While I was at DMA in Boston back in October, I signed up for a subscription to the print edition of The Social Media Monthly magazine. The hook was a social media case study book I wanted, so I signed the dotted line and waited for my book to come in the mail. Admittedly, the book came and I completely forgot about the magazine I had subscribed to… until yesterday.
Upon getting the mail I came across my first issue of The Social Media Monthly magazine. As I’m reading it now I have some thoughts I’d like to share about my experience with this print-edition social media publication. Mind-you, these are my opinions mixed up with some general observations about this new magazine.
My first observation… It’s a print magazine. A friend noted on Facebook this morning that it seemed odd to have a social media magazine in print. At first, his comment made me stop and think that perhaps it did seem odd… But… as I sat down to read the magazine I found myself grateful that it was a print magazine, for a couple of reasons.
1) There is something special about print publications. I still love to read books. I have the Kindle software on my iPad, and yet, I’ve only downloaded and read one book on it in 6 months time. I prefer to hold a book in my hands and smell the pages. There is just something about a book or magazine in print that improves the experience.
2) Having the magazine in hand gave me a chance to actually disconnect. Since I “do” social media professionally, I am not often disconnected from the online world. I actually set aside time today to walk away from my computer and set aside my phone to read and absorb the articles. When I’m reading blogs online, I often get distracted by incoming tweets, emails and Facebook notifiers – so this was a nice break.
My second observation… The articles are actually good! Yes, in truth, I was surprised. I was worried that the stories might be old news by the time they hit the stands – but the writers were able to take current or past stories and put an interesting spin on them related to trends, technology and social channels. I won’t spill all about the articles in the November, 2011 issue, but I have enjoyed reading them. They covered a breadth of topics from food to radio to physical fitness and yet they all related to social media. It was not just one page after the other about how to develop a strategy or how to measure. I found useful information to help generate ideas for new uses of social channels. My favorite this month… “Confessions of a Foursquare Addict.” Why? Because I could relate!
My third observation… A lot of QR Codes! Admittedly, I said above that I disconnected from the world to sit and read this edition of The Social Media Monthly, but I have to tell you my iPad was right next to me with my QR scanner fired up and ready to go. Why? Because I took the time to scan each and every QR code in the magazine to learn as much as I could about how people are using them (and perhaps get some great content). There were 22 QR codes in the roughly 60 page publication. A few were duplicates to promote readership of the new magazine (it’s all good). Others were advertisements for products and services, and my favorite was for a free download.
What I thought was interesting was that some were poorly placed inside their ads. Even if you didn’t know which side of the print publication your ad would appear on (left or right), wouldn’t you place your QR code in a place within your ad that would be suitable for either? I had to press down on the fold of the magazine for one or two to get them to scan (not good placement). That is not at the fault of the magazine, but rather the ad designers. I would venture to guess if they are tracking the number of scans, they may revisit their ad layout in the future.
I also found it interested that only one of the codes was customized at all, and the extent of the customization was that it was colored blue. The rest were just the plain old black and white QR code. Don’t advertisers know you can transform the appearance of QR codes to make them fun and inviting? The one shown here is for a local village to promote traffic to their website, and it plays on some key landmarks in the village to give you a sense of what might be behind the QR code. I’d be much quicker to scan this one, than a boring old black-and-white one. Wouldn’t you?
So… as I wrap up my thoughts about this first (my first) issue of The Social Media Monthly magazine, I will tell you that I am very pleased, and that the magazine exceeded my expectations. I got to disconnect for a time, really focus on the content and found myself looking forward to next month’s issue. I would recommend it to a friend (and no, I’m not getting any referral kick-backs from TSMM magazine – I’m just spreading some love)
There is an iPad edition available (which I learned from one of the QR codes). When I originally subscribed, I had asked about that, and it was not yet available. And in hind-sight I am glad. Now I get to take a time-out from my computer and sit and read the magazine, save the articles, highlight, make notes and yes, smell the pages in print.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Great review Wendy!
Having professionally researched B2B and B2C, I can assure you you’re not alone when it comes to preferring a print edition over a digital edition. I see that time and time again across the thousands of research studies I’ve conducted for hundreds of publications. Some magazines do a great job with converting their content to a digital edition – either a straight digital copy or something that supplements print. Others were forced to digitize to save costs and haven’t quite figured out how to be successful at it.
It’s interesting that you mentioned QR codes. We’ve measured the extent to which subscribers use QR codes and the results are disappointingly low (under 6% on average). While QR codes may work in some areas, they’ve yet to catch on with readers of most publications in most industries. Although, my guess is that a magazine like this one would be quite a bit higher.
Based on your review, I think I’ll look into this magazine!
Wendy,
I agree with your comments on reading via a hard copy. Reading the print version enables absorbing the content at a slower pace and allows more time for observation and reaction. It is interesting but, not surprising, that the magazine includes interactive features. I’m sure the features and layout will be tweaked going forward.
Arthur and Ed, thanks for stopping by to leave comments!
I really enjoyed reviewing this magazine (maybe even more than I enjoyed reading it). I think this issue I received is only the 3rd issue to date in the magazine’s history, so for a brand new magazine I was pretty impressed.
Some the QR code uses were lackluster as best – to your point Arthur – and that’s something I’ve been toying with myself. I think there is an audience for them, but they are not being used well so far.
Ed – I agree the layout faux-pas will get cleared up in time. One of the things I think they are missing is mass advertisers which leaves them with some awkward white space.
Should be fun to see this magazine evolve and I hope it sticks around!