Have you ever thought about what it’s like to work for one of the top magazines from 2020?
Many of these great magazines managed to succeed because of one reason: company culture. These magazines are run by groups or organizations that prioritize cultivating an atmosphere that’s conducive to increased productivity.
Whether it’s Cosmopolitan, People, Consumer Reports, or Reader’s Digest — these magazines all succeed because of their company culture.
So how do you create a great company culture for your magazine venture?
Here’s what you need to know:
Offer Employee Rewards
Employee rewards programs are one of the best ways to motivate employees to work harder.
We all know that incentives are what push your employees to work harder. The best incentive is more money, but this isn’t always possible when you run a fledgling magazine business.
One of the best employee rewards you can offer is SWAG. Even though SWAG stands for “Stuff We All Get,” they’re actually merchandise that you only give to your best employees.
They’ll have to step up their game to win these rewards. If you show them bags, hats, clothing, etc., that they can win they’ll strive to work harder. You can look at this website https://axomo.com/employee-rewards-platform/ to learn more about what employee rewards you can offer.
Encourage Teamwork
The best company culture is the one that encourages teamwork.
Often, your employees get caught up with their own duties that they neglect to offer a helping hand to their colleagues.
For example, you can stop by each of your employee’s desks and let them know how they can help another colleague.
Is John an excellent copywriter? Perhaps he can pop by Bill’s desk to help him with his weekly editorials. Maybe Roy is a great photographer and can help Sharon design the cover for the upcoming issue.
You have to encourage your employees to share their strengths and weaknesses with each other.
This will let them know how they can help others and whom they can depend on for assistance.
You should also find a way to enforce teamwork if necessary. For example, you can have your employees partake in an anonymous survey. In this survey, you can ask them if they feel any colleagues haven’t helped them.
This isn’t to punish any employee. It’s meant to remind them that they have a responsibility to their colleagues.
If everyone works to assist their colleagues with their duties, you’ll see an increase in productivity and efficiency.
You can also offer rewards to employees who assist their colleagues. You can give an ‘Employee of the Month’ award to each employee who assists their colleagues the most!
This will push your employees to compete with each other to lend a helping hand.
Setting Goals for the Magazine
So what does a magazine venture do to make it succeed? What specifically about a magazine’s company culture helps it become more popular than its competitors?
You have to work with your team to set goals for the magazine. You’ll later brainstorm on how to achieve these goals. But as your first step, work together to create realistic goals.
Here are some sample goals that help popularize a magazine:
- What do you want your circulation to be by the end of the year?
- How many new subscribers do you wish to get?
- What would you like your subscriber retention rate to be? (Percentage)
- What new features would you like to include in the magazine?
- Do you hope to reach new markets?
These are just a few goals that you can set for your magazine. You can set as many as you like, but you want to make sure you keep it realistic.
For example, if you’ve recently launched your magazine it might be too ambitious to expect 1 Million new subscribers. Try to keep this number between 1K and 10K.
If your magazine is available in both digital and print, you should set separate goals for each version. After you set these goals, you should discuss with your team how to achieve them.
Offer Opportunities for Professional Development
As a final step, you want to offer opportunities for professional development to your team members.
One of the best ways to retain team members is to help them grow in their careers. If an employee feels they’ve reached the zenith of their skillset, they’ll start looking for employment elsewhere.
So what are the professional development opportunities that magazine workers need?
Let’s start with your photography and design team. You want to offer workshops for photography, modeling, and graphic design. Enroll them in online courses on how to use software such as Photoshop and Lightroom.
This will help them build their craft and will lead to improvements in your magazine. You’ll see better magazine covers and centerfold features.
Next, you want to move onto your writing team. Your office should contain a library of writing books. This can include On Writing by Stephen King and On Writing Well by William Zinsser.
Enroll your writing team in courses where they can improve their writing. These can include free courses by Neville Medhora or paid writing courses from Jordan Peterson.
Use this same approach for all your departments. Often, employers can get upset if they feel their team members are producing substandard work.
But the only way to ensure stellar work is to help them with their professional development.
If you look back at the top magazines from 2020, you’ll see that none of them are new magazines. These are all older magazines that have spent years developing excellent teams!
That’s How the Top Magazines From 2020 Succeeded. Is Yours Next?
Now you know what made the top magazines from 2020 become so successful last year.
Now the question remains, will your magazine be among the top for 2021?
If you follow the company culture rules in this guide, you’ll definitely be on the right track.
Focus on offering rewards to your employees to incentivize them to work more. Afterward, you want to work to encourage teamwork and growth so that your magazine will soar in popularity!
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