One of the best ways of promoting a new or even long standing company is with an in-house magazine. Boost staff morale, encourage teamwork and generally let everyone know what you are up to. Really there's no excuses why you shouldn't be producing a magazine, heres how you could get started...

Short of cash? Get some advertisers to pay for it!

Paying for a good quality designer to design and layout your in house magazine goes without saying and a print run on a couple of thousand magazines isn't going to give you much change out of a couple of grand. Therefore make the magazine pay for itself by getting some advertisers on board. It would be worth offering some big name advertisers in your chosen field a highly reduced ad rate for the first issue and by the time issue 2 is ready to go, advertisers will be queuing up to get involved having seen who else is placing ads in your publication.

As endorsed by...

Everybody loves celebrities and if you can manage to get some sly celebrity patronage of your product or services then you've effectively got your magazine cover star - doing your selling for you. For instance, if the company you are involved in sell shoes, send out some samples to public relations companies handling the stars and ask for some kind of feedback from their clientelle. Even if it is met with a blanket silence you can always pull out the old 'allegedely' trump card and claim that Kylie Minogue was reported to be a fan and user of your product and hey presto buddy, you've got yourself a hot dang news story.

Circulation, circulation, circulation

Lets face it, printing a handful of A5 magazines on the office inkjet isn't going to create a buzz among the cognoscenti. Realistically you need to be looking at 10's of thousands quantity wise to get the return on investment for your time. Depending on your particular industry, mailing and marketing lists of suppliers and contacts within your target market are fairly cheap and easy to come by. Send out your industry bible and get people talking.

Generate a buzz

Magazines live or die by their reputations. What you should always be thinking about is your next promotional idea. Most retail magazines these days in the shops are plastered with promotional giveaways. Could you give away a cover mounted CD with your magazine for example? The design and style of the magazine is also intrinsic to its perceived value. If you don't have in-house designers or writers capable of producing a quality publication then you need to find a good contract publishing company to take care of your magazine design, layout and sub-editing. This could then free you up to come up with some wacky promotional ideas such as getting Gordon from accounts to do a sponsored masturbateathon in aid of endangered wild cod. You get the idea - make it controversial and see those circulation figures go through the roof.

OK thats given you enough incentive to go out and produce some wonderful magazines. Once the magazine settles in and becomes the industry standard, why not sponsor some kind of festival or event giving the magazine and possibly your products even more promotion. It's far too easy isn't it?