What would your print magazine’s impact slide say?
Over the past decade, I’ve shared a lot about the craft of making a magazine.
How do you make your headlines better?
How can you craft stories your audience actually wants to read?
What kind of covers get readers to pluck a publication out of their mailbox and put it on their coffee table?
There’s no doubt that making a beautiful, compelling magazine is important!
It’s also only part of the equation.
The other part is proving it works.
And while there are a lot of different ways you can talk about whether or not your magazine works, there’s one thought experiment I find especially clarifying: If you had to summarize your print magazine’s impact in a single slide for a VP, what would it say?
From my perspective, there are three simple, interlocking ways to think about impact. Here’s what they are, and a few ways you might start measuring them.
1. Is your audience reading it?
First, you need to answer the most basic question about your magazine. Is anyone actually cracking the cover? There are a variety of ways you can get a sense of reader interest:
Responses to prompts
This might include things like mystery photos, surveys, questions like “who was your favorite professor,” or finding hidden mascots. Prompt responses show that readers are paying attention.
- Here’s one prompt approach that reliably generates a few dozen responses per issue for one editor — including the exact steps to do it well.
Letters to the editor
Though a little bit less common these days, letters to the editor pages show readers are engaged enough to continue the conversation. There are effective ways to nudge people to do this!
Light-touch survey results
Surveys help confirm readers are opening, reading, and have feelings (!!) about your stories.
2. Does your audience actually want it?
Passive readers flip through your pages, but you also want to specifically highlight details about people who reach out, ask for more, or go out of their way to tell you they care.
Class notes
Submissions show that alumni value your magazine enough to want to be part of it. (And it’s the #1 section people actively turn to, so having a robust section has a big impact.)
- Here’s more on class notes.
Individual kudos from inside or beyond the institution
When people contact you to praise a story or your publication, it indicates that your work resonates enough that people take time to tell you.
Requests for extra issues from development, admissions/enrollment, alumni events, etc.
It’s a vote of confidence when your colleagues see the magazine as valuable enough to share with donors, prospective students, or event attendees.
3. Does your publication deliver results?
This is where you connect your magazine to things that are especially important to leadership: mission, fundraising, and value.
Stories linked to your school’s mission or strategic plan.
Institutional stories signal to leadership that the magazine isn’t operating in a silo—it’s a strategic communications tool.
Gifts from blow-in envelopes or QR codes.
These tie your magazine directly to revenue — a metric that gets everyone’s attention.
Cost savings or efficiency improvements.
Did you switch printers and save the school thousands? Better align your mailing list to the people who are most likely to find value in your publication? These show you’re delivering value and being a good steward of resources.
I believe that it’s important to start taking the measurement of your magazine seriously, even if you have lots of institutional support!
Because at some point, someone will ask what the magazine actually does for the institution. Maybe it’s a new VP, a budget conversation, or a strategic planning process.
When that moment comes, you don’t want to be scrambling.
You want a clear, confident answer ready, ideally with numbers attached. You’re likely doing incredible work with your magazine! You just need to show it in a few clean, measurable ways.
Here’s your action step: Pick at least one measure from each of the three categories above and start tracking them in your very next issue.
They’re not what you hoped for? That’s okay! You can methodically work to make them better over time.
But even beyond defending your budget or the value of your magazine, tracking your magazine’s impact helps you do better work.
When you know what resonates, you can do more of it. When something’s a flop, you can ditch it in favor of another approach or idea.
Plus, it’s way more fun to work on a project that you know matters.
And the work of measurement doesn’t have to be hard. A slide, a one-page PDF, even a running list in a simple spreadsheet or Google doc will do.
The point is to start collecting evidence now so you have it when you need it.
