Reader Engagement Is Such A Buzz Word
Wedding World is waking up to the power of digital marketing, and it is about time!
Reader engagement is such a buzz word, along with content is key!
When I started in corporate world we were singing from the same hymn book, how times have changed. No more internal memo envelopes, now we Skype, What’s App, Tweet or Snap chat. So surely it is time that the industry I love, adore and luckily work in joins this digital revolution. Finally it has! Wedding World is waking up to the power of digital marketing, and it is about time! In October 2013 we launched our interactive digital magazine, for the past year we have been told we are ahead of our time in this industry, so it is good to see venues and suppliers now incorporating the use of video and CTB in their promotions.
I love a good book, I really do, but in the world of weddings over 90% of our readers are online, using search sites and blogs to find their essential wedding ingredients so for us, the move from print to digital was an easy one. We took it one step further as I cannot understand why a digital publication does nothing, you click, you flip the next page and that’s about it. So we created an interactive magazine, everything you touch comes to life! You can dress your groom (well some of them do need some help), play make-up artist (not on the groom), you can experience venues/resorts by our use of embedded video which also works offline. Just imagine browsing through a magazine on your tablet/phone and tapping the link to be taken straight through to the website, to add the product straight to a shopping cart, to have 360 degree views of products, videos and so much more; we really do bring everything to life! We are the wedding version of Night At The Museum, without the tablet of Ahkmenrah.
I recently judged the wedding category in the National UK Blog Awards with Lisa Hogg from the Wedding Affair (wedding show organisers and the originators of #weddinghour – the busiest twitter hour for wedding professionals and couples, Wednesday evenings 9-10 – usually trends, you cannot miss it). We had the exact same judging criteria but whereas Lisa was assessing on a pc, I looked at the entries on tablet/mobile. There was quite a differential in our scoring, mainly because Lisa is much nicer than me, I am far more Barry Norman. There were all excellent blogs, worthy of these nominations but I marked harshly on those that were not responsive. Why would you invest so much time/money/personal interpretation in a blog that works in one dimension?
Every business, regardless of size and industry surely must now be looking at their target audience and adopting a marketing strategy that incorporates traditional and technological methods. As marketers we must understand our client’s needs and requirements and deliver to our audience in a way that works for them, our engagement must be responsive, making it a simplified process for client and user to connect.
For one such as me, a self-professed digital dinosaur, the speed and method of communication still astounds me. I got my first mobile phone at the age of 26, if any of you remember the Sony mars bar phone! Now every man, woman and child has some form of device. The kings of media are now the buying agencies, the film makers and the users. Every industry is forging ahead, developing a digital strategy that will see them move ahead of their competitors, finding new and unique ways to capture that all important audience and market share.
I still sing from the hymn book, only now it is purely digital. In the autumn we move to television, in a groundbreaking move to revolutionise the
Wedding planning process for brides and grooms around the world. We have joined forces with VIVE Lifestyle Network to launch Ultimate Wedding Channel & Ultimate Wedding Guide, a 24/7 wedding-themed interactive television channel complemented by a dynamic, interactive all-video directory, respectively. We like to think of ourselves as pioneers (well we are the originators of the only fully interactive wedding magazine in the world). This strong union will create a worldwide channel unique in content, quality, reach engagement and value.
We maybe the only ones doing the digital dance in our industry, but we have taken our lead from market leaders across the globe. Brands who have embraced responsive engagement are our mentors, and we cannot wait to see how the latest technology demands more from us as publishers, and how much more our audience demands from us in respect to deliverance.
Have a sneaky peak at what we do: