One of the parts of the digital revolution publishers experienced was social media boost. It totally changed news consumption habits. Readers fell in love with social media platforms functions, e.g. fast access to the freshest information and its easy sharing function. It had a significant influence on magazines’ conditions. Social media channels dominated the advertising and traffic market in digital space, forcing publishers to change their existing business and distribution models.
What’s more, social media made that the concept of “the publisher” has also changed. So far, “the publisher” was a person or a company that was responsible for creating, preparing, and distributing printed or digital publications. Today publishers have gained new additional duties; they also have to be active on different social media channels, be responsible for writing
posts, and promoting it.
To be an important player in the publishing market today, being active on social media channels is a must-have.
Which social media channels should publishers choose?
There’s no sense to be everywhere unless you can afford to hire a staff of professionalists taking care of different social media channels. If you are active only in a few appropriate places, your work and engagement will be rewarded in gaining new readers or business partners.
According to this, I’d like to recommend three social media channels to you, which I think are the most powerful for publishers now. I also explain why I think that and what you can gain thanks to them.
Let’s start.
Let me get this straight – LinkedIn is not just a job search platform; its application is much broader and users are more diverse.
Thanks to LinkedIn you can build the credibility of your brand showing that real people stand behind it. Authentic bosses’/workers’ faces attract customers more than brand logos.
LinkedIn beats platforms like Facebook or Twitter with regard to the quality of attracted leads and the strength of established business connections. This social media network has a huge potential for publishers and authors, offering them an increase in visibility and recognition. However, the path to achieve it isn’t so obvious.
Brands accounts are great for Facebook or Instagram, while in the case of LinkedIn, it’s better to invest time in running a personal account. The thing is that today all of the business, marketing, and sales sectors have turned into relations called H2H – human to human.
Behind every brand stand human people want to know.
LinkedIn is the best channel to use it. Why? If you promote yourself well, it can become the best source of high-quality traffic to your magazine, blog, or other publication. And that’s the beginning of the list of benefits.
What other profits can LinkedIn bring you?
- You can gain your credibility as a publisher with the LinkedIn community as well as with the world. There’s no space to be anonymous. Your brand has your face.
- You can increase traffic to your digital resources, such as your website or blog, by linking to some other online content. You should just be active, publish posts and articles, comment on other content.
- You can make connections with people similar to you thanks to sharing your industry or hobby observations. Who knows what will come of this.
- You’ll attract employees, advertisers, collaborators (copywriters, photographs, designers, etc.). If you’re looking for an employee, your announcement can be shared and visible by a huge amount of people on a platform free from spam.
If you’ve never published anything on LinkedIn or you’ve just started your adventure with it, I encourage you to take a look at my article published on this channel: LinkedIn – what’s in it for publishers? You’ll find there pieces of advice on what to pay attention to when you’re creating an account, what content you should publish (with specific ideas for posts and articles), tips on how to increase visibility, etc.
Instagram opens a lot of interesting opportunities for publishers, despite the fact that it tested removing “likes” from photos (because of psychological aspects and taking care of users’ self-confidence). Anyway, the fact is that Instagram is the fastest-growing platform for magazines, even for politics and news magazines now.
Thanks to Instagram’s potential, you can attract people and create a community that has a big potential to become your loyal readers.
How to build a community thanks to Instagram?
- First of all, tell people that your brand is on Instagram (publish a post on Facebook, send an email or use another channel you communicate with readers).
- You can foster relationships with your followers by reposting their images, which is actually a really great way to thank followers for tagging them while also getting more original content without having to produce it yourself.
- Interact with the community: reply to comments and direct messages, follow hashtags that fit your brand. You can build followers’ engagement by mentioning people in your posts or write a private personal message (or send a short video!) to someone who started following you.
- Build engagement by using features like Stories or Instagram Live.
- Organize contests where the prize could be free access to your content.
You can learn more about reasons why Instagram is a good channel for publishers and why it is worth investing in it in this article: Is Instagram a good medium for magazine publishers?
You can think of it whatever you want, but the facts are impeccable – The Association of Magazine Media studies shows that Facebook is the social media behemoth, and accounting for nearly half of the magazine brand industry active audience. Despite the conflict with technological giants, publishers still indicate Facebook as the most important platform to build brand awareness and increase the audience. The similar situation can be observed with news consumption, where Facebook is dominating in getting information category nowadays.
It’s hard to deny that Facebook has brought some chaos to publishers’ lives, because of dominating the advertising and traffic market in digital space, forcing newspapers to change their existing business and distribution models.
That’s why it’s so important to use Facebook wisely.
The goal of being on Facebook is to redirect people to publishers’ own sources what at the same time preserve the independence and don’t share profits with this technology giant.
What are some good practices to promote magazines on Facebook?
- Publish on a brand’s profile the information about your other sources: website, blog, mobile app. It could be a special graphic on a photo in the background, pinned post, call to action button.
- To get loyal fans, you can create a Facebook group that focuses on some topic your readers are engaged in. Don’t use it as a place for direct magazine promotion, but rather to encourage others to trust you.
- Facebook is a good tool to feel people have an influence on your magazine shape. You can ask people about the next magazine number cover before the issue is ready. The post can include an easy copy with two photos – “which one is better in your opinion?” It engages people a lot! Another idea is to carry out a survey related to the topics readers want to see inside the magazine in the future. It makes them look forward to the next issue.
To know more about how to promote magazines on Facebook, you can read my article: How to promote a magazine on social media?
What about other social media channels?
Regardless of which social media channels you’ll choose, you must remember that each of them gathers a different audience, and helps achieve various goals.
The ones selected above are just my suggestions – I just recommend to think about them in the first order. However, it doesn’t change the fact that others will be bad for you. Is there a better place for news content than Twitter? Shouldn’t a woman-oriented magazine be on Pinterest and brand for teenagers’ audiences on TikTok? In this case, channels like Facebook, LinkedIn or Instagram can play supporting roles.
What’s the big three for you?
