago when SEO was still king, and AI was an academic’s wet dream, about developing a full website. The feedback wasn’t particularly welcomed, and they continued using Issuu for hosting their PDFs with non-optimized website.
Then the director in January announced new plans… but they have come to naught, for it is too late: they’ve run out of time, money, and vision, despite the promising metrics. I think the magazine has a valuable role in multiple (bi-) directions, even solely as a website. It reaches out to sponsors, advertisers, community members, staff, readers, newcomers, volunteers and clients. Often those people cross-pollinate as they traverse the different roles in the community (for we all play multiple roles).
But the days of SEO and SM (FB/IG) are numbered now, those strategies have played out with severely lower visibility on all of these 3 mediums. It’s still possible to build audiences with those 3 mediums but the easy pickings are gone. Print media is all but dead in magazine format, even for giving it away free – it’s just a cost with little return.
So what are you going to do? It’s F2F these days. That’s FACE To FACE! It works the best, there is no intermediary to dilute or suppress the message, and participants get to know you!