Inked Australia magazine uses Facebook to drive newsagency traffic

The publisher of Inked Australia and related tattoo magazines has excellent and successful social media engagement, connecting people interested in their titles through their terrific Facebook page.

I love that they actively promote newsagents as the place to purchase their titles: Inked Australia, Inked Girls and Inked Artists. This type of external promotion direct to a community of close to 30,000 people who have declared their interest in the titles can be more valuable for our retail channel than in-store marketing collateral.

Whereas posters and other retail collateral promotes a title once shoppers are in-store, this Facebook engagement around the Inked titles targets getting people into newsagencies where the titles are sold.

I would not have known this had the publisher not made contact with me.  Here is some of what the publisher had to say in as email to me recently:

As a very small publisher based in Sydney apart from walking into as many newsagents I can – it’s good to get a perspective on the frontline of newsagents. Your Blog is a good resource for this, the challenges you face – what works for you and what doesn’t. Like all publishing we are all battling to manage change and develop sustainable business models.

In regards to your latest posts regarding Social Media I thought I would make you aware of one of our magazines Inked Australia/NZ– we have 12 issues a year (6 of Inked Australia, 4 of Inked Girls and 2 of Inked Artists)

In the last 2 years we have managed to grow our Social Media page  https://www.facebook.com/InkedAustralia to:

• 29,500 fans 90% of which are Australia and NZ based.
• 55% women 45% Men.
• It grows now between 500-1000 fans per month and has done since we started the page.
• We have NOT spent any money with facebook this has been purely organic growth through interaction with our readers and fans.
• Every time and issue is about to hit newsstands we publish a teaser campaign and then show the cover and push the fans to the local newsagent.
• As you can see (attached screenshot) the main page always has driver to newsagents and we reinforce this on a weekly basis.
• Put simply Time and effort to engage our readers have resulted in our community growing and we are seeing a result in sales (Slowly BUT its getting there)

I would encourage all businesses to engage with facebook – after all its free to use and its great to get one on one feedback with customers.

Beyond the support for newsagents by the publisher of the Inked titles, this blog post is a reminder to newsagents to engage with Facebook – in a clever way which reflects the uniqueness of your business … in a way which connects with your community.