Time magazine is ahead of the times when it comes to having a sound digital IQ in the publishing world.
According to a new report this morning from Ad Age, Time placed first in a new ranking of 87 magazines’ digital intelligence from New York-based think tank L2.
Time scored a “digital IQ” of 140, which puts it squarely in the “genius” category. The ranking “is meant to reflect the quality of magazines’ websites, digital marketing, social-media efforts and mobile presences.”
Ad Age, which poured over the ranking system and its determinations, found that Time earned points for having a Twitter feed “with personality, subscriptions that bundle print with digital access on the iPad and online, a robust Facebook page, a range of apps for various devices and a drive to try new things.”
People magazine finished second overall and Cosmopolitan rounded out the top ten.
Seven magazines – near the tail end of the ranking – were dubbed “feeble.” Those publications include: Traditional Home, Muscle & Fitness, Elle Decor, Star, Men’s Journal, Town & Country and In Touch Weekly.
Surprisingly, “there is a weak relationship between a magazine’s circulation and its number of Facebook likes or Twitter followers,” L2 found. Conversely, the more “fans” a publication has on Facebook, for example, the more difficult it can be to manage those relationships and keep fans engaged.
“While much of the conversation regarding Facebook has been about the size of an organization’s page, we believe that a more important metric is the percentage of the community interacting with brand content,” L2 says. “Across magazines, interaction rates were negatively correlated with page size.”
