Reader’s Digest has attracted a large audience to one of its latest digital initiatives. New data from comScore Media Metrix about Allrecipes.ca and Allrecipes.qc.ca, the company's food and recipe social networking sites, shows they have averaged over 1.7 million unique visitors per month since October 2009.

“Food is one of the biggest affinities for Reader’s Digest as a company in Canada and in other markets,” says Reader’s Digest Canada’s vice president of digital media and strategic partnerships, Yann Paquet.

He says several of the company’s brands such as Reader’s Digest, Best Health and Sélection feature content about food and nutrition, so making a “social media site focusing on food and recipes and bringing the community aspect to it was just the natural next step for us.”

The website consists of user generated content. Once you join the community users can post, rate, comment on and chat about recipes. The online community can also be accessed through an iPhone application.

Paquet says the website’s audience is completely separate from the people who read the magazines. “It’s really a different brand, it’s a completely different community. Most of the traffic to the Allrecipes sites comes from people searching for information on recipes,” he says. “It’s a search traffic model.”

This project is about increasing company’s audience reach, Paquet says, “not taking the readers of the magazine to a different user experience online.” He says the company packages Allrecipes with their other titles to attract advertisers.