• by Fern Siegel , July 24, 2019

Clicking “likes” is a dominant feature of social media. And it is a big factor in charting the popularity of magazines.

Per the latest social-media report from MPA-The Association of Magazine Media, the follower growth on magazines showed a 6.3% hike for Instagram in the second quarter versus the first.

The 270 magazine brands, from the 33 member media companies that participated in the study, include lifestyle, news, sports and tech titles.

The recent report, which tracked Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, found likes/followers in total increased to 1.1 billion in the last three months. Facebook accounted for 46% of that share. But the plus for Instagram came in growth, YOY, adding 19.7 million likes for a 6.3% uptick. 

In fact, the MPA notes Instagram has scored the highest growth rate for all three social networks in the past three years.

Facebook lead in sheer volume of fans for the magazine industry, but Instagram “takes the lead in engagement with a media Engagement Factor of 4,532 versus 2,890 for non-magazine brands for Q1 2019," says the report.

The methodology to calculate social-media engagement: comparing social-media actions (likes, comments, favorites, retweets, repins, sharing, etc.) to publisher posts.

Getting greater traction digitally is a plus for magazines. As of June 30, the top five magazine brands for likes/followers were: ESPN The Magazine, Vogue, Food Network Magazine, National Geographic Traveler and The Economist.

Some of the magazines that increased their Instragram followers include Architectural Digest up 7%, Vanity Fair, up 5% and Elle up 5%. News titles also rose, including The Economist up 13%, The Atlantic up 23%, The New Yorker and Scientific American each grew 6%. 

Instagram hit 1 billion monthly active users this year.

And, despite the hits print has taken, the MPA Centennial Factbook reports 191 new print magazine brands launched in 2018, with a frequency of quarterly or greater. That is a 46% increase over the previous year. The total number of print consumer magazines grew to 7,218 in 2018.