Launch the community, then the magazine

The way Future is launching its consumer magazines these days is pretty smart. They don’t just launch a magazine, then try to develop a community around it – they launch the social media presence first:

“It creates a buzz and you also get people who want to contribute to you magazine. Once they realise that it’s a brand, writers and photographers and bloggers will make contact. It’s not only a consumer community but it’s also people who will contribute to the product and advertisers as the Facebook page allows us to create a dialogue with potential commercial partners.”

It’s a clever, agile and iterative approach to both building a product, and having an audience ready at launch.