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In my last post for this blog, I talked about looking back at the past year, and the content I was excited to see unfold from our newsroom in 2018, such as the continuation of C&EN’s Talented 12 program, and new onsite publications from the C&EN BrandLab team.
Reaching and delighting the widest possible audience continues to be priority number one for C&EN. In addition, we want C&EN to remain a vibrant and modern news operation, situated at the cutting edge of publishing technology and creating exceptional journalism. Last year was a turning point in that sense. Editorial leadership and innovation became our mantra, and there is no turning back.
There were a lot of changes behind the scenes, and I wanted to take this opportunity to discuss C&EN’s transformation and reader engagement initiatives with our advertiser community as well.
The transformation started with the launch of C&EN Global Enterprise last January. This new product offers access to a digital version of C&EN’s weekly print magazine to thousands of institutions around the world, greatly expanding the reach of our audience.
Then in May we introduced a new version of C&EN’s members-only digital edition for those who request C&EN in their inboxes rather than their mailboxes. This new version is more aesthetically pleasing, has improved functionality and security, and has new advertising opportunities.
Watch our video tutorial below to take a tour of the updated platform.
Then, during the summer months we undertook an ambitious restructuring of our production processes.
This is one of those changes you won’t have even noticed. If I can compare it to anything, I’d say that it is like changing a tire while you are still driving your car. Its end result makes us better equipped to publish more content more quickly and efficiently to all our channels, creating a modern, multiplatform media operation.
In this spirit, we have started the New Year taking measures to make our content even more discoverable, more engaging, and more valuable to our readers and advertisers. We have just debuted an A/B headline testing tool on cen.acs.org, meaning we’ll be able to test multiple headlines for a story and statistically measure which one best captures our readers’ attention. Soon we’ll also introduce machine learning to power recommended-reading lists on the site. And at the end of February, look for C&EN’s first podcast, aptly named “Stereo Chemistry.” It aims to be an extension of the reporting that we already do, but add the voices of both our reporters and the chemistry community. More to come on that soon!
This launch will quickly be followed by the redesign of cen.acs.org around the time of the ACS National Meeting in New Orleans. Prepare for a better mobile experience, improved navigation, and a vibrant and dynamic look and feel. And this is just the beginning, with better search, personalized features, and so much more to come later on in the year.
Of course, this doesn’t begin to touch on the new innovative products we’ve created for our advertiser community – the largest being the launch of C&EN BrandLab, our custom content publishing studio. But it is important to recognize that this initiative does provide value not just for our advertisers, but for readers as well and we’ve seen strong indication that audiences prefer to learn about advertisers through storytelling. Not surprisingly, the books are quickly filing for 2018.
We hope you have been keeping up with the changes at our publication, and we look forward to sharing our stories with you in the months and years to come.
Bibiana Campos Seijo
@BibianaCampos
