Not Another Holiday Card

Don’t look now, but the holidays are coming. Before you order your standard corporate holiday cards, let’s explore your options.

Oh yes, there are options.

You could not send a card and be villanized as a Scrooge. You could send singing telegrams, but your interns may protest.

Or you could go digital!

A digital holiday card lets you express your company’s attitude and gratitude to your clients in a unique way that won’t get lost in the avalanche of cards sure to decorate their desks.

Abandoning the traditional in favor of being original opens up a world of animation, audio and design possibilities that will leave a lasting impression and have your clients wondering how you’ll top that next year!

Our Creative Services Team has their elf hats on and we’re ready to help you stand out this holiday. Give us a call or drop an email and we can brainstorm in time for the holidays.

Because It’s Not Just a Phone Anymore

Remember when cell phones were the size of a brick and were used to make calls? Only?

Every generation of phone since then was challenged to be smaller, thinner, lighter, sleeker. Even more importantly, later generations were made with screens.

It’s an old story from here: people started using their phones for so much more than making calls. It really wasn’t long at all before phones became more like computers than their corded predecessors.

But still we valued smaller, thinner, lighter. At least we did before Internet and mobile media consumption came into its own. Now people care less about how well their phone fits in their pocket and more about if they have to squint to see the screen’s content.

Wired’s Gadget Lab just released an article covering media’s shift back to larger phones with greater screen sizes. They site sizes up to 4.5-5.5 inches are garnering more market interest when compared to the previously popular 3.4 inches. In fact, according to the article, "At the end of last year, 24 percent of smartphone handsets sold had a screen size of 4 inches or more."

So what does this mean for you?

It means your content is going to look even better on phones. Right now, you can easily have your content read on multiple smartphones. You can choose to have both images and text display, or just the text. With a larger screen, however, you can expect more readers to enjoy using their smartphones to access your content, and images and advertisements will be easier to view.

See where publishers are pushing their content now with this eReader Guide:

 (pg 4 of the eReader Guide)

 

 

 

Does Digital-Only Make Sense For You?

"Online Only Magazines Gain Traction," says this CNBC article. Well of course. We’ve watched as everything from advertising to commerce to entertainment moved online. Magazines, brochures, catalogs and collateral is no exception.

The question is, does this venue make sense for YOU?

The CNBC article offers a brief look at one publication that started digital, and due to the magazine’s success online, is considering adding a print component as well. This model made sense to the founder, who used to work for a print magazine and saw an opportunity to take advantage of a gap in a digital niche.

Several of our clients have a similar story, and they have found the digital-only model achieves their goals without needing a print component. 495 Communications, for instance, produced a digital-only travel magazine to reach specialized niches with their gorgeous content.

Similar to the magazine mentioned in the article, Business Media offers a trendy furniture and home design magazine, Furniture & Interiors, in digital-only format for its readers.

One publisher, TechGen Media Group, takes the digital-only model a step further. Not only is their trade magazine, eFab Shop, digital-only, but they also take advantage of our in-house design services to handle the production process. They simply hand over their raw files and completed ads, and we take care of the rest. (I personally enjoyed the article featuring Jay Leno on page 8.)

Take a look at these samples and consider if a digital-only model would be cost-effective, time-efficient, and worthwhile for your organization. If you would like to talk through the possibilities available to you, our Success Management Team is prepared to talk about where your audience is and how you can best reach them.

The AMS Most

The Affinity Digital Magazine Scorecard was recently released, rating 170 magazine titles and placing them into "Most" categories, such as Most Authoritative, Most Enjoyable, or Most Useful.

However, MediaPost provided a perspective which gives a focal point for the story created by the scorecard. The article quotes Affinity Managing Director Tom Robinson as saying Most Innovative category is an:

"especially telling attribute in terms of looking at the prospects for digital magazines, because ‘magazines are now competing with all of the content and advertising available in digital form, not just their traditional set of print competitors. Only those brands that leverage the latest technologies in creative ways and offer consumers interactive and meaningful experiences will stand out among digital users.’"

Digital publishing, while not exactly a new industry, is still coming into its own with the advent of the tablet and new technology pushes. While fitting into Most categories is important, consider which Most categories will still be around in the future.

Publishers Talk Tech

Recently, Folio: released an article entitled "Top Tech" in which interviewed publishing executives discussed which technologies had the biggest impact on their companies in the past year. Among those mentioned (some more than once) were the following:

• Lead behavior tracking and data
• Social networking
• Mobile apps
• Omniture analytics
• Relevant content delivery based on behavior

Much of the conversation seemed to involve reacting to user behavior, either in tracking readers’ interaction with content or in discerning how audiences preferred to receive content. Data is an intrinsically valuable resource which publishers have always craved, and today’s technology allows them access to this intelligence. Recognizing this value, Nxtbook Media has many of these features already built into the interface or has the ability to add them with the publisher’s request. To position your content on the cutting edge and to gain the abilities publishing executives are calling the most impactful in their business, consider which technologies you would like inherent in your digital edition interface.

Case Studies in Custom Publishing Webinar

Custom publishing is constantly being redefined as it shifts and grows in the marketplace. Some use custom publishing to increase engagement with their current audience, set their content miles apart from their competition, and boost brand awareness across new mediums. Others seek to create something their audience can really be excited about and engage with, while still others use it to discover a niche audience for their brand. 

On Thursday, July 21 at 2:00 EST/EDT, you have the opportunity to hear case studies in custom publishing in a free webinar hosted by Folio: and sponsored by Nxtbook Media. In one hour, three speakers will explain how they used custom publishing to achieve their goals. There will even be time for you to ask questions.

Register for the webinar by clicking above or by clicking here.

For more information on the speakers, click here.

You’ve Got to Circle Readers with Content

Face it: your audience is crawling all over the Web.  That’s one of the reasons why so many publishers have made the move to getting their materials online. Creating digital editions is a crucial step to developing an online presence. But chances are, if your readers like your publication, they’ll appreciate more chances to interact with your brand and your content on other platforms. We have a couple of plans to help you circle your fans with content they can interact with.

1. Animated buttons and toolbar buttons – sharing to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn has always been as intuitive to our platforms as it is to your readers. We’ve just taken it a step further: from intuitive to obvious.
2. YouTube – Adding video to your content calendar provides engaging content for your digital edition AND increases your online influence. This publisher set up their own YouTube channel for their publication, Beauty LaunchPad.
3. Facebook Page – As of right now, 45,893,447 people “Like” Facebook, and Facebook stats report over 500 million active users. Somewhere in there, your readers are bouncing from page to page, clicking "Like" as they go. Some publishers take advantage of this: NailPro magazine’s page provides a meeting ground for readers and editors and those interested in the industry, and they have incurred 8,677 "Likes" so far.
4. Twitter Thoughts – Having readers follow your brand on twitter is an easy way to consistently interact with them on a large and small scale. Take Connections which uses the medium to post links to articles as well as respond to readers’ tweets.

Building an online presence can take time and resources, but the efforts enable current readers to have a deeper engagement with your brand and new readers have a chance to find your publication on platforms they already frequent. To that end, Nxtbook Media Creative Services Team can help you plan and implement a social media strategy to increase your online influence. Simply click here and tell us what you need or contact your Account Manager to get started.

It’s Time to Increase Your Tweets

Twitter announced yesterday a new “follow” button coded to make following publishers, businesses, writers, editors and others easier. The button enables you to follow Twitter users without being redirected to Twitter’s main page. Making it easier for your readers to interact with your brand and your publication through Twitter can encourage readers to return to your publication, share it with friends and generate a discussion about your content.

If you are not convinced your digital publication can benefit from using social media such as Twitter, consider the interview I had with Taz Thornton, editor of Tweeting Times and co-founder of Turquoise Tiger, just this morning. This digital-only publication is written for their Twitter followers about celebrities and people of note on Twitter. In the interview, Thornton explained the magazine’s circulation is based solely on Twitter hype and social sharing. Yet the results and support they’ve found is astounding. A case study on their success will be released shortly, but here is a sneak preview of some of the benefits Thornton noted:

“As fast as I could clear my screen, there were more people following and tweeting about Tweeting Times”
“There is a genuine affection from the tweeting community and people have really gotten behind it.”
“Of course with the success of Tweeting Times people have come to us asking us to handle their social media or train them on it or present it. … We’re producing something successfully and big name tweeters are behind us and support us.”
“It helps to have a publication out there for a real cause, to find out what really motivates people and the real news and real stories without having a hidden agenda.”
“When [advertisers] can see it and see the brands and the magic, they’re there, right away.”

Keep an eye out for the soon-to-be-released case study to read more about how this digital-only magazine spreads across twitter. To check out Tweeting Times today, click here.

To begin your own social media campaign, talk to one of our account managers to craft a strategy to match your audience and business model.

Buying An App Shouldn’t Be This Hard

Chances are, you’ve already been pitched about having your own native app. Chances are the pitch sounded a lot like this. But if you’re looking to get your content onto mobile and tablet devices for less money than you thought with a strategy that makes sense, give your Nxtbook Account Manager a call today!

 

HTML5: Not to Say “I Told You So”

Still wondering if you should design in Flash or HTML5? This infographic, created by Periscopic, should cut your evaluation time in half.

Some key points they bring to light:

Flash: The Flash potential audience includes 2+billion users (compared to HTML5′s 800+ million and Apple iOS’s 20+ million users) and is supported by browsers with the top market share, including mobile, desktop, and laptop browsers.

HTML5: Less than half of browsers support HTML5 at this point, and top browsers (IE, Firefox, etc.) only partially support some HTML5 features. Even support on Apple’s default browser is "incomplete".

Apple iOS: While Safari iOS – Apple’s default browser – accounts for much of the mobile traffic, it only claims about 2% of the total browser market.

Ultimately, though HTML5 is still developing, Flash continues to reach the broadest audience. In the market today, Flash use is still very much in the majority for websites and video players. For devices that don’t support Flash – which largely means Apple devices – native apps are still a viable option.

Any way you cut it, Nxtbook can help you reach the 99% of browsers supporting Flash AND on Apple devices AND other mobile devices through mobile browsers. As we mentioned before, HTML5 is a great idea in theory, but while we’re waiting for that to catch up in the marketplace, we’ll keep getting your content where it needs to be right now.

« Previous Page — Next Page »