Physics Today puts your advertising to work.Fall 2015

How Does Your Facebook Audience Grow?

A Q&A SHEDS LIGHT ON HOW PHYSICS TODAY EARNED MORE THAN 2.4 MILLION FACEBOOK FANS.

Charles Day, Physics Today’s online content editor, recently presented at the Association Media & Publishing 2015 Annual Meeting—a membership organization that serves association publishers, business executives, marcom professionals, design-ers, and content creators. He discussed Physics Today’s social media strategy as it relates to Facebook and how he brought its following past 2.4 million likes. Added Value asked Day to

explain some of the success factors of his work with Facebook and how to generate an online community that is engaged and growing, with your organization as the center.

Added Value: Describe the growth over time of Physics Today’s Facebook audience.Day: We started in April 2010 with around 400 fans; now we have more than 2.4 million. The growth rate in between has been highly variable—sometimes linear, sometimes exponential! Right now the page is acquiring new fans at a rate of about 1,000 per day.

AV: What are the most important aspects of building a strong Facebook audience?Day: Your audience will respond to content that is so interesting that they share it with their network. Some of those people will become new fans who go on to share with their friends. It’s a snowball effect. Also, keep in mind that most Facebook users do not click through to the links you post. Most of your posts should be self-contained.

AV: What are some of the pitfalls to avoid when trying to grow a Facebook audience?Day: There’s a different audience on every platform, so don’t post exactly the same content everywhere. When you set up your Facebook page, think carefully about its scope. If the scope is too narrow, you won’t be able to find enough interesting things to post each day.

AV: How is Physics Today’s Facebook audience different from its magazine audience?Day: Our Facebook fans are younger, more international, and less likely to be profes-sional physicists than our magazine readers. A typical Facebook fan could be a physics major at a university in India.

AV: Why is a Facebook presence important for organizations to engage and grow?Day: Facebook has more than a billion active users. No other medium offers such a large potential audience.

Physics Today ’s Seven Lessons for a Successful Facebook Page

Post content that is of broad interest—so your fans will share it with their friends.

Make the text of your posts self-contained—so your fans won’t always have to click.

Post interesting content—so Facebook’s news feed algorithm will favor you.

Widen your editorial scope— so you can cover more topics.

Interesting = fresh, relevant, engaging, and informative— just like in other media.

Study your page’s statistics— so you can identify popular types of posts.

Don’t expect Facebook to drive traffic—your Facebook page is your outlet.

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Why Some Marketers Are Calling Print “The Secret Weapon”According to Canvas magazine managing editor Michael Pallerino, print is a powerful strategy for B2B marketing. In his article “The Bridge: Defining print’s role in the digital marketing age,” Pallerino tells the tale of Full Circle CRM’s 2014 campaign aimed at CMOs. The company created, printed, and mailed a 16-page booklet that hit home with its target audience.

And it worked.“For a company that pro-

vides marketers full response lifecycle management solutions in their quests to acquire accurate and defining ROI, the highly specialized print campaign hit the mark,” writes Pallerino. “In a time where most, if not all, organizations are shifting their budgets toward the digital side, print is becoming a highly targeted way to make your message stand out,” he explains.

This ability to help your message stand out is a key element in a multi-channel strategy, and especially at this

time, when so many mar-keting budgets are skewing toward digital.

Print serves to engage your audience in places where your competitors are not, Pallerino notes. And while digital has become a low-barrier and inexpensive commodity, print continues to be seen as higher value.

Clive Sirkin, CMO for Kim-berly-Clark notes, “We don’t believe in digital marketing. We believe in marketing in a digital world.” That distinction is quite important to note, and puts the idea of modern marketing strategy into a clearer context.

“Heading into 2015, the consensus is clear—marketing campaigns that immerse audiences in a memorable experience will be the win-ners. That said, there is room for a lot of channels, including print,” Pallerino writes.

In your next advertising plan, remember it’s all about creating a well-rounded marketing stream, and print makes big waves.

Buy a domain, launch a website, and start talking up your prod-uct on Facebook. Many small business owners over the past decade have been made to believe that this is the way to success.

Too bad they are wrong, for the most part.

“When you run a small business, it can be easy to think that the only ways of advertis-ing that matter are those that are free—your Twitter account, your Facebook page, and so on,” writes Boris Dzhingarov in Tech Co. “However, these styles of marketing do have their faults. In a lot of cases, it is better to spend a little bit of your budget on advertising your business, rather than just going with the things you can do on the Internet for ‘free’,” he continues.

Why? For starters, con-sumers pay more attention to print than digital ads.

According to Dzhing-arov, “when it comes to advertising, people see endless online adverts every single day. As a result of this,

people have become desensi-tized to advertising.”

And while “free” is cer-tainly tempting to an under-funded company, print media is surprisingly affordable.

“You can get a really good return on your investment because you are using a way of approaching people that they won’t have already seen 500 times today. You are giving them something tangible that they can keep, and will refer back to,” Dzhingarov says.

Lastly, your print ad offers permanence that can’t be replicated by digital (unless you…ahem…print it out).

“Never underestimate how much people like to have something they can hold, touch, and retain.”

We see small businesses struggling every day to figure out social media and SEO. Those things can be useful, sure, but they cer-tainly shouldn’t form your entire marketing strategy. Think print and gain some instant exposure.

Why Invest in Print Ads? Because They’re Worth It

These article excerpts, by David Pilcher, originally appeared on Freeport Press at www.freeportpress.com.

Study Shows Print Is Preferred

PUBLISHERRandolph A. Nanna

EDITORChristina Unger

MANAGING EDITORMelanie Bracey

PUBLICATION DESIGNERZon Buckley

CONTRIBUTING WRITER David Pilcher

Added Value is published quar-terly for Physics Today by The YGS Group, 3650 West Market Street, York, PA 17404. ©2015. Sourced articles have been edited for style and fit.

We’ve been saying this for a while now: study after study confirms that consumers by and large prefer printed paper over digital readers when consuming all types of information (marketers agree). There’s yet another study that confirms this statistic.

In May 2015, Two Sides North America, a global non-profit organization of graphic communications industry professionals focused on sustainable print practices, conducted a study with the help of research organization Toluna focusing on what mediums consumers prefer to read from, print or digital. The results tell it like it is: Readers continue to prefer reading in print.

Portions of this article are by David Pilcher of Freeport Press and were originally published at www.freeportpress.com. For more information on Two Sides North America, and to view the complete results of the study, visit www.twosidesna.org.

Source: “Reading From Paper or Reading From Screens. What Do Consumers Prefer?” A survey of U.S. consumers, undertaken by Two Sides, May 2015.

PRINT KEEPS READERS FOCUSED

Readers reported being much less distracted when reading print than when using digital methods, with only 23 percent reporting being easily distracted while reading print.

77%

PRINT ADS ATTRACTof respondents reported paying more attention to advertising in print magazines, much more than the 26 percent who say they pay more attention to online magazine ads.

64%

PRINT EASES COMPREHENSIONA majority of respondents said they prefer reading print documents when the subject matter is complex.80%

OPT IN TO PRINT

of readers surveyed said when given an option, they choose to read print over digital formats. This is consistent across all age groups, with 77 percent of respondents from 18–65 and older choosing print.

81%

REMEMBERING PRINT of respondents said they retain information better from print than other formats.88%

81%PRINT IS RELAXING

of respondents said they are most relaxed when reading print materials. Specifically when it comes to magazines, 75 percent of respondents said they are more relaxed and receptive reading print magazines.

American Institute of PhysicsOne Physics EllipseCollege Park, MD 20740

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