Audience Engagement Research- Womens Health

Women’s Health is a health and fitness magazine geared towards women encouraging a healthy body, mindset, and lifestyle. Although the content of this magazine and the target audience is a little different than that of mine, I feel as though it reaches the outer parts of my audience rather than only the core. Similar to my magazine, Women’s Health is published mainly for women. The age group of this magazine is a little higher however the readers aren’t drastically older and it still target some you’ve aged as well. A majority of the readers are 35+ , but it reaches readers of the age of 18 as well. Similar to my magazine, Women’s Health is geared toward women who are interested in maintaining a healthy appearance and doing what they can to make them feel beautiful. Women’s Health also reviews products that women enjoy. Women’s Health markets their products similar to other magazines, which is on social media. They frequently post on social media platforms to promote and share their content. Along with social media, Women’s Health does frequent advertising through email as well as they made the magazine digital which is more convenient with the rise of technology. A way that Women’s Health also promotes themselves with their print is by putting their magazines in public places where people will be prone to read it, such as in doctors offices. This is convenient and an effective method in sharing their product. This technique of putting their magazines in convenient places is one I may use because nothing will promote the product better than seeing it yourself.

Audience Engagement Research- Cosmopolitan

Cosmopolitan is a widely enjoyed magazine for women that focuses on beauty, fashion, and other aspects of pop culture. Our target audiences are similar because both magazines reach a somewhat younger age range of women. Cosmopolitan reaches out to readers ranges from 18-34 years of age. Most of the women have a steady income, but are not overly wealthy, with a salary of at least $30k. This is also because a large number of the readers are still in college. Cosmopolitan also reaches out to women who enjoy beauty, fashion, pop culture, etc. Cosmopolitan mostly uses social media to market their product. This is because 80% percent of their readers are mobile users. They use platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Google+, and YouTube. Cosmopolitan is one of the largest magazines in the world. For this reason they use many digital platforms to market their product to go along with all their printed magazines. Cosmopolitan is very active in social media such as Instagram and Twitter. There was a 445% increase on Instagram users for Cosmo. For their marketing, Cosmo uses celebrities and other intriguing news to catch readers attention. Making their social media posts very frequent keeps the magazine constantly in the public’s eye. Cosmo also makes their social media such a large part of sharing their content as it is easily accessible and liked. For example, as seen in the picture below, Cosmo presents one of their magazines photos on Instagram to get readers interested in the magazine. Furthermore, Cosmo heavily uses their website to market their magazine with over 8.2 million page views per month. Cosmo also holds many public events to market the magazine, including flash mobs, pop up stores, etc. This is very effective in directly reaching out to people with human interaction and getting it straight in the public's' eye. I would use the technique of heavily using social media as an outlet for content because it is such a large part of society now. And turning more things digital is becoming more convenient for people.

Audience Engagement Research- Elle Girl

Elle Girl is a worldwide fashion, beauty, celebrity, and advice magazine, however the one I am researching is based in Russia. The target audience of both our magazines are extremely similar based on the people and their interests. Both magazines aim themselves at readers who are heavily interested in beauty and fashion as well as celebrity involvement in beauty and fashion. Normally in many cases, younger people are more interesting in keeping up with trends and with celebrities. Due to this, both magazines have a target audience of younger women. Elle Girl readers range in age from 16-34. The content in the magazine does relate more to the younger readers as this is the more youthful and trendy version of Elle magazine. Being that most of the readers are younger, they most likely do not have a high income level and Elle Girl relates their content to that as well as many readers may be in college and trying to keep up with the trends. Elle Girl uses many digital forms to market their magazine. They use the persuasive technique of promoting their magazine on many social media platforms in order to reach many people and constantly be showing up on peoples devices no matter which platform they are on. They also have a website and a database email newsletter, which personally advertises to readers. The database email newsletter reaches out to each reader personally and frequently reminds them of upcoming news. Along with the emails, there are normally special offers or events included in the magazine which will motivate people to read further and to subscribe. The website offers easy access to the articles and is a frequent substitute for the print magazines. Elle Girl's website receives around 4.5 views per month. The digital platforms they use for marketing are Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, Ellegirl.ru, and VK.com. I would use the technique of attacking many different digital platforms to reach many people for marketing. This is because so many people today prefer to use digital platforms because it is easy to access and inexpensive.

Indesign Class Activity

Today in class we utilized Adobe Indesign to lay out our 2 page spread. The experience of using Adobe Indesign was very overwhelming and confusing. It is set up very differently than the normal platforms I use such as Word and Publisher. The functions on it were much more specific in how they need to be used and there were more functions than usual. I believe that I will use Indesign to make my third quarter revisions because it offers the most applications for my article, even though it is confusing to use. I only have a few revisions to make. If it becomes to difficult to use, I will use Publisher instead because I am more familiar with it. Below is my progress of the day we used Indesign. Since you needed to remake your entire article in this platform, it is mostly incomplete. I also was still figuring out the functions of Indesign.

My Target Audience

My target audience is yyounger women, ranging from around the ages 13-30. Since these are younger women, there isnt a definite income level of the target audience, however it does cover all kinds of different income levels for the most part. This is because people of all income levels beautify themeselves and people also tend to try to save money in their beauty. The magazine is geared toward a target audience that is interesting in beauty, how it works, what products to use, who uses what, success in the area, etc. My magazine will be appealing to younger beauty enthusiasts and beauty product users because it very eye-catching and fun to read. It offers a range of topics through that will interest different people of different ages, experience, and income. Overall it is an informative and exciting magazine for young women.

Feedback and Revisions

I did not receive much feedback from my midterm presentation because for the most part I included everything that was necessary. My cover was said to look very nice, I only had the suggestion of making sure my writing was centered in its spot and that it lined up nicely with my cover photo. I also need to put my page numbers on all my pages. Finally, I need to make sure my pictures are properly aligned in my article and I may need to make my article a little shorter so that I can fit another picture. These revisions will ensure that my magazine looks very realistic and that it s fully symmetrical and pleasing to the eye. I will carry out these revisions in Microsoft Word and Publisher, where I made the original pages, because the revisions are very small.

Use of Conventions

How does your product use or challenge conventions of your genre?
My magazine uses many conventions of the genre of beauty. In my magazine, I cover all three components of beauty: makeup, hair, and skin. My magazine includes many ads spread throughout that would advertise various beauty products. My articles are all mixed about, but cover many interests of makeup, hair, and beauty as well as people involved in the industry. Many beauty magazine have a unique and eye catching article to be their feature, which I included with my article on stage makeup. I noticed that many beauty magazines include celebrities, so I was sure to include celebrities in a few of my pieces. I organized my table of contents to each different component of beauty which is something that is done in this genre. Finally, I maintained a very girly atmosphere throughout the magazine as this genre normally appeals to women.

How does it represent social groups or issues?
My magazine mainly targets the social group of young women in today's society. Makeup is such a large part of society today and how women try to express themselves, and this is especially true in young women. Younger women are constantly keeping up with trends, trying to impress people, and constantly beautifying themselves. With my featured article, I wrote it about stage makeup because so much of the makeup that people do today, originated from the stage. The makeup that young women wear is so intense and I felt that my featured article was very informative on that. Keeping my magazine fresh and bright was also effective in representing the social group of young women, along with things such as my celebrity articles and quizzes.