New media

New Media

Media is currently taking over the world at the moment and everyone takes in  some sort of media every day whether watching  TV,  reading the newspaper, listening to the radio or even reading a magazine or  on line. Therefore, promoting a  magazine  through  New Media  is very simple; has become a very popular way of advertising/promoting in 2013.

Twitter

Twitter popularity has grown over the last 5 years and has become one of the most commonly used social networking sites with  a range of users from David Cameron to Teens. It's purpose is for you to update on your thoughts and feeling about anything that is relevant at the moment. A magazine account on twitter would be perfect because it allows the followers to know exactly what to expect within the magazine and special offers/money off vouchers could be posted for the followers to use. You could post images of the magazine producers and things that go in with our magazine, by posting photos it can make the followers feel more involved in the magazine. The twitter account name would be put into every issue so it’s easily seen so the account would gain more followers; become more popular.

Facebook

Facebook is extremely popular today. Facebook allows you to create groups and pages for users to like. So, any information posted by the magazine page would go straight onto every person that liked your page’s timeline. Facebook and twitter can become very addictive and time consuming so there is no way that it wouldn't work due to people not seeing the posts. Facebook would make it easier to post photos, possibly some picture that are expected within the magazine and it also it allows other users to post what they think. E.g. commenting, sharing images and posts from my magazine to promote our magazine even more, this will also help our read ship to become wider. Gaining the magazine some free feedback there could be sections such as ‘Who do you want to be interviewed next?’ which  would  help with  getting  my  magazine  to  suit  my  target  audience  really  well.

Smart PhonesThe report shows black circles representing the times you’re currently posting and light-gray circles representing the level of interaction those posts receive. The biggest light-gray circles represent the best times for you to post based on your followers’ engagement.Most people of today own a smart phone  iPhone, Blackberry or an HTC. All of which have access to the internet and allows you to download apps. An app is a great way to promote my magazine. It would be a free app because that way more and more people would download it which would also be available to all smart phones. As I think that is where there is a gap in the market, not all apps are available for all different types of smartphones so it limits who can download it. The app would send a notification to each phone when something very interesting occurs such as a competition; the notification would also remind the user to visit the app and find out what’s to come within the next magazines. Although the app would not have the whole magazine on it, it would definitely have some features and lots of images and information. I will include exciting pull quotes from interviews to wheel the readers into buying the next issue of my magazine. 

InstagramThirteen percent of Internet users have Instagram accounts and more than half of the world’s top 100 brands are on Instagram. Your customers and potential customers are there as well. Including hash-tags to do with your magazine and what's involved in the context will help your target audience reach out to you and find out what you're all about. Hashtags are a way to group ideas, concepts or conversations. They make it easy for people to find others who are posting about topics they’re interested in. By including the appropriate hashtags in your updates, you can effectively reach new people interested in your magazine / company. The key is to use hashtags that not only describe your photos and business, but are also actively searched for and used on Instagram.

Posting at the peak time for your usersAs with all social networks, knowing when your community is most likely to engage helps you choose the most effective time to post. IconoSquare has an optimization report that identifies the best times for you to update based on your previous posting history and engagement.

The example above is taken from the Shopify Instagram account. You can see that the best posting times in this particular case are Friday at 9pm and Monday at 9am, surprisingly.

Engaging with competitions for people to repost a particular image to win a tickets free for a gig. This will then be advertising your magazine to their follows what should fit into your target audience. This will gain your magazines account more followers and views.

Equipment

 



Schools camera

Schools lights

Indesign Software
 

I have my own Canon SLR so I decided to do my photo shoot myself out of school, from using a high quality camera it makes the photo-shoot much easier as it enabled me to take hundreds of photos at great quality that could simply be look back on so I can select the best images for my magazine. For my photo-shoot outside of school I only used one piece of equipment what was my camera. However I prefer my photo-shoot from outside of school; the images are more unique and fit in my magazines target audience more than my photo-shoot that took place inside of school. However for my photo-shoot inside of school my images came out at a better quality because I used a high professional camera, a white back drop and lights. It took me a few minutes to set my photo-shoot out and to decide where I wanted the lights to be placed to reflect the best lighting and shadow on my model.After uploading my photos from my camera and putting them all together in a folder I singularly went through each individual photo and decided if I thought it was a good image. I had 80 photos to go through in total, so it took some time. I am now creating my magazine on Indesign.

Existing names and mastheads

What do we expect from a music magazine?

What do we expect from a music magazine?
From a music magazine we expect an eye catching and interesting front cover, talking about our favourite artists and bands with a unique image that will attract the reader from that particular audience. This will make us pick up the magazine and have a look inside. From an Indie/rock music lover in a magazine we expect a lot of articles from festivals and images. Interviews with members of the bands and exclusive images that we cannot access online. We expect to be able to subscribe to Indie/rock magazines as their target audience are aimed at an older generation that will more likely be able to afford that sort of thing. In all genres of magazines there will more than likely be a freebie what will attract the audience into buying the magazine even more. E.g. posters in a pop magazine; a free CD in a rock or R&B magazine. In a music magazine we highly expect good quality articles and information because we want to learn and find out new interesting things about our idols. We want to be updated with the latest news and not hear stuff from months ago that we already found out online. The images we see in music magazine are expected to be at a high quality and photographs that we wouldn’t be able to get hold of ourselves. E.g. close ups of Green day playing at Reading and back stage. These would be perfect photos. We would like our magazine to also include there website if they have one, as it will allow us to find out more about the magazine and read new articles and watch videos and play interactive games.

Why do audiences read magazines: what pleasures do they gain from them? What information might they benefit from? Why would they still read a magazine in light of easier (and cheaper) access to similar material on the Internet?
The older generation prefer to read a magazine because its hand held and easier to take around; you can read it on the train and read it in the bath. You don’t need Wi-Fi access so you can constantly be reading it. Some people are not very computer literate so they either find it very difficult or confusing trying to find out the information they are looking for online. However some people prefer reading magazines as they enjoy collecting them weekly/monthly. Print magazines can be very useful in their own way. The articles that interest you may be longer and more detailed than what you find online, can include lots of images and useful charts. Another nice thing about print magazines is their portability. You do not need a power source or battery to access them and if you accidentally drop them, then no harm done. The information inside a print magazine is going to be serious and realistic but if you’re researching something online you cannot guarantee that it’s going to be 100% true as anyone could have just typed up an article.
How do magazine publishers make money? How are they attempting to retain audiences? What business models are used to ensure a sustained audience? What are some of the magazine’s wider assets – TV, radio, awards, and stages?
Magazine publishers make some of their money from allowing advertisement inside their magazines, that will interest there target audience. E.g. Rock magazine advertising new beer flavours by a certain company; pop magazine advertising a new range of pink eye shadow. They also make money from having a subscription for their audience to have for their magazine. It allows the publishing company to excess money before they have even sold anything to their readers. So they have time to product the magazine with the money that they have paid for subscription. Another way publishers make money is from there audiences buying there magazine. NME are a famous Indie/Rock music magazine however they have been extremely successful, they currently have there own radio station and stage at Reading festival with well known artists performing on it such as Biffy Clyro and Alt J. They also have a app you can download on any apple product that gives you the latest updates on all of the new music and photography. NME have there own music awards that promote new bands but also have famous rock legends performing, such as The Arctic monkeys.

How is your particular genre of music represented? What are the key iconography, Artist, albums, attitudes, ideologies? Indie/rock music is represented in a very aggressive and bold way with mainly the use of the instruments of a either a electric guitar or drums. The artists usually dressed very dark coloured. The males of the genre wear tight black skinny jeans, with over sized black/white t-shits. They are very scruffy and un-clean showing a lot of facial hair and a messy long hair style. The females of the genre are normally dressed in dark clothing also, either wearing a skirt or skinny jeans. The females usually wear heavy eye make-up and dark red lips and tend to care more about there appearance then the males. The shoes worn by both genders are either Vans or Doc martens. However some females tend to wear chunky heeled boots or platforms. The genre accessorise there outfits with leather jackets, metal studded belts, heavy piercings and some of the artists will be covered in tattoos. This conveys there individuality and there confidence to be different. The rock genre is always associated with alcohol and heavy drugs in the need to look 'tough' and 'cool'. The men are very into having a lot of all and are known for smashing up hotel rooms; having a attitude of 'I don't care'. The rock genre is primarily presented through the actual artist or/and band of the genre. The bands within the rock genre are usually extremely unique to one another and portray this both at their live performances and in their music videos. Most rock music videos are actually presented to the audience by a live performance and you will commonly see this with bands such as Guns n' Roses. If you look at the popular rock bands out there, you will see that they all have that unique rock style to them, in which a lot of them will be dressed in dark/indie outfits. Some bands will take it to another level of extreme and radical, such as the popular band Kiss,  who are well know for their outrageous dress style. However this is what being a successful and popular rock band is all about being different.

Feedback from proposal

Audience Survey

I created a survey on 'SurveyMonkey' to help me find out what my target audience would enjoy and like to see inside my music magazine. This helped me get a good idea of how to set out my magazine and a reasonable price. I decided to ask my audience what social networks they used on a regular basis, what one gets the highest favourites I will then create this social networking site because I can advertise my magazine and loads of news and my monthly competition. I decided to create 8 questions that would summarise my magazine the best; I kept them very plain and simple so I didn’t bore my audience easily. One of my questions was ‘How often do you read music magazines’ I done this so I could get a general feel of my target audiences views. However this was a very important question because I needed to find out whether to publish my magazine weekly or monthly; if my magazine was monthly I would have to include a lot more information and time. But if it was weekly I could make my magazine smaller with less information. However I also incorporated more detailed questions such as ‘What social networking sites do you use the most?’ I thought this was a good idea because it portrays that I’m trying to make my magazine fit my target audience perfectly and to make it as successfully as possible. All of my questions used were given multiple choice answers so the participants felted like I wasn’t missing anyone one with a big range of answers.

This is the link for my survey
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/MFTXNW3

Analysing double pages finally

 

Magazine contents page analysing

 

Magazine front cover analysing

Preliminary task video

At the start of the course we were asked to do a preliminary task of creating a front cover and a contents page for a school magazine. I quickly sketched some ideas for my layout. I then used a DSLR Cannon camera to take photos of my chosen models, locations and food which included a range of long shots, mid shots and close up shots, I have used on my front cover and contents page.

I wanted a name for my magazine that denoted its purpose of being a place for the students of Haydon to voice their thoughts and opinions, and therefore decided on the name 'Haydon School'.

In the next lesson I began constructing my pages. I have used a simple house style of navy blue, yellow and black as these are the school’s colours, and therefore link the magazine to Haydon.