A Look Ahead
Dear Reader,
It is an absolute pleasure to welcome you to California Broker Magazine as we start our forty third year of publication. This year brings about changes, as our founder and visionary, Richard Madden, has decided to retire. He’s handed over the magazine, eNewsletter and website to a new media group made up of the current team and some new faces as we collectively look to provide you with the resources and information you need to be successful.
The core team of California Broker remains unchanged. I am thankful the team works so well and have confidence the readers and advertisers are well served.
We are implementing gradual changes to our media which will be driven by our vision of the future and your feedback. You may see some of these changes soon especially as our team is adding content from more news sources, listing events from all ends of the state, and forming advertiser relationships spanning all three of our media tools. The print magazine will continue monthly and cover new categories based on feedback from our advertisers and readers. We want to move to be even more content driven and implement tools to collect your comments more immediately.
We plan to emphasize ways to make our current key relationships grow even stronger and do the work to reach out to health insurance professionals using all three of our media resources: eNewsletter, website and print magazine.
You will see more from our push into the digital space and have the opportunity to access our new advanced technology tools to interact with us. We have many loyal readers, and we plan to continue to offer the information many have enjoyed and in the format preferred. We also know that by adding more readers our digital platform has significant upside potential so we will position resources to reach more digital viewers and readers.
We consider our role to be a resource provider for health, life and annuity professionals. With our current verified circulation at 25,000 we expect to build on this number — while adding more eNewsletter subscribers from our current list of 7,000 — and to increase visits to our website, currently at 15,000 monthly. The “triple” media combination offers a variety of tools and makes California Broker an ideal communications partner as we connect advertisers and readers.
Our unique media options give us the tools to emphasize stories, news and events of interest to California heath, life and annuity professionals. Along with this triple information distribution system, we are working with current and new advertisers on ways to utilize all media tools available to promote their brand and direct readers to take desired actions such as
- complete surveys
- click links for more information
- learn about CE or events
- share news about product and service developments
Looking forward
New for 2023 will be both a new CalBroker YouTube channel. We are bringing back the print and online annual directory for 2023.
For authors, we ask that content specifically help inform and educate readers to be the best client advocates possible. This is our editorial filter — we want readers to instantly understand and benefit from the stories in all of our media. We ask that articles be ‘vendor neutral’ and prefer balanced comparisons rather than pitching a particular company’s service or product.
For those looking to blend editorial content with pitching their services or products we have created new categories to accommodate sponsorship/partnership advertorials. This arrangement follows best practices seen in many professional magazines.
OUR MISSION
Our mission is to be the leading source of news and information for California brokers and agents operating in the health, life and annuity industry.
As a publication, we do not advocate for any specific political ideology, but we have set standards regarding the posting of harmful and denigrating pieces of any type.
Our platform is for health, life and annuity professionals and not for issue positioning and thus, we view that it is our responsibility to cover stories that can help our readers be stronger client advocates.
On behalf of our CalBroker team, we look forward to supporting both our readers, authors and advertisers as we enhance the three media tools we offer. Please let us know how we are doing and share your news and events spanning our industry that you feel our readers can benefit from seeing.
I am elated to work with you to have an impact on the mission of California Broker and our media. Our team
looks forward to hearing from you.
Blessings,
Phil Calhoun and the CalBroker Team publisher@calbrokermag.com