Magazines' New Role In The Digital Age (TWX)

Traditional print media is seemingly going the way of the dinosaur. With the increased prevalence of laptops, tablets, and smart phones, sales of print media have quickly decreased. Time Warner TWX, a major magazine publisher, is exploring new strategies to engage readers and remain solvent in the face of a newer, more dynamic market. Mashable's Gina Gotthilf writes about new strategies print magazines are using. Magazines are finding that becoming the authority in their field is vital to their survival. Thus, magazines are aggregating content and adding external links to their social media feeds. This creates a dynamic news feed of completely relevant articles all under their brand. Additionally, magazines are responding to reader's interests far quicker. Thanks to social media, the editors can quickly find reader comments, thoughts, and questions. This allows magazines to cater to their audience more efficiently and more dynamically. Furthermore, magazines can now offer their particular expertise in real time through live chats. Moreover, magazines can enrich the viewing experience. By adding polls, videos, games, related articles, and real-time chats to their articles to allow a more interactive experience, unparalleled to print media. Offering communities for their readers to reach one another has been a complete boon to magazines. Cosmopolitan Magazine allows and encourages community member questions and responses on their site via Facebook. This creates relationships and conversations around their brand while costing the magazine absolutely nothing. Magazines can now push news that will be sent to thousands immediately through Twitter. Further retweets will reach thousands more, helping create free advertising. Taking this even further, magazines can even publish sponsored Twitter backgrounds and messages for an additional revenue stream. Magazines are intelligently responding and adapting to the challenges provided by a more dynamic market. It remains to be seen if this enough to stymie the tide against declining print sales. Perhaps only a select few magazines will survive with an online only presence in the future.