“Find out how and why magazines carry out a SWOT analysis. Carry out your own SWOT analysis for The Yorkie magazine to identify strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats.”

 

What is a SWOT analysis:

“a study undertaken by an organization to identify its internal strengths and weaknesses, as well as its external opportunities and threats.”

How to carry out a SWOT analysis: 

When carrying out a SWOT analysis, magazines and businesses consider the strengths and weaknesses of the business, as well as opportunities and threats that may arise from the production of the magazine or within the business.

Businesses may choose to conduct a SWOT analysis because it allows them to see where problems may arise for them and how this could be fixed before it happens. Analysing strengths and opportunities ensures the company knows what they are good at and can promote this as much as possible; specifically with magazines, knowing what you are good at and how that makes you different from another magazine can help to make you stand out and be the magazine that customers consume.

In the same sense, knowing your weaknesses and threats as a magazine means you can react to these and make changes so that the impacts are less damaging. For example, knowing a threat to a magazine is the growing numbers of people consuming content online, a magazine company may choose to also post some their content online behind a paywall, like The Economist, in order to make sure that threat has as little impact as possible.        

Strengths:

• The range of sections mean there will be a lot of varying articles in the magazine to reach more of our target audience.
• The target demographic may meet audiences that do not have a magazine that appeals to them in York or that they are interested in, specifically younger people or people with a lower income.
• Having a politics and current affairs section in a magazine with a younger demographic may encourage younger people to get involved with politics, help grow and interest or present views which aren’t represented elsewhere.

Weaknesses:

• The demographic presents the more under-represented in York (younger people, people with lower incomes) and therefore risks limiting the amount that it will be consumed.
• The sections are very broad and therefore stories may overlap sections, meaning some are more full than others.
• Having a politics and current affairs section in a magazine targeting young people may be risky as stereotypically younger people are not interested in politics (although that may be considered untrue now after the last election.)

Opportunities:

• A chance to create a magazine with varying content we previously wouldn’t have been able to write about in other modules.
• Aiming for a different target demographic than the general one in York will hopefully open more media outlets opportunities to people that may feel unrepresented.
• It also means we will be able to write stories that previously have been overlooked because they didn’t fit an organisations demographic.
• The Yorkie website is an already established site which will enable us to promote our content digitally as well as in print.

Threats:

• Legal requirements not being properly acknowledged and therefore receiving fines, getting into trouble etc.
• Limiting the demographic may mean the magazine is less successful because it doesn’t appeal the general public in York (based on my research.)
• Group projects often become heated because they rely on people fulfilling tasks and this doesn’t always happen, this could mean the magazine is not made to the standard it should be.
• Many people in our demographic will consume content online or on mobile devices and may therefore struggle to make them choose print.