What the web tells us
Posted by John McHale
At Military & Aerospace Electronics we think we've done a fairly good job over the years of discerning what types of content our readers are looking for.
Our content crystal ball is getting much clearer through the Internet or more specifically our website, which has become an invaluable tool for tracking what stories and topics get the most attention -- or hits on the site. For example this year stories on a new exoskeleton from Lockheed Martin -- pictured here -- and the jet-powered Predator C unmanned aerial system from General Atomics received a ton of hits on our site.
Much of this traffic comes from search engines and links from other stories. As a result we're taking some of these topics and expanding on them in our magazine. I just finished writing an expanded story on the exoskeleton. After seeing how much attention it got on the web, I went to Lockheed and interviewed the engineers running the program. The article should appear in our magazine this summer.
I'll be doing an expanded piece on the new Predator variant as well.
Worth noting is that for 2007 and 2008 the most viewed article topic was software defined radio (SDR) -- the technology behind the Army's Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS) program.
Others topic heavily viewed topics included unmanned systems of course and COTS obsolescence challenges.
In a way our website is becoming a guide we can use to better target our magazine content.
When we redesigned our print magazine in January, our goal was to make it reflect our growing digital presence because the future of this business is the Internet not print.
Online media enhances print -- it doesn't mean that print must go away. Print just needs to evolve.
John Keller is editor-in-chief of Military & Aerospace Electronics magazine, which provides extensive coverage and analysis of enabling electronic and optoelectronic technologies in military, space, and commercial aviation applications. A member of the Military & Aerospace Electronics staff since the magazine's founding in 1989, Mr. Keller took over as chief editor in 1995.
