Glamour, a Conde Nast magazine, has put an interesting symbol on its cover. That little blue “f” signifying everyone’s favorite social networking site has caused quite a stir among magazine readers, the traditional and non- alike.
This symbol, or the Facebook logo, on the corner of Glamour’s September issue leads to something more than just “liking” the magazine’s page. If a reader takes a picture of this symbol with her (or his) phone it leads to exclusive content from the cover girl, Rihanna.
Throughout the issue these types of symbols are available that lead to more content and, yes, the ability to “like” Glamour’s Facebook page. Is this type of interaction simply a fad? Absolutely not, according to the magazine industry.
As more and more journalism and entertainment content is moved to the web, loyal readers of physical magazines are less and less likely to make the jump to the web to find their news. In order to engage with their paper-based readers, giants like Conde Nast have begun integrating web connections into physical issues so they don’t leave readers behind.
Glamour’s connections used Social SnapTags from SpyderLynk. Allure magazine, another CN brand, recently did an issue full of giveaways accessible via Microsoft Tags. Reportedly Allure’s tags reached over 400,000 hits this year. The use of these types of tags has rose 4-fold in since the start of 2011.
Before the uses of these tags were mostly relegated to things like giveaways, content, and advertising. Now that they are linked to social media, increased use of the connections is expected. Being able to not only access but share content via Facebook and Twitter comes easily to the tech generation.
Although it may take on slowly for the traditional reading folk, the tags are already working for Glamour. Within the first week of the newest issue, 100,000 interactions occurred from the tags, 25,000 in the first day. Since the release the magazine’s Facebook fans rose 18%.