Dive Brief:
- New York Magazine decided last year that its social media focus was going to be Instagram, and it was specifically looking to increase followers and engagement, according to the publisher.
- Since kicking off the Instagram campaign, the magazine grew its followers from 190,000 to more than 475,000 over the last year.
- The effort included weekly meetings with the photo department to discuss upcoming magazine art that can be used on Instagram, the launch of a social graphics channel on communications platform Slack to collaborate on creating custom graphics, and the creation of an in-house tool to enable social media teams to more easily create their own graphics.
Dive Insight:
With time and resources, New York Magazine's Instagram strategy has paid off in a big way. The publisher more than doubled its Instagram followers in a year's time, with the magazine's teams finding new and creative ways to bring their storytelling to the highly visual social platform.
The team described their most ambitious Instagram project as the “Audiogram” experiment they did for the magazine’s “Cosby: The Women” issue. The project included photos and video interviews with the women who have come forward during the sexual misconduct revelations surrounding Bill Cosby.
Lainna Fader, New York Magazine’s engagement editor and manager of the social media team, explained that they didn’t want to replicate the website or print experience on Instagram with the Audiogram experiment. They also wanted to avoid the typical auto-play 15-second video clip found on the social platform. Instead the team created an Instagram-specific type of media that included a static image with a pull-quote overlay with 15 seconds of audio loop on top. The idea was to appeal to users with an experience that included audio and video.
“We know people engage on Instagram within Instagram, so we look to provide the richest experience for them within the platform using audio, custom art, and photography they won’t see anywhere else,” New York Magazine Social Media Editor Tara Abell told Marketing Dive about the team's overall approach to Instagram.