A Change In The Relationship Between Magazines and Celebrities

In the past, people would go to big magazine labels, such as People, to learn about their favorite celebrities and any new information about their lives. However, the trend nowadays is for the public to go straight to the source – the celebrities themselves.

Social media sites like Facebook or Twitter have become increasingly popular for celebrities. They can choose to say whatever they would like (within reason) and get it out instantly to the hundreds or thousands of people that follow their accounts, instead of letting the paparazzi decide how the public will view them.

An example of this situation is the recent birth of Jay-Z and Beyonce’s daughter, Blue Ivy Carter. According to the Huffington Post, normally when celebrities have children large magazines will fight over who gets to release the first pictures, usually offering giant amounts of money to the couple as bribery. However, in this case, Jay-Z and Beyonce posted the pictures themselves, to Jay-Z’s Tumblr account.

This simply shows how the field for magazines, and how they can bring about public relations to celebrities, is constantly changing. Magazines may have to step up their publications in some way if they want to gain the power over and respect of celebrities that they once had.

For more information on the Huffington Post article, please go to this website: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/21/celebrity-baby-photos_n_1291502.html.

Creating Your Own Online Magazine!

So I found this video on YouTube the other day (just a side note: YouTube is one of my most favorite things ever, and I’m slightly addicted. Bascially.).

http://youtu.be/GQTIzsUGAqo

This man, Mark Clifton, actually has quite a few videos talking about marketing and public relations, and I happened to find this one involving tips on how to create your own online magazine, (or, as it is apparently called, a Web-Zine). From 1:41 on, he talks about public relations and communicating with people that subscribe to your magazine.

Clifton says that it is important to keep the people subscribing to your magazine feeling important and involved. This is especially true when you first start out, since you probably don’t have many readers or publicity. And nothing is stronger in public relations than people telling other people something positive about your product. So keep people feeling involved, and your magazine will be well on it’s way to becoming the next big thing!

What About Social Media?

In my last post, I talked about how magazines promote themselves through public media on the Internet in general. This time I want to delve more specifically into the area of social media, and how magazines are using this newfound phenomenon in their PR campaigns.

According to Mashable, a website that discusses various kinds of social media, there are a number of ways (seven to be exact) that magazines can use social media to draw in new readers through sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, etc. If you would like to read this article yourself, here is the link: http://mashable.com/2011/02/09/social-media-magazines/

One of these ways is through collaborating with other magazines and newspapers, by reblogging information that readers might find relevant to their lives. Although this might seem counterproductive at first (who wants to tell people that they should read another magazine, not yours, to find out something?), it actually works well in a round-about sort of way. Gaining readers’ trust is one of the ways that magazines can draw people in, and if a publication honestly says, “Hey, I don’t have this information, but you can go here to find it,” not only will people think the publication is trustworthy, they will also realize that when the magazine does publish something, they  must know what they are talking about.

Another way that magazines are using social media sites to attract their public is more obvious; they use sites like Twitter and Facebook to update their followers in real time with experts in the field and important information that the people may want to know immeadiately. Being able to communicate with experts can make readers realize how valuable the publication is, and can also let them see how many connections the publication has in higher places.They can also conduct contests, which can draw people in most effectively. (At least, I know I often join contests if the prize is something I really want, even if I have never hear of the company before.) Events are also easier to do, such as when inviting people via sites like Facebook, since a magazine company can simply press a button and all of its followers will be notified of the event.

And one of the biggest advantages of social media sites: THEY ARE FREE (generally). Free publicity (as long as its postive) is something every magazine desires. To get your name out there, so people will actually be thinking about you.

(I left out quite a few of the other reasons that magazines will use social media sites, so if you are interested in learning more about this, again here is the link to the article: http://mashable.com/2011/02/09/social-media-magazines/. Also, for an example of a magazine’s social media site, go to http://www.facebook.com/#!/dogfancy, http://www.facebook.com/#!/peoplemag, or http://www.facebook.com/#!/vogue.)