Saturday, April 23, 2011

Family Magazine Trivia #4

FAMILY Magazine 20th Anniversary Trivia

The very first printed issue of FAMILY Magazine was the April 1992 issue. It was printed the end of March at a printing company in Silver Spring, Maryland. We had 26 advertisers. Over the next 20 years we have printed 18,704,000 copies of FAMILY Magazine, and have had over 48,000 advertisers. We have printed over 800 guides and resource lists. There have been 18 Best for Families surveys. We have sales people who have moved to locations all over the United States and now work for other parenting publications. This is a great job if you are a mom!

Over the years there have been 24 babies born to our employees (our family), many of these while working for FAMILY Magazine. Our most recent addition was a beautiful baby girl born to Annette Cooper who now lives in New York City.

When we first started FAMILY, we only sold print advertising. It was simple, buy an advertisement and be in front of the moms who read our printed magazine. Now, in addition to print advertising, we sell a completely integrated marketing plan that contains many different tools to help companies communicate with moms who are interested in getting the best for their family. We sell online advertisements, Web Tags with landing pages, blog sponsorships, coupons, eBlasts, contest sponsorships and a whole range of tools for social networking. The advertising world has changed and we have been leading the way with every change in technology.

We were the very first publication in this region to have Microsoft Web Tags that made our print magazine interactive. In fact, USA Today did not launch their Web Tag features until February of this year. We have been utilizing them since July of last year. Look for these fun tools throughout the magazine.

Time has flown since that first year, and a great deal has happened. FAMILY Magazine continues to work to be there as a great resource for parents in the Washington region. We sincerely appreciate all our readers and all our advertisers. They are the reason we are here, and it has been a whole lot of fun!

Sunday, April 17, 2011

The Big $Party Cash Giveaway

I know you have heard it before but we are celebrating our 20th Anniversary all year long April is the actual month we first published so we are trying to make it a bit more exciting!

Want to go on a scavenger hunt for cash? Looking to have some fun – and are you willing to tell you friends so they have a chance to win the BIG BUCKS?

We are trying to give away $2000 . . .but you have to Fan us and have your friends Fan us on Facebook. Nothing is ever totally free :-(

Our Big $Party Treasure Chest is starting out with an awesome $1000. For every new FAN we have on Facebook from now through April 22, we will add $2 to the Big $Party Treasure Chest (up to $2000).

Help us fill the Big $Party Treasure Chest by telling all your friends to FAN us on Facebook.

WHERE IS THE PARTY?

Clues for location of the party will be in our eNewsletter. Be sure to sign up for the eNewsletter so you will know where the party is and how to win the CASH.

Here is our web site. www.WashingtonFAMILY.com

On the homepage you can click on Fun Things To Do, To Your Inbox. That's where you can sign up for our eNewsletter. And, then fan us on Facebook. http://www.facebook.com/FAMILYMagazine

You can send the link to all your friends and get them to fan us as well. For every new fan, we add MONEY to the prize.

So, where is the party? You will just have to stay tuned and find out.

Brenda

Saturday, April 16, 2011

Family Magazine Trivia #3

FAMILY Magazine 20th Anniversary Trivia

Our first magazine was produced in the basement of my home. I had a little Mac computer my husband bought and a printer donated by my father. Our first employee was a part time secretary who was a college student. Maureen went on to work for AOL (when they were big) after she graduated from college. Our first home based sales person lived down the street and had 2 little girls. Jeanne found out she was pregnant with her 3rd child not long after coming to work for us.

Our entire creative department was a mom who worked out of her family room surrounded by toys and her two young sons. For several years, I would drop off work on her front porch and go back to pick it up later.

Now we have four people in our production department and work in a beautiful office with new computers that were just installed a few weeks ago. I don’t do much of the creative work any longer, but it is still one of the most enjoyable parts of putting together our magazine. We have a great time planning, brainstorming and just trying ideas out.

My picture this month was taken looking in our production area of the office. We have an open floor plan so that we can all work together and be the most creative team we can be. Our staff is great and it is truly a pleasure to work with them.

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Family Magazine Trivia #2

FAMILY Magazine 20th Anniversary Trivia

When the first magazine was publishing, we delivered it door-to-door in neighborhoods with lots of children. Our phones were constantly ringing and it be became apparent that we needed a better way of getting FAMILY Magazine into the hands of moms and dads who wanted to read it.

We started developing a network of places that moms go—where they sit, where they wait, and where they go to do things with their kids. At first this was a big task, but before long, our phones were constantly ringing again with places that wanted to have the magazine.

In 2011, we will deliver FAMILY Magazine to over 2,900 locations throughout the metro DC area every month and in the course of the year over 2,400,000 parents will read our magazine. My picture this month was taken in one of our 4 warehouse locations where our route managers pick up the magazine each month.

We are confident parents enjoy and benefit from the magazine, and we are confident that we can place it in the Metro DC market where they can find it. If you have a location you would like to add to our list, please let us know. You can also find a list of locations where we restock racks throughout the month by visiting our web site, washingtonfamily.com.

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Awards Season – We’re a Stand Out Publication!

It is always great to hear from your professional peers that you are doing a stand out job. It is also beneficial to give feedback to those on our staff who might not get as many obvious pats on the back – our production staff.

With sales, you can easily see progress just by looking at the numbers. Which month was up, who had the most sales in January, and so on. However, production’s outcomes are less easily quantified. While we all can see the fabulous finished product each month, sometimes it seems they only hear complaints. So I am always looking for ways to let them know what an amazing job they do.

FAMILY Magazine belongs to some national and regional trade organizations whose membership is made up of publications like ours. Sharing ideas and providing feedback on industry issues is a big part of being a member of these groups. Another part is competing against each other to see who can create the best publication. For the first time this year FAMILY Magazine entered the competition.

In the past, we simply did not have time to put together the entries. This year I decided to let our production staff put in the time to enter so they could see how they are doing compared to other publications. It ended up being sort of fun (in a weird – hard work – crisis - work as fast as you can way).

We entered one national and one regional competition. The Association of Free Community Publications (AFCP) is a North American organization of free publications which includes publications in Canada, and has a combined circulation of more than 17 million. The Mid-Atlantic Community Publications Association (MACPA) is an association of community publications delivered free to readers. This association represents the states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia and Washington, D.C.

Just a few days ago we received a letter notifying us that we had won at least one award in the 2011 AFCP Awards Contest. Then on Friday we received an email indicating we had also won an award in the MACPA competition. We are so excited.

The annual meeting for MACPA will be this week. So by Friday of this week we should know what entries are the award-winning ones for MACPA. The annual conference for AFCP, when the awards will be announced, will be held during the first week of May. It is very exciting. I will keep you posted!

Congratulations to our production department. No matter what the award, we already knew they were winners!

Brenda

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Family Magazine Trivia #1

All during 2011 I will be posting trivia from FAMILY Magazine. As we celebrate our 20th year of publishing, it is fun to look back and see where we come from.

Circulation of the first FAMILY Magazine was 18,000. The “paper,” as it was known then, was delivered to homes in areas of Northern Virginia where families with young children lived. By the end of the very first year, the circulation grew to 50,000. In 1994, FAMILY increased its distribution to parents in Maryland and DC. Four years later, we were the largest parenting publication on the East Coast. Today, FAMILY can be found in over 2900 locations where moms go with their kids throughout the Washington, DC Metro area.