I launched Magenta Magazine in September 2017 and just knew that my millennial readers would love the brand as much as I do.
Magenta was launched because we identified the huge potential to launch a female millennial product over Africa as there’s not a lot of resources for African women to get the latest fashion, celeb and lifestyle news.
Under the mentorship of Grant Fredericks, CEO of African News Agency, I’ve managed to create and grew my website from 2890 unique visitors in the first month to over 105 000 visitors per month in less than 5 months.
We’ve also managed to get over 220 000 page views over that one month period – all by working hard and implementing effective online strategies based on research and digital consumer trends.
My motto is ‘CONTENT IS QUEEN’ and quality over quantity will always result in returning visitors and long term results.
Our top 5 countries – Reader Demographics
South Africa 29.3%
Kenya 22.6%
Nigeria 16%
Namibia 10.7%
Ghana 7.7%
Magenta readership growth since launch in September 2017
| MONTH | UB | % GROWTH |
| September | 2890 | 285% |
| October | 11474 | 297% |
| November | 22199 | 93.5% |
| December | 36100 | 62.6% |
| January | 47820 | 32.5% |
| February | 105250 | 120% |
| March | 98184 | -6.7% (due to regular site crashes and server updates – we had too many readers on our site, so we had to upgrade our server to accommodate the growing website traffic.) |
EXAMPLE OF OUR MAGENTA STYLE CATEGORY
SOCIAL MEDIA
Social media is our biggest traffic source as almost 70% from our readers are directed to Magenta via our social platforms.
It’s important to stay authentic to your brand. We use our Instagram platform to enhance our brand identity with is fashion forward, youthful and pink.
With Twitter our strategy is to follow the latest trending topics and post breaking content as it happens. For example we immediately wrote a short online feature when it was announced that Bonang Matheba will be hosting Miss South Africa 2018.
See reaction to our tweet with link to site below:
Besides using our Facebook Page as a website driving tool, I believe it’s extremely important to engage with your audience and build conversation around relevant topics.
8 tips to grow your online traffic from my experience:
- Identify your brand’s USP – Unique Selling Point – and stick to it.
- Invest in social media advertising. Start off with a small budget and tailor your target audience.
- Stay up to date with the latest breaking news and produce and upload trending content while it’s still hot and happening.
- Use visuals to keep your readers longer on your site to lower your bounce rate. Research has shown that you only have four seconds to grab a person’s attention online, so make it worth their while… and data.
- Invest in a proper SEO strategy by making use of keywords, alt & meta tags, image captions, inbound & outbound links.
- Use relevant on hashtags to increase your posts on social media.
- Finally, my golden rule is – if I won’t read it, I’m not posting about it.
- My CEO told me in the beginning that I need to be ready for the ‘blood, sweat and tears’ moments. All of the above have happened, but if you believe in yourself and your brand, the results WILL show.
I’m not with Magenta anymore due to a promotion to Head of Digital at a Publishing House, but Magenta will always be my ‘baby’ and it served as a great research experiment to show that you can achieve anything you put your mind on.
Go to magentamagazine.co.za for all the latest lifestyle, fashion and celebrity news.
Always Anne 