Going Past the Printed Page
By Bruce W. Smith
A few weeks back I received a complimentary e-mail from the owner of a construction company in Southern California who praised the magazine and the articles. His only wish was we be published more often and had more articles.
I replied and asked if he’d been to our website. Nope.
The reality is the bulk of our articles, buyers guides, reviews, news, new products and other helpful information for our readers is right there at the fingertips at propickupmag.com.
Reading the printed magazine is a lot like going into Outback Steakhouse or the Olive Garden and reading just the first page of the menu where all the appetizers are listed.
To get to the real food you have to turn the pages. In our case, you really need to visit the website to get the whole picture of what’s offered.
Where we can only bring you good stuff every other month in the magazine, the website allows us to post new products, press releases, industry-related news, vehicle recalls and other items every day.
In addition, where we are limited on how many pages we can devote to a particular article in the magazine, the website allows us to bring you a lot more information.
For example, where a how-to article may be just a half-dozen photos in print, we might have a gallery of 20 or 30 detailed images and diagrams in the same article on the website.
The printed magazine is like the appetizer page of a big menu:
The bulk of the meat and potatoes is on the website.
Those same articles include links to related stories or to manufacturers so you can research a topic or product of interest just by making one click of the mouse button.
Then there’re the dozens of how-to articles, vehicle news items, tech tips, reviews and buyer’s guides on the ProPickup website that never appear in the magazine itself.
Our editorial staff spends the majority of our time working on web-related articles.
We do that so readers like you can stay on top of what’s new, what aftermarket products make your pickups more efficient, what upgrades we’re making to the trucks we work on, and to give you ideas for upgrades of your own making.
By all means keep reading the printed issue that comes packaged with our sister magazines (Equipment World, Better Roads, Total Landscape Care and Aggregates Manager) – or you receive digitally via e-mail. We take a lot of pride in the magazine, how it looks and the information within its pages.
But if you want the “rest of the story,” as Paul Harvey was fond of saying, make propickupmag.com one of your web favorites.
There you’ll find a wealth of great information for those who depend on pickups for their business – and there’s something new within those “pages” everyday.
