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TikTok on the Social Media Clock

If you’re a millennial like me, hearing the words “tick tock” probably makes you think of a 2009 Kesha hit – not the video social media platform that’s taking the world by storm. Good luck getting that song out of your head now, sorry.

Nonetheless, the TikTok app is growing in popularity as social media users continue to favor video and seek new ways to engage with friends online. In fact, it’s topped competitors YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat in user downloads since 2018. Now, more than 1.5 billion people launch the app, fully prepared to follow the white rabbit down the hole – with its pocket watch going “TikTok” all the way down, of course.

Video wonderland

Knowing that the primary demographic on TikTok is half my age, I approached the app with caution last week. A friend of my prompted this venture when his own video series went viral on the platform. Curiosity struck, so I had to see what it was all about.

My friend’s video feed intrigued me enough to dive in further. The app is simple enough for a novice to use; swipe navigation makes it easy to get sucked into a black hole of pets, pranks, do-it-yourself tutorials, challenges galore (my husband and I even tried the woman versus man chair challenge), tricks, music videos, and more. There is a seemingly endless supply of content, and it’s easy to see why the average TikTok user spends about an hour a day on the app.

Much like other social platforms, you can like, comment on and share the videos you enjoy. Hashtags are a great way to find videos related to themes you like, and they’re searchable. Plus, you can follow accounts from users whose content you want to see more of in your feed, and usernames are formatted like Twitter and Facebook handles.

One thing that differentiates this app from its competitors is that you can be a passive user. I was able to download the app without creating an account. If you want to contribute video content, you have to be an account holder, but you otherwise have access to all the same app functions without logging in.

Much like Alice in her wonderland, I was curioser and curioser about this new social medium.

Off with their heads

Right in the middle of my TikTok exploration came an announcement that immediately changed my favorable opinion of the app. According to documents recently published by The Intercept, app moderators were instructed to manipulate the algorithm to suppress content from certain users. Those that were deemed too ugly or of “abnormal” body shape, whose surroundings appeared too impoverished or “slummy”, and even those whose homes are messy were to be excluded from feeds.

With cyber bullying at an all-time high (25 percent of teens reporting they’ve been victims of bullying on their phones and online), one might want to give TikTok’s owner the benefit of the doubt. Maybe the company intended – albeit a little tactlessly – to cut down on bullying against its less fortunate users. But ByteDance, the Chinese company who acquired Musical.ly in 2017 and rebranded it as TikTok the following year, did not have honorable intentions. It’s motive for implementing the changes? To retain new users and grow the app.

I was less than impressed when reading this article. Since it was just released this month, it will be interesting to see if the app suffers any reputational damage and a marked decrease in its loyal user base. Only time will tell.

Back to reality

Maybe I’m a little mad, but I see TikTok in my social media future. While this platform’s user demographic isn’t my company’s audience, I really enjoy the app for my personal social media consumption. Though I haven’t taken the full plunge as an account holder making videos for the app, I do have a few ideas. In the words of Wonderland’s Lewis Carroll, “It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.”

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It’s Not You(Tube), It’s Me

If I had to describe my relationship with YouTube, I could do so in just two words: It’s complicated. I know, I know. Everyone loves YouTube – and for good reason. In its 15 years, YouTube has become the second most popular search engine next to Google (which just so happens to own it). In fact, viewers consume more than a billion hours of video on the channel every day!

Like my fellow Millennials and the Generation Z-ers after us, I find myself watching YouTube daily. From cat clips to cooking tutorials, hair how-tos and music videos, there is a myriad of engaging content on this veteran social media platform to tune into. And with more than 300 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute, if you can dream it, there’s probably a recording of it somewhere on the platform.

But as much as I enjoy my weekly Yoga with Adrienne and getting lost down a rabbit hole of Motown hits, when it comes to being a content creator myself, I just can’t, well, commit.

A fulfilling first date

I recently assisted with marketing for my alma mater’s second annual giving day. The event is a one-day crowdfunding extravaganza to solicit support for the college’s various needs. Projects vied for donor dollars to be able to purchase equipment, send students to volunteer abroad, renovate locker rooms, and more.

The whole giving day is orchestrated through a company that specializes in such events, and they host the website for ours. The company’s strategy revolves around video. The website template has options to embed unique videos for each project in addition to the primary pages, like the landing page. The company encourages clients to embed video calls-to-action in appeal emails. And, of course, videos should be repurposed for sharing on social media.

Without a budget for professional production, my team did our best to create a bunch of diverse, engaging videos to position ourselves for giving day success. Organizing spokespeople, scripting, filming, and editing ensued. Needless to say, it was an exhausting ordeal for what amounted to less than 15 total minutes of content.

The company required that all videos were uploaded to YouTube, and we were asked to provide links to the content for the various templates. I got to work with the upload process, and I was pleasantly surprised at the easy user interface. I simply had to give each video a title and description, indicate whether it was kid-friendly, ensure it would be viewable by the public, and voila! Our channel was suddenly chock-full. If my inaugural experience with YouTube was a first date, I’d say it was pretty successful.

Heavy on the hopeless

OK, so things were off to a good start with YouTube. I expertly navigated the upload process and shared links out to my team. Videos were embedded to the various templates, and I was already thinking about a second date. How could I continue to use YouTube in my organization’s social strategy more than for just this one event per year?

Then I learned about video algorithms.

As a content curator, YouTube favors brands that add to viewing time on the platform rather than directing people off site. Our nonprofit’s goals for social media at this time are all about acquisition. We’re trying to drive people to our giving day site one day a year, but our general website the other 364 days. That means YouTube doesn’t quite align with the objectives we’re trying to reach – a less than desirable quality in a relationship, I’d say.

I’m not one to give up on something good that easily, though. Let’s say I’m a bit of a hopeless romantic.

So maybe we won’t become influencers on YouTube, but I thought there might be a way to use videos there to enhance our efforts on other social channels. We all know video is king on social. I did some research on sharing YouTube videos to Facebook and Twitter. Sadly, I didn’t like what I found.

First I learned that videos uploaded directly to Facebook receive 40 percent higher engagement than those shared from YouTube. Plus, Facebook’s algorithm prioritizes its own videos over those shared from what has become its primary competitor in vying for viewer attention. But Facebook also measures views differently than YouTube. With only a three-second threshold to be counted as a video view, it measures many more views than YouTube, which counts viewers at about 30 seconds. This makes comparing marketing metrics between the two platforms challenging because measuring video efforts is weighted to favor Facebook.

Obviously, I’d be spending the time to upload our giving day videos a second time, rather than sharing them over from YouTube. I mean I like the platform, but I still have to see other people. 

Working on myself

It’s not that there is anything wrong with YouTube. Rather, I just don’t have the time to dedicate toward making the relationship worthwhile. And it would take a lot of time to make the efforts worth it. Not only would I need to devote consistent hours to content creation that our intended audience would care about consistently through the year, it takes precious time I don’t have to upload videos to both YouTube and Facebook. Until I can get our organization in a position where I can allocate more of my limited resources toward a YouTube strategy, set measurable objectives, and demonstrate progress toward those objectives over a period of time, it’s just not going to work out.

Even though the timing isn’t right for me and YouTube, I do wish it the best in its many other meaningful relationships. I don’t think it’ll miss me for now.

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Lost in the Noise on Twitter

If you tweet and no one reads it, did it make a sound? I’ve been asking myself this a lot lately as I consider my organization’s digital strategy, and I’m pretty convinced of the answer. It’s no.

Working for a nonprofit, one usually has limited resources. My marketing manpower consists of me. My marketing budget is nearly nonexistent. And the time I have to dedicate to marketing on social media is, well, not enough. I’m often charging out to battle the odds in favor of strategic, data-driven communication efforts that would free up time and money so I can apply it to more fruitful efforts. Sadly, I usually lose those battles to the argument that “it exists, so we must be on it.”

But must we?

Who we’re talking to

The first thing I like to consider when investigating a social media platform is the audience. I need to know who is using the channel and whether or not they align with our engagement goals. As a foundation on social media, we hope to reach donors who can contribute to our mission – eliminating barriers to higher education. We provide scholarship support and funding for program expansion and facility enhancements at our university.

Engaging people who will financially support our mission involves entering a long-term relationship with them. Most donors are alumni, and they have a built-in affinity with their alma mater. But alumni graduate with student loan debt and are often not yet in a position to make financial gifts. The longer they work, the more disposable income they have. Later in life, we hope they’ll make the ultimate gift in donating their estate or other assets to the university. It may be 50 years before a graduate bequeaths their life’s earnings to us, but their lifetime value is an accumulation of all the minor contributions, volunteer hours and word-of-mouth recruiting they do for us in the meantime.

We have to keep graduates engaged at every step along their journey after commencement. At each step, we’re reaching them in different places in print and the digital landscape. So when I think about a channel like Twitter, I have to know if our prospective or existing donors are on it and what step they’re on as they climb the proverbial ladder to success.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Montana, it’s a huge state (fourth largest in the U.S.) with a very small population. In fact, the entire state’s population is only .3 percent of everyone in America. When I see that only 22 percent of Americans are on Twitter, the share of Montanans I can expect to have an account is pretty small. The likelihood that those are the people who care about our university enough to donate is even smaller.

Is that enough to deactivate our nonprofit Twitter account? Probably not in and of itself. But there’s more.

What they want to hear

Even though alumni aren’t ready to donate at different stages of life, we can keep them engaged with news and updates, volunteer activities and events, awards programming, and more in the meantime. We just have to find the best platforms, the best times of day, and the best content with which to reach them.

On Twitter, promoting your content and having your audience actually see it is a challenge. To illustrate this point, consider that there are 500 million tweets are sent every day – that’s 6,000 tweets every second. Just a day’s worth of tweets would fill a 10 million page book. So it’s easier for a brand to get lost in the endless stream of messages than seen by the people you’re trying to reach.

To break through the barrage, brands have to be active on the platform. More than 90 percent of companies on Twitter send more than one tweet per day; twenty percent tweet 6-10 daily. Despite their efforts to get in front of users, the average Twitter account holder follows only five businesses.

Moreover, the most popular content pushers on the platform are not nonprofit foundations; rather, they’re celebrities and politicians. Accounts like @katyperry and @barackobama and their 100-plus million followers are difficult to compete with.

Did you know the lifetime of a tweet is only 15-20 minutes? That means for my organization, I would need to create tweets on a constant basis, pushing content that an audience primarily made up of 40-year-old males are interested in, compete with posts from their favorite celebrities, and engage what would likely be a totally disinterested audience with no affinity to our university when they log onto the platform only once per month to even see a return – albeit, a likely minimal one – from a massive investment of my time.

As a one-woman marketing department, I simply don’t have the hours or content necessary to send the number of relevant, engaging tweets necessary to develop a robust following.

#lasttweet

I’ll tell you what I didn’t expect in researching Twitter this week. I didn’t expect that I’d go into work and promptly make a case that I should deactivate the two Twitter accounts I manage for the organization.

At this time, our following on both pages is minimal, our interactions are abysmal, and our capacity for creating enough relevant content is non-existent. I am of the philosophy that I’d rather do a few things exceptionally well than many things mediocre. While my recommendation is still under consideration, I am grateful to have the data to support a shift in my limited resources. Hopefully, I’ll soon be making a #lasttweet post to commemorate the closing and the opening up of my calendar for more fruitful communications endeavors!

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LinkedIn, Tuned Out

“Hi, Tiffini! Nice to e-meet you. Our studio provides animated explainer video creation service. May I ask you – could this be required in your company?”

Look familiar? It’s one of several messages I received on LinkedIn this month, and I’m sure you’ve seen a few like it. Every time I log into my LinkedIn account, messages like this crowd my inbox. Some inquirer I have no personal or professional connection to is touting the best XYZ product or service and wants to know if they can help my company.

LinkedIn’s mission is to connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful. When I think of how that mission relates to me as an account holder, my first thought isn’t of spammy messages from experts hoping to get my business. Can’t blame ‘em for trying, but I’m not interested.

While I may be linked in with my fellow professionals, this type of superficial connection makes me tune the platform out.

A network for new work

My relationship with LinkedIn has been on-again-off-again. It’s almost like the wingman of social media in that when I’m looking for the next great gig, I can turn to LinkedIn for prospects through the people I know. My page gives potential employers the professional highlights, and we can take the connection to the next level offline.

When I was looking to leave my last job, I went searching through all the standard online job boards. I had been passively perusing LinkedIn for opportunities when a former colleague reached out. He had worked as a writer with me at the newspaper company I was still at. Another victim of downsizing newsrooms due to dwindling print readership, he was also on the hunt for a new position. Apparently, he came across a job posting he thought would be perfect for me at a nonprofit foundation contracted by my alma mater. When the opportunity piqued my interest, he connected me with a friend who had once worked for the foundation so I could get the scoop and decide whether or not I wanted to apply.

I had been notified about a job, viewed the details, could see who else worked for the company and our shared connections, and was able to talk to a former employee who knew someone I knew – all through a social media platform. Did LinkedIn intend to be the “dating app” for employees to meet employers? It’s not in the mission, but it’d be a lot cooler if it was.

Will work for feed

Not looking for work this time, I logged into my LinkedIn account this week. Aside from the 93 notifications I had accrued since my last visit, everything was as I’d left it. I’d updated my profile with my new employer (thanks second-degree connection!) after joining the staff and logged out. Since then, I’ve largely ignored emails about my connections’ promotions and time spent in their roles, and I’d resolved to check back in next time a new career called.

A quick glance over the platform seemed to be business as usual. I’d appeared in some searches and had visitors to my profile, and my inbox was mostly full of sales pitches. Quickly disregarding their inquiries, I turned instead to the feed to see what this platform was all about, aside from searching job prospects.

A few work-related memes provided comic relief to a feed full of industry reports and a variety of articles. Not baited by the “815 hotel deals Marriott signed in 2019,” I continued scanning. The content that stood out most to me was sporadically posted by LinkedIn Marketing Solutions. The articles were clearly promoted, but relevant. One in particular spoke to how LinkedIn can help with coordinating university-wide strategy on the platform with a downloadable guide. Surprisingly, this channel that helped me find work might actually help me at work.

Learning in progress

Embarking on a reinvigorated exploration of LinkedIn, I sought out to find other cool features that might benefit me as a current employee, not only a potential one. It didn’t take me long to stumble into the LinkedIn Learning portal – and I am so glad I did!

Thanks to my grad school program, I could access the portal with my university login. Once there, I found a plethora of tutorials for learning a wide depth and breadth of skills. Hoping to start off on a good foot, I set a goal of a half-hour spent learning on LinkedIn each week. How hard could that be?

A quick click on the “marketing” category took me to a variety of related courses and videos. Since it had been a while since my Google Analytics Academy training, I selected the Google Analytics Essential Training course for a refresher. The course is divided into easily-digestible videos covering segments of information, and most are less than five minutes long. It turns out, I could devour half an hour of learning and look forward to the next. It just didn’t feel like work. Although I haven’t finished the course yet, I plan to – and a few more after that.

A new purpose

Much to my surprise, LinkedIn is more useful than I thought. Now that I’ve cleared my notification cache and cleaned out my inbox, I realize those minor annoyances are worth some of the real benefits of this platform. Not only can I find work and connect with colleagues, past and present, I have access to tools that will enhance my ability to be hired for future roles, too. Although I don’t plan to seek a new job for a while, I’m eager to return to LinkedIn for my weekly half-hour of learning in the meantime.

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Reddit: Brands beware or bust

If Tyler Durden, the deranged brain-child of author Chuck Palahniuk, was a moderator, he’d probably tell you that the first rule of Reddit is you do not talk about Reddit. Even after months of being a so-called Redditor professionally, I cringed a bit when creating a personal account. Why the visceral reaction? Because my experience on this social media platform was like dirty secret – a secret I couldn’t wait to talk about. However, I quickly found out I had no one to tell.

A Reddit revelation

As the social media manager for a chain of Montana newspapers, I was charged with training reporters to use social media, measuring our impact on the digital discourse, and investigating new ways to engage in the online community as publishers. I was always eying new measurement tools, like Parse.ly and Sprout Social, to test, and after training photojournalists to share their content on Instagram, I was on the lookout for the next social platform opportunity.

One night at home, my husband and I were lounging when he asked me if I’d read an article about a particular news event. When I hadn’t, he pulled the article up on his Reddit account for me to read. After scanning details about the event, I navigated back to the Reddit thread where I perused reader commentary. I noted the sarcastic banter, system of upvoting and downvoting both content and comments, and the structure of the subreddit, including the list of rules specific to that particular community.

Although I recognized the playful orange alien that is the Reddit logo, I was totally unfamiliar with the social media platform. After only a few minutes of exploration, I was hooked. Perhaps this was the channel I’d been looking for.

Time to spy

It didn’t take much to convince my superiors that Reddit was an avenue worth exploring. Since Reddit is the second most popular online news source worldwide, and is primarily a destination for users to share and consume news, it just made sense that a news publishing company might have a place there. Plus, at the time, The Washington Post had a well-established presence on the platform. Why not a Montana newspaper?

As the only person exploring Reddit for the company in 2017, I had a lot of freedom. I got to set my own objectives for growth, determine my own metrics for success, and engage in the discourse freely to enhance our brand. But I had to do so as a private user and not on behalf of our branded papers. At least not yet. If a brand is going to be on Reddit, it has to be there very strategically to avoid getting shut down by users and subreddit moderators for shameless self-promotion.

Armed with a spreadsheet of karma goals and click-through hopes (and possibly fewer ethics than I’d like to admit), I went to work sharing content from five newspapers to a set of relevant subreddit communities to see what captured user interest. I recall that the most successful post I made was a grizzly bear’s prediction for the 2017 super bowl win. Some historic photo galleries and an AMA I helped a reporter host on the opioid crisis also performed well. When articles did well, they topped subreddit hot charts, but for the few topics with broad appeal that caught on, there were many hyperlocal stories that received little interaction.

After a quarter-worth of data gathered, I presented my findings. My enthusiasm was met with crickets. I quickly found out that only one other team member I reported to had even heard of Reddit, and none of them were active users. After explaining the platform, my objectives and performance toward them, and my recommendations for how we might proceed with exploring a brand strategy on Reddit, the project was shut down by staff convinced that if they weren’t on Reddit, neither were our readers. My undercover data undoubtedly went to some hard drive corner to die that day.

Thread lightly

Recently, I revisited Reddit – not under the guise of publisher strategy, but as myself. I had created a new personal account after leaving my previous employer, but I rarely visited the platform to passively peruse content. It was a bit unnerving to approach the platform without the confidence behind my original mission.

As a new mom, I decided to join a few related subreddit communities, like r/mommit and r/parenting. With only 130 karma, I began to engage with other moms about topics like breastfeeding and maternity leave. I upvoted cute kid photos, shared my birth story, and read the latest news in vaccines and women’s health. After nearly two years of being virtually inactive, I’ve grown my karma by more than 2,000 in just a couple weeks.

Now that I’ve had some time to engage with this unique community, I’ve learned a lot more about it than I ever had approaching it with an ulterior motive. I am so impressed by the breath of users I encounter – from teens making hilarious memes to lawyers sharing their expertise, fellow nerds who love Harry Potter as much as I do to animal rights activists, marketers, and video game enthusiasts. They are all united under a shared love of news and niche community. And they’re all quick to shut down people who don’t belong, like those sharing their own blog posts or promoting their own businesses – there are subreddits for that sort of self-promotion, and they’ll be directed to them in a sort of “we don’t like your kind around here” repartee.

Brand or bust

Don’t get me wrong, there are some brands who’ve made a go at Reddit and been successful. But even Digiday has said it’s “one of the trickiest platforms to crack.” This is because Redditors have no time for commentary that offers them no value. If you’re in it for yourself, you’re bound to fail.

Take EA for example. In response to user criticism, the brand attempted to diffuse negative feedback with a carefully crafted message about how they appreciate the comments, will try to keep doing their best, and so on. Their message quickly went down in history as the single-most downvoted comment in Reddit history. Yikes.

On the other hand, Nordstrom, the WWE, and, as I previously mentioned, The Washington Post have all broken through the Reddit barrier successfully as brands. They’ve done so by capitalizing on their existing fan base to create a community where those fans can openly engage with the brands. Redditors respond to articles, ask questions of customer service, and share their experiences in these unique subreddits.

Other brands are looking to ad content and Ask Me Anything sessions as loopholes to get in front of Reddit’s 330 million active monthly users. Toyota promoted videos of professional drivers racing its Supra models, and even Bill Gates has hosted several AMAs about technology and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Was there a place for Montana newspapers to join the digital discussion on Reddit? Maybe, although I doubt they’ve begun to explore it even now, two years after my time there. However, like any good Reddit community before them, if there are enough fans who have enough to say about the brand, one of them is sure to create a subreddit for it in the future. I’m looking forward to joining it if they do.

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Have we turned the page on magazines?

During my senior year in college, a well-meaning professor suggested I intern as a writer for my final capstone project. I was about to complete a degree in public relations, but after six years working in higher education, I needed to expand my horizons and find out where I could put my talents to use after graduation.

The editor of Montana’s largest newspaper took me under his wing. I remember him saying I was “more eager than skilled” during my interview. Yikes, right? But despite my lack of experience, he put me to work in the paper’s niche publication department. Here, I was to write and edit two magazines, a lifestyle column, and other editorial content with a team of two others. I was thrilled to prove myself as a would-be writer and flex my creative muscles in another facet of the communication field.

No more magic

Just a couple of weeks into my internship, I was offered a full-time position with the niche pubs team. I hardly hesitated to jump at the opportunity to write for a living, which was basically my career holy grail. It was especially fun to create the bi-monthly Magic City Magazine, which touted its position as Billings’ most-read magazine since 2003. Apparently, not enough people read it. After only six short months of writing full-time, I faced the proverbial ax. The magazine, along with my position, was eliminated.

Luckily, my PR degree meant I had other talents to contribute. I was moved to a digital team, but the transition didn’t come without questions. My dream of being a career writer was over. So, naturally, I wanted to know what happened.

Palms sufficiently sweaty, I approached the corporate bigwigs about the decision to kill my beloved publication. Fresh out of college, my head was whirling with ideas about spreading awareness, reinventing the brand, assessing the market – anything to save Magic. It did no good. The decision was based on years of dwindling advertising revenue that resulted in the magazine’s eventual demise. I was too late, but it got me thinking…Is print dead?

Trending toward non-traditional

This week, I looked at some magazines, both locally and nationally, that seem to be avoiding the fate many like them have encountered in recent years. Aside from casually picking up an issue of whatever publication is lying around in a lobby while I wait for an oil change or a dental cleaning, I am not an avid magazine reader these days. The publications I do interact with tend to be limited to the brand’s social media. I love a good recipe or design inspiration, so the Better Homes & Gardens Instagram is one of my favorites.

Apparently, I’m not the only one interacting with traditional publications in a non-traditional way. According to Statista, the year 2018 marked a decline of 600,000 magazine readers over the age of 18. Though there are more than 7,000 magazines in distribution in the U.S. today, the fastest-growing publication genre is special interest. So, people are engaging with magazine brands that specialize in their interests, like motorcycles or beauty. And they’re looking increasingly to websites, emails, and social media to interact with those brands. So, is print dead? Not yet. Although I’d argue that it’s likely on a slow trajectory toward that end.

The digital shift

Here in Billings, Yellowstone Valley Woman quickly adopted the “Billings’ most-read magazine” tagline after its competitor fell. It boasts a readership of more than 80,000 men and women, with a distribution of 25,000 issues to more than 100 locations throughout Montana and Wyoming. The publication thanks its readers and “amazing list of advertisers” for its success.

Updated just this month, Agility PR Solutions lists the top 10 U.S. magazines by circulation, with National Geographic in the lead. Owned by Disney, National Geographic reaches 433 million households in 171 countries and in 45 languages.

Comparing these publications at-a-glance to the former Magic City Magazine, they are both doing a variety of things that keep them relevant in modern-day. Each has an interactive website on which readers can scan feature stories and photos without ever having to pick up a print issue. Each has an active social media presence, too. Fans see the content they love with the added benefit of easily participating in contests and giveaways, and interacting with others who also enjoy the same niche. And – my personal favorite as someone in PR and marketing – they’re both making strides to measure their efforts. These publications are alive and well, and they have the numbers to prove it.

What went wrong

So, why did my beloved magazine die? While yes, it came down to hemorrhaging the advertising dollars necessary to keep it going, that was only the result of leaders ignoring the symptoms of its ultimate failure ahead of time. Had we taken the time to develop a digital discourse with our readership, we likely could have navigated the necessary transition to keep our product relevant with an increasingly online audience. We should have been more actively developing relevant social media channels to engage with our readers, and we should have made our content more accessible with a stellar website like our competitors had. And obviously, we should have been measuring our outtakes. Sure, we were sending out great content (thankyouverymuch), but we couldn’t back that up to corporate without data from reader surveys to know who was reading what, when and where from our magazine.

In the end, I know I’m unlikely to subscribe to a print magazine. But as a lover of words, it’s good to know there are brands out there doing their part to keep editorial alive.