By: Miriam Camp
Editor: Becky Atkinson
Oct. 7, 2009
@Magazines Extra! Extra! The Internet and social networking sites will help you stay afloat.
This is advice for the magazine industry in the form of a Twitter tweet - a strategy that magazines are starting to use to stay ahead and interest readers.
Judy Johnson, a managing editor for Southern Distinction, said, “We’re jumping on the band wagon with Twitter, Facebook, and blogs. We don’t want to fall behind”
Johnson said that they were currently working on making sure they were set up with accounts on Twitter, Facebook, and blogs.
The Athens Blur Magazine’s executive editor, Alec Wooden, said that social networks have helped his physical publication, even though the magazine is free. He thinks that online and social networks help the smaller magazines.
“Big ones do it so they don’t fall behind,” said Wooden.
Shannon Baker, the publisher and editor of Athens Parent Magazine, agrees that social networks help small magazines.
She said, “I can go online [Twitter] and say, ‘It’s the advertisement deadline or we need a story about a local fisherman.’”
Contacting people in the community, like Baker is doing, would be difficult for a national magazine.
Baker is still in the process of bringing her magazine up to date with social networks. She is currently using Twitter, but has not set up a Facebook yet.
Maintaining readership has been good for Blur. “We’re in a fortunate situation because we print a low number,” said Wooden. They do not have millions of subscribers, but they are able to get rid of their copies, because they are free.
Blur produces 4,000 copies every six weeks, a total of eight issues per year. They do not have a fixed cost; therefore, it is not a struggle to distribute their magazine.
Online presence helps Blur because it keeps them in the audience’s mind when they are between publications.
Athens Parent is a bimonthly and publishes 10,000 copies of each issue. They will sometimes run a short version of a story in their magazine and have the full version online.
Southern Distinction is mostly sold by subscription, Johnson said. Copies of the magazine are also found in places such as Publix, Barnes and Noble, stores in Atlanta, and hotels in Athens, Ga.
Athens Parent is mostly distributed in Athens Clarke and
A bookseller at Barnes and Noble in Athens, Ga., Elise Stangle, who deals mostly with magazines, said it is hard to say which type of magazine is the most popular.
Although social networks and online publications are the new trend for magazine the cover of a magazine at a bookstore still draws the reader to a particular magazine.
Along those lines, Wooden said Blur’s process is simple. “[The issue] has to be something that appeals to people and looks good, Wooden said. “We try to make each issue look a little better and read better than the last.”
Blur uses a blogazine and receives about 4,000 views to their online publications. The largest viewing was around 10,000.
Wooden said, “We constantly use all the social networks.” Promotion for their physical publication is found online.
Blur’s Twitter account is mainly used to direct people to their blog. They daily receive around 400 hits a day to the blog. Facebook friends for the magazine’s account have now reached 1,470.
Wooden spoke highly of new technology, calling it hugely beneficial to the industry. “People fear that people will go online only, but if anything, it makes people crave the physical issue,” he said.
A year ago social networks were not prevalent in the industry; now they are, “necessary for survival,” Johnson said.
Baker does not believe that social networks or online publications have harmed the magazine industry.
“The whole point of reading a magazine is to sit in your tub or a comfy chair and read it,” said Baker.
John Cable, 21, the drummer for Corduroy Road, from Thomasville, Ga., looks at music magazines in Borders.
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