It’s Always Good To Share. Or Is It?

These days, we all live in an inter-connected world. And most of the time, that’s great.

Social media like Facebook and Twitter lets us stay in touch with friends and family across the world. It keeps us up to date with current events, too.

Here at the “Friend”, we use social media a lot. Not just to communicate directly and instantly with our readers, but to talk about all the great stories and features in every issue of the magazine. It’s an important way for us to attract the attention of new readers.

We also love it when our writers, contributors and the organisations we feature in the “Friend” spread the word. It’s fantastic to see how proud they are to be part of the longest running women’s magazine in the world.

But . . . there are occasions when it’s not so good to share.

And that’s when we see people posting complete stories and features from our latest issues on social media.

While we do understand that good intentions lie behind this sort of behaviour, it does cause concern.

Think before sharing

If excited contributors, interviewees and featured organisations share the whole story, anyone who wants to read it can do so there and then.

They don’t need to buy the magazine, which means a lost sale.

I’ve written before about how magazines live and die by the number of copies they sell. Put bluntly, sharing our content for free is a risk to the long-term survival of the print magazine.

After all, that interested person who might have been prompted to buy the “Friend” to read a particular article could have become a regular reader. Or even a subscriber.

It’s also important to be aware that the copyright of each printed magazine page belongs to the publisher.

We don’t want to discourage people from using social media to spread the word that their work is being featured in the “Friend”. Far from it!

But please take care to use a photograph of just a portion of your story or feature to accompany your post.

It’s in all of our interests to ensure that the “Friend” continues to thrive!

For more from the “Friend” team, read our blog here.