Having a conversation on LinkedIn

It's nearly 30 years since Industrial Plant & Equipment (IP&E) launched as a print magazine. Back then, in 1992, the web was the preserve of a handful of academics working in particle physics. Times change, and so does IP&E. Once just a print magazine, today the IP&E brand stretches across multiple platforms. Our website brings years of content into a single, searchable portal. Our digital magazine replicates the print magazine for readers who prefer to read on notebook computers, tablets or e-readers. Our digital conferences bring together industry professionals to share and disseminate knowledge. And our social media feeds allow us to have a conversation with out audience. Our aim is to provide the best quality industry information, whatever the platform.

What do you want from IP&E on LinkedIn?
As part of our expanding digital presence we want to know how YOU, the readers, use social media for business. We think LinkedIn is a bit different from other social platforms – because of its business focus. We don't, for instance, use it for product news, as we do on Twitter. But we do use it to share news about our digital and offline conferences and events, and to report on general industry news. While LinkedIn is different, it is clearly moving towards engagement: more clicks, more conversation, more time spent within its ecosystem. Do you want to have a conversation with IP&E? Do you want to engage our readers in debate about industry specific questions? Let us know.

Outside of LinkedIn, what do you want from IP&E across all its platforms? What do you like about IP&E? What, in your opinion, do we get wrong? Is there anything that we DON'T cover that you think is relevant?

Don't worry, we're not going to link to a questionnaire. There will be no forms, tick boxes, radio buttons or drop-down options. One of the problems with readership surveys is that they tend to offer reassurance to publishers when they should be applying leather to the posterior. Whether by accident or design, readership surveys tend towards the conservative, the "how it is now" rather than the "what it should be in the future". Questions tend to be leading and not open-ended so the research is misleading as result.

A comparison, in manufacturing, would be the launch of the 1990 Ford Escort. It was a critical car for Ford in Europe. So it built a car developed from the findings of extensive focus groups and market research. On its launch it was dated, bland and lacked the ride and handling drivers had come to expect from Ford. For its replacement, Ford ditched the focus groups and tried to anticipate what the market might want in the future, not what it wanted at the beginning of the development cycle. It decided to be more daring with the styling and dynamic with the chassis, suspension and handling. The result was the ironically named Focus.

So, no focus groups, no questionnaires – not yet, at least. We just want readers to know that we exist to serve your needs and that we're always open to suggestions, feedback and constructive criticism?

So what do you want from IP&E on LinkedIn, online and in print? On Twitter we are open to direct messages or you can @ us. Or if you have any comments or requests about the magazine, please email our editor [email protected].