Issue No. 2: Effective use of social media- another alternative of increasing sales of magazine?

Due to the rise of popularity of social networking sites, a wide range of magazines have also progressively joined the online community as such genre has now flourished its way of endorsing its genre through social networking sites as this alternative way of promoting not only increased the sales of magazine, but also becomes an social media that provides useful information for its reader through Facebook and twitter. The wonder of social networking sites allows such magazine publications to provide a “real time voice” for its audience as to keep them up-to-date upon the ongoing incidence occurred. As such magazine publications made its way through social media, it gives encouragement for marketing advertisers to merge, simultaneously generating new marketing ideas upon enhancing the printing editions to a whole new level.

As social networking sites have flooded all over on the internet, such magazine has made its way in building up a reputation. It has now engaged with its reader in a more personal and “intimate” way by just one-click thus causes the recognition of the magazine continue to rise. As Matt Milner, vice president of social media and community for Hearst Magazines Digital Media describes that “social media transcends departments - it's beyond edit, beyond sales. It will inform more and more content decisions in a good way” (Sivek, 2010).

(source: twitter wire, 2008)

Brown (2009) explained that social media is bound to be combined with continuum, whereby it is classified in two categories:

1. the social side of continuum

2. the media side of the continuum

For media publication such as the magazines are bound to be engaged with its readers through the content. That said, the theory of social side of continuum is perfectly applied in media publication as Brown (2009) indicated that “the intimacy of scale matches the intimacy of sale”. So to say, social media works perfectly well in such merge of magazines as business-relationship is needed in generating an ideal relationship with its audience that simultaneously leads to the goal of attaining “the best-selling magazine”. Moreover, the concept of instant yet effective messages seems to be working rather will in regards of the modern society today. As said by Penman (1998), “a document’s functionality is dependent on its structure matching reader’s reading habits, expectation and context of use”.

(Lewis,2010)

Whereas for the media sides of continuum, high involvement of categories is essential for a business to bloom when engaging with its audience as compared to the low involvement of categories (Brown, 2009). In other words, it is more effective if a wider range of audience in involved in promoting a certain event. To be exact, Facebook and Tweeter would be the significant media tools in spreading messages as such social networking sites comprise of billions of people all over the world. Hence the intended goal would be easier to achieved.



Reference :

• Brown, D 2009, the continuum theory of social media, Danny Brown, viewed 16th June 2010, <http://dannybrown.me/2009/03/12/the-continuum-theory-of-social-media/ >

• Penman, R 1998, Document structures and readers’ habits’, Communication News, Vol. 11 pp. 10-11.

• Sivek, S C, 2010, How Magazine Use Social Media To Boost Pass-Along, Build Voice, viewed on 16th June 2010, <http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2010/03/how-magazines-use-social-media-to-boost-pass-along-build-voice075.html>