Should magazines embrace social media?

Raymond Snoddy says despite the relentless rise of social media what comes through loud and clear is the importance, and at least for now, the continuing dominance, of print at the heart of the brand…

By any standards the magazine industry is having a tough time at the moment. Maybe not quite so tough as newspapers – but nearly as bad. Apart from never-ending competition there is a recession after all and the same issues – print versus online, how do you compete with endless amounts of free electronic information and how do you make decent money from online – quickly raise their heads.

The facts are clear in the latest ABCs, which were out earlier this month. Only about one in three of the 500 consumer magazines audited by the ABC put on print sales year-on-year in the second half of 2011.

There are glorious exceptions with Private Eye famously increasing its sales by 10% and the rock music sector rose by 16.3% – mainly because of free magazines such as The Stool Pigeon and Properganda. But elsewhere the bell tolls with the women’s magazine sector taking a 9.6% haircut while the men’s sector fell 5.2% with the leading title Men’s Health down more than 10%.

According to the ABC, sales of the digital editions of magazines it audits are still very small. Yet at a session of Carat’s Press Week yesterday on the use of social media by magazines there was surprising optimism and unanimity by three Bauer editors on the importance of engaging enthusiastically with social media.

Facebook, Twitter and everything from foursquare, Instagram and Pinterest to Get Glue and Stamped – and whatever is just round the corner next week – were all seen as important allies in protecting the long term futures of print editions.

James McMahon, editor of rock magazine Kerrang, has no doubt whatsoever about the importance of social media. He needed a monkey for a shoot and twittered to Kerrang readers. A monkey, though admittedly a rather small monkey, was duly located.

Rather more seriously McMahon argues that his magazine was about creating a community of music fans and the social media was ideal for that.

The Kerrang editor was convinced that the magazine’s social media profile helped drive sales of the printed magazine, which put in a solid performance in the ABCs – down around 2% to just over 42,000.

Lucy Cave, editor of Heat also insisted that magazines should embrace social media and use it to engage with readers on a day to day (almost hourly) basis. As a result the overall reach of the magazine is increasing though changing in shape and structure. In the ABCs printed sales of Heat were down 12% to 325,370.

But wasn’t there a danger in the world of gossip and celebrity that instant twitter feeds would satisfy consumer’s appetite and that the celebrities will communicate directly with the fans cutting out the magazine middlemen? Not according to the editors – people will always respond to editorial and opinion – and straight, unvarnished, self-serving PR from the celebrities will always be boring.

Alison Perry, executive editor of More! and head of its social media operations, has gone several courageous new steps partly because More‘s editorial team is young and social media is already part of their lives.

In June Perry told how More! published a crowd sourced issue, handing control to its Facebook community, and followed up with a Bloggers Issue featuring some of the biggest bloggers in the space. Despite the obvious spirit of innovation the More! print circulation was down by 19% last year to 152,571.

So where is the money coming from all the social media activity?

Ben Ayers, head of social media at Carat, believes that magazines are in a better place to exploit social media than newspapers and that the money will come.

In future social media will inevitably take a larger slice of the total advertising pie than it does now. The latest world advertising revenue forecasts out this week suggests that this year online in all its forms will take $83 billion out of total advertising of $465 billion.

Bruce Daisley, UK sales director of Twitter, was able to smile benignly at the proceedings certain in the knowledge that Twitter traffic will continue to rise and that he will make money out of organising and riding on the trending issues. Naturally he believes that both sides – the social media owners and the established media will emerge as winners.

In a very different part of the magazine world Vogue has recently been talking about how important its social media and online operations are for the publication. Vogue has an ABC figure of 210,806 – virtually stable on a loss of 0.2% but says that thanks to multi-media its overall audience is 2.13 million a month.

Vogue.com has more than one million unique users a month – a number that can soar to two million during London Fashion Week. And apart from iPad editions the magazine has more than 100,000 Facebook users and 400,000 Twitter followers.

Yet despite the relentless rise of social media what comes through loud and clear is the importance, and at least for now, the continuing dominance, of print at the heart of the brand.

There are of course exceptions like Wired for obvious reasons. Even digital natives such as the young people who blog and chatter away on social media outlets still want to see their names in print almost as a form of authentication. Or as an old colleague on the Oxford Mail boasted years ago – his article has achieved “the dignity of print”.

A great strength of magazines remains the fact that many of their readers, particularly women, see their chosen magazine as a bit of a treat – something to be enjoyed in a bubble bath. After all it is pretty unwise to take an iPhone, laptop or tablet into a bubble bath.

All that needs to happen now is for all that effort and innovation in digital and social media to be rewarded with a stronger current of cash.