As we were flipping though our Google Reader, this blog from The New York Times caught our eye. According to the Media Decoder, help for businesses owners on how to work Facebook marketing and Twitter for business can soon be found in a magazine. Four magazines, to be exact; they are expected to cover everything from LinkedIn for businesses to the latest in Twitter trends. Tweeting & Business, LI & Business, fb & Business and The Big G & Business, respectively, are the brainchildren of GSG World Media and will be sold at Office Depot Stores for $7.95 a pop. The magazines are clearly the publishing world’s reaction to social media marketing and will naturally also be available in a variety of digital formats. But do “how-to guides” to social media marketing signal an end to the popular platform or a new beginning in accessibility?
According to publisher Eric Yaverbaum, the magazines are meant to help demystify social media marketing for the masses. “Small business owners and entrepreneurs are all trying to figure social media out,” Yaverbaum told the Times. “Print magazines help make the information accessible to them. There will be great success stories and useful information.”
The concept of traditional magazines and how relevant they actually are is a conversation for another day. Still, we see no reason against a publishing boom around a topic everybody wants to know more about. If sewing and fly-fishing can have their own magazines, why should social media be any different? Business journals like these sell well and it would be ironic and fitting if social media wound up helping old school media.
Mainly, the social media marketing magazine craze re-enforces what we’ve known for some time: Small business owners are ready to empower their companies’ online marketing with social media. And we think that’s terrific. Now excuse us while we grab a coffee and curl up with the latest issue of FourSquare Fancy.
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