Meredith Corporation, publisher of magazines as mainstream as Ladies Home Journal, Better Homes & Garden, Parents and Family Circle also has an entire division of special interest or niche magazines aimed at very segmented audiences.
These titles include Diabetic Living, Decorating, Kitchen & Bath Ideas and over 200 additional magazines aimed at women particularly honing in on homebuilding, remodeling, decorating, gardening, crafts and cooking.
They access and influence over 75 million women with their titles. That’s a lot of power and because of the narrow focus of each title — a lot of passion.
Meredith announced today that it has signed a contract with Wetpaint to create a series of Wikis for its company’s most popular special interest magazines and Web sites.
The first Wiki to launch will be Scrapbooks etc.
So what do you think? How will this influence circulation? Advertising dollars?
Do you think this strategy would work as well in a more mainstream magazine like Time or People?
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This is one fabulous strategy. I am a HUGE fan of narrow niche pubs, and it seems a wiki is a natural extension of their existing business — at least from a subscriber/ehthusiast perspective.
That being said: As for the affect on ad dollars, that remains to be seen. All I know is that if I were an advertiser, I’d think that any brand that is making an effort to service enthusiasts broadly is a brand I’d have faith in.
Ann,
What makes this story even more interesting is Meredith’s recent purchase Los Angeles-based digital-ad agency Genex and Arlington, Va., word-of-mouth-marketing firm New Media Strategies.
It will be interesting to see where they’re headed.
Drew
After checking out the scrapbooks wiki, it really seems they’re going the distance by allowing the users to create/groom the content (ie leverage the realy power of the wiki platform).
Doug,
I know, it’s pretty cool. Meredith has always had a very collaborative spirit and I think one of the reason their niche magazine division is skyrocketing is because they truly understand that for their readers, the specific focus areas are much more than a hobby — they are a passion.
Drew
What an interesting way to get people interested in reading! Book trailers are like movie trailers, but for books! You can find them all over the internet now, but here is a site that’s featuring them on YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/booktrailers