How FITNESS Magazine Flexes Its Muscle in the Social Media Space

How FITNESS Magazine
Flexes Its Muscle in the
Social Media Space
Using social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter,
FITNESS magazine has driven more users to its site in
2010. Building on that success, in 2011 the magazine will
expand its social media efforts with initiatives using
Foursquare and contests featuring user content uploaded
via Facebook. Speaker: Christie Griffin, Digital Director,
FITNESS.
A Quick Look Back at
2010: Facebook
Facebook.com/fitnessmag
•A leader on Facebook in magazine
health vertical with 117k+ fans
•Usage of Facebook wall
conversations/prompts as a way to get
anecdotes for the magazine
•Extremely high engagement/loyalty
on Facebook: 4:1 ratio of instances to
fitnessmagazine.com to Facebook fans
•Most recently launched Fan Exclusives
tab, which offers free virtual gifts,
sharing your 2011 goals, and more
A Quick Look Back at
2010: Twitter
Twitter.com/fitnessmagazine
•Keeping pace with other brands on
Twitter. According to Pipes, we often
have just as many retweets and branded
hashtags as other accounts that have
twice as many followers as us.
•Strong brand awareness on social sites:
People often tweet at us without any
prompting.
•Many of our staff/features editors on the
magazine staff voluntarily have a FITNESS
Twitter handle. (FITNESSkarla,
FITNESSkristen, FITNESSjenna,
FITNESSmarianne, etc.) Marianne—who
maintains the main account—has the
highest followers (1k+).
•Twitter success could be stronger
though. We only do one or two links to
the site per day, and had a separate
account for sweeps. We’ve just recently
revisited both of those angles and are
experimenting with new approaches.
FITNESS’s Facebook Survey
Out of 330 responses; December 2010
• 60% of our fans report that they hate it when other fans clutter the
brand’s wall with posts…so we turned that option off.
• 32% of our fans get irritated when we promote something more than once
a week…so we rarely do, if ever!
• FB fans are very loyal magazine readers—less than 20% of our fans don’t
read or buy FITNESS ever. This means we have to be very aware of what
we’re promoting and when, ie. not promoting a “free” online article that is
in the current month’s issue.
• 84% of survey takers gave us a 7 or higher (out of 10) when asked how
happy they are with our FB page
Additional Survey Comments
•“I like your questions. They are thought provoking
and you seem to appreciate the feedback.”
•“I like that you sometimes ask fans to share their
own stories with the potential to end up in the
magazine or on the Facebook page.”
•“I like the Fitness page! It is my daily inspiration
to keep working towards my fitness goals!”
•“I love when I get on Facebook and most of the
time I see a new tip, new story, etc. from Fitness
Magazine! It keeps my diet and exercise fun, fresh,
and on track. :-)”
Less than 10 of the 70 responses to this
“Additional Comments?” prompt were negative
How We’re Stepping It Up
in 2011:
Face of FITNESS
•Cover contest to launch in early
February on Facebook and
fitnessmagazine.com
•10-weeks long
•35% of Facebook survey respondents
said they were extremely (rated 8+)
likely to participate
•Must “like” our page to see details
and enter the contest
Face of FITNESS cont.
•Photo submissions and essays are
uploaded while still on Facebook tab.
•Friends and users must vote on
fitnessmagazine.com. Getting votes
heavily relies on people promoting
their link in the contest.
•Hoping to strengthen FB presence,
brand awareness, and target our core
demographic
•This is not a body builder or beauty
contest—the essay/inspiration part
carries as much weight as photos.
How We’re Stepping It Up in 2011:
FITNESS on FourSquare
Branded profile page just went live Jan. 3, 2011:
Foursquare.com/fitnessmagazine
FITNESS on FourSquare
cont.
•Why? Our brand missions are in line with
each other: We’re both about getting people
up and out, and rewarding them for it!
•Advice for brands: Expect a waitlist; 4Sq is
overwhelmed with requests and there isn’t a
self-service dashboard yet.
•Badges are now a more complicated/tough
process but we’ve submitted requests for
“You Can Do It!” badge and “FITNESS buff”
badge.
•Expert tips from FITNESS for specific venues
will pop up on followers’ cell phones when
they check in to the venues.
•Specials/Offers/Promotions will absolutely
be explored next, ie. check into a Gold’s Gym
and get a freebie or sub discount?
•4Sq is extremely interesting to small
businesses, and it makes sense for bigger
brands and businesses to be available/open
for partnerships.
Questions?
christie.griffin@meredith.com