Research the current editorial market.
I wanted to look into the current editorial market to see what is successful and how I can use these ideas to shape my own for our magazine. I firstly found an article that discusses what trends are becoming more popular within the industry. The article starts by stating a “growing demand for audiobooks and e-books” this made me think, is there a way we could have articles read to our audience? I feel this could be an effective method to also help our audience as we are targeting people with a busy schedule. The article later goes on to discuss “digital marketing” it goes on to say “Authors and publishers want to build long-term, ongoing relationships with their readers. Customers who are engaged like this are more likely to buy books in the future.” When our group first started coming up with our target audience, we wanted to sell our magazine to a more mature audience who are dealing with the stresses of life. I knew then for the age range we were discussing the online content would have to be as engaging as possible. The article gives an example of an author that emails his audience when he has new content being released. This is a method I would like to try, but I feel I need to be looking at more ways as I feel email is becoming more outdated. I think using social media such as TikTok showing sneak peaks of content would an effective way to draw people in. These apps have features such as hashtags that can get content on certain peoples ‘for you page’ which will be very helpful. TikTok is a great app for selling products to a certain audience I think using ‘sounds/ trends’ and using the algorithm on TikTok will allow more people to see our work.
Our magazine has a really strong selling point with the topic of freedom. We are here for people when they are finding areas in their life tough, so our social media has to showcase this. I want to make sure I am creating content in an authentic way. “Approximately 90 percent of consumers reported that authenticity played a factor in their shopping decisions, up from 86 percent in 2017” Stated in an article by digital media solutions. From this we need to be looking at ways to be actively engaging with our audience. This could be having a pop-up shops selling our magazine/ prints in locations we would find our audience in eg. Pub, café, so on. This would allow us to talk to our audience and even get their opinions and any suggestions they have.
Social media today claims that “Millennials, specifically, rely heavily on UGC (user-generated content) as a “good indicator” as to whether or not a brand or product is high-quality”. We have to advertise our magazine as something that will actually effect them and their everyday life.
According to one study by Cisco, “as much as 82% of online content will consist of videos this year.” The article states in many cases, video posts perform better than static photo posts on social media.