To find out what I needed to include in my college magazine I designed and carried out a questionnaire asking what other college students looked for in a college magazine and whether or not they would buy one.
After combining my results with the whole class we found that 80% of students thought that it would be a good idea for the college to have a magazine, But then only 10% said they would definitely buy it leaving 45% saying no and 45% possibly buying it. From this research we knew we had to make the magazine successful and interesting so that the 45% saying possibly might fall into the ‘yes’ category if our magazine meets their needs. We had to think about advertising space and how we would advertise it and where. We had to think of ways to make our magazine cover and contents page stand out from any other magazine. To know when the students wanted this magazine we asked how often they would like it published including the options weekly, fortnightly, monthly and every term. From the results we found that 90% of students would prefer for the magazine to be published either every fortnight or on a monthly basis. We then asked how much the students would be willing to pay for the magazine ranging from nothing – £1.50, overall 60% of students said that they would pay for the magazine but as well as this 80% of students said that they wouldn’t subscribe to the magazine, therefore we decided to make the first issue free to interest the audience into subscribing if the magazine is good enough for them. In order to know what our target audience want to read about and what they want included in the college magazine we asked them, the results had shown that gossip page, college information, course information, events guide and a job section came out to be the most popular. It’s easy to just think that the students will just buy the magazine and read it but what will make them want to buy it? Most students responded with bright colours, pictures and an eye catching page as a reasons that would encourage them to buying it and they all chose a picture of a student to be printed on the front of the cover.