Journals thrive or perish based on readership.
The more people that read your journal, the more the work within will be cited. The more citations you get, the more that will affect your impact factor. As your impact factor increases, more people will be drawn to your journal.
There is a constant cycle that all hinges on the premise that your readership equates to future growth. As such, ensuring that your journal’s readership grows is of critical importance. Unfortunately, this is all easier said than done. Journals require strategy to be successful, and sometimes that strategy needs to be a multi-faceted plan that takes several major things into consideration.
Coming up with a plan to improve journal readership
Your journal will not be successful overnight and there is no such thing as a silver bullet to be immediately successful. Planning carefully can help you to achieve success, but understanding what your options are is important. Increasing journal readership isn’t as straightforward as one might think. Simply publishing content and then expecting it to be read won’t necessarily yield success.
Businesses need careful planning, and in this article, we’ll go over some of the basic things that you might want to consider to help you increase your journal readership.
The first part in developing a strategy to improve the number of readers you have, is to understand what your options are.
Improving journal readership using SEO
Sometimes, one of the easiest ways to grow your journal’s readership is to just make articles accessible to readers.
But getting articles in front of a reader can sometimes be challenging. In fact, there’s an entire industry devoted to this practice—SEO, or “search engine optimization”. SEO aims to accomplish several things, ranging from site health to speed. But one of the most crucial elements that it deals with is getting higher ranked search results. Over 90% of internet search queries remain on the first page of search results. Because of this, getting your content onto that first page can be critical to success. SEO can seem challenging, but there are many people who are experts in the field that can help you to accomplish your goals. Before you decide to hire an SEO, you should try to learn as much as you can about the basics.
Hiring an SEO might not be the most cheapest way to generate a readership, but it can be one of the most effective ones.
How conferences can help to grow your journal’s readership
Another effective way of connecting to readers is to meet them where they are. This is to say, find places where your readership will be and then be there as well. One of the best places for you to connect actively to your potential readers is at an academic conference. Academic conferences are really good opportunities to meet potential readers (and also potential authors). When you go to an academic conference, most of the people there will have some amount of interest in the subject matter of the conference. If you go to conferences that align with the subject matter of your journal, you will start with a common topic of discussion.
There are a lot of different reasons why you might want to consider being involved in academic conferences, or even to sponsor them.
In addition to the benefits of being able to talk to readers, there are other important benefits that exist from attending a conference. For example, because fields can change radically, very quickly, it gives you the ability to see what people in your field are talking about. Learning about what the current hot topics are can be a major benefit.
Paying attention to what people are talking about at a conference might be one of the best ways to find interesting topics to cover in your journal. In addition, you’ll also learn who the movers and shakers in the field are. While understanding these things can help you to improve your readership, there are also other benefits. With a bit of good luck and some good conversation, you might be able to draw people to your editorial board. Or they might want to serve as guest editors. Or be involved in any number of other activities.
How can (paid) advertising help?
Advertising can be done in many different ways. But, it is generally broken down into two types: paid advertising and free advertising.
What’s the difference between paid and free advertising? Well, this is very simple. When you pay to put your ads in front of potential readers, this is paid advertising. Any time that you are advertising, in any form, and money is not exchanged, this is considered free advertising.
Knowing which one to use, and in which situation, can be a critical tool to help you succeed. Learn more about the different types of advertising in an upcoming article!