Sharing smarter documents: How filesharing services fall short

In BEST PRACTICES
9 November 2018
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Filesharing tools have become an important part of modern digital life. Services like Dropbox store files on the cloud and synchronize them on different devices so that users can share and collaborate. However, they aren’t always the best option for distributing your documents online.

In this article, we will explain five ways that these services can fall short. Plus, learn why digital publishing can offer a great alternative to filesharing.

Lacks polish

Most popular filesharing services began as a tool that allowed users to work on a single file across multiple computers. For teamwork and individual use alike, filesharing is strongly associated with drafts and projects in progress. This can make it a poor choice for sharing finished work. We recommend publishing your reports, presentations and newsletters digitally for professional results.

Statistics not included

Whether you’re sharing sales material with a potential customer, circulating a memo to your team or publishing a magazine, you want information about how it is being viewed. Filesharing services generally do not provide readership statistics, so you won’t know if your audience has opened your document a dozen times or not at all. As an alternative to filesharing, opt for creating a digital publication on Calaméo. You’ll get insights on views and a full range of advanced statistics.

Limited enrichment

Although some filesharing services let users add external links and images to their documents, the possibilities for creating interactive publications are limited. With the Calaméo Editor, you can add links, video, audio and more to your publications in just a few clicks. Then all you have to do is share!

Privacy headaches

Filesharing services often require users to choose between making their documents available to everyone and approving viewers for private documents one-by-one. Want a single, private link to send to your whole mailing list? It’s easy with Calaméo. Just select “Allow access with a private URL” in your publication’s Properties. If you need more security, set up password protection for your documents with our Subscribers feature.

One look fits all

Since filesharing solutions focus on drafting, editing and modifying documents, they offer few options for tailoring your publication’s final appearance to your needs. Digitally published documents benefit from a dedicated viewer and on Calaméo, it’s fully customizable. You can add a logo, change the colors and even add your own buttons so that your publication matches your brand perfectly.

While filesharing services can be great for collaboration, digital publishing is a better fit for sharing professional, interactive documents with your audience. You’ll enjoy publications that look polished, smart privacy controls and advanced readership statistics. And the best part? Publishing on Calaméo is a breeze.

Sign up for free and start sharing smarter documents today!

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BEST PRACTICES

Our top tips to improve your publications’ reading time!

In BEST PRACTICES
20 August 2020

Making a strong connection between your audience and your brand is a key goal for digital publishers everywhere. In this article, get our tips on how to keep your audience engaged with your publications and improve reading time.

What is reading time?

Reading time is a metric that shows how long people spend viewing your content. On Calaméo, this information is available as part of your account statistics.

You can toggle between the total reading time of your publications and the average reading time per view. The total reading time represents the combined amount across all views. The average reading time represents how long a typical view of your publication lasts.


Thanks to your Calaméo statistics, it’s easy to explore daily, monthly and yearly trends in reading time. Plus, see mobile and desktop breakdown, sources and more.


Reading time can be an especially valuable way to measure audience engagement with your digital publications. The more time people spend reading, the more interested they are in your content—and the more likely they are to keep coming back.

With no further ado, here are four tips to improve reading time for your ditgital publications!

How can I improve reading time?

Use Bold Graphics

Grab your readers’ attention with lively layouts, like in this example from Mixte magazine:

This large, colorful image paired with a pull quote invites the reader to dig into the article and find out more. Clean fonts and plenty of white space make the text easy to read. Fun fonts, new colors and infographics are other great ideas to try.

Index Key Terms

Some readers will view your publication to look for specific information. You can help them find it painlessly by optimizing your document for internal search. All of the text in your publication is automatically indexed for the search function inside our viewer. To benefit, make sure that essential terms are included as text rather than images.

💡TIP: Creating a table of contents for your publication can also make it easier to navigate. Then readers can spend less time in search frustration and more time enjoying your content!

Check External Links

Publishing digitally allows your readers to shop products, visit advertisers and learn more about your business, all from their browser. Although it’s simple to add external links to your publications with the Calaméo Editor, don’t forget to check the “Open in a new window” box. That way, the publication won’t close when readers click your links and they can return to your content effortlessly. Seamless browsing is good UX and is a quick fix to improve reading time for your publications!

Get Interactive

Since video and audio have proven to be enormously engaging to today’s internet users, you can use them to good effect in your online publications. For example, in this catalog from Samedia, a video clip provides a product illustration:

These interactive elements encourage your audience to watch, listen and dive deeper into your content. Result: higher reading times!

💡TIP: Calaméo’s PLATINUM plan lets you include audio from SoundCloud and video from YouTube directly on the page.

Equipped with our tips, you’re ready to improve reading time for your publications. But to go even further, evaluate which of your content performs best and adapt to your audience’s interests. Your advanced statistics includes pages with the longest reading times so you can identify areas to focus on—and keep growing audience engagement!

If you’re ready to give these tips a try, it’s time to request your PLATINUM Demo. During your two-week free trial, access the full range of unlimited statistics on Calaméo and test out the great features of our professional publishing plan.

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BEST PRACTICES

Beyond the PDF: Why opt for enriched documents

In BEST PRACTICES
27 July 2017

Portable Document Format (PDF) is a file format used to present documents in a manner independent of application software and operating systems. The format was established in the early 90’s and has since been widely used around the world. But PDFs do come with some disadvantages in the modern business world. 

The creators of PDFs originally designed the format for printing and features have since been added. However, many do not hold up to the high standards of enriched multimedia document technology that we have today.

In this article, learn about the top three problems with relying solely on PDFs. Plus, we will explain how Calaméo can help transform your PDF documents for your business needs.

PDF document icon

What are common issues with relying on PDFs?

DISPLAY

PDFs are not screen-friendly and are often ill-formatted on small devices like tablets and mobile phones. As a result, finding the right page can mean minutes wasted scrolling unnecessarily within a document.

TECHNOLOGICAL COMPATIBILITY

PDFs have always been difficult to integrate on webpages. For example, without the necessary plugins, users are often prompted to download and view the file in a separate application.

In addition, PDFs make it almost impossible for you to engage your readers with interactive content. That’s because images and videos are cumbersome to include within the document. Unless you’ve added dynamic links to the document, viewers cannot even click on links provided in the PDF itself. Thus, PDFs actually get in the way of a seamless online user experience.

ONLINE VISIBILITY

Finally, one of the biggest disadvantages: PDFs tend to lack key information that search engines need in order to understand exactly what your document is about. When your content is hosted on a high PageRank website like Calaméo, search engines index it quicker and make it appear higher in their search results.

Which PDF alternative should I use?

Calaméo is the perfect solution to bring your documents into the digital era. Our HTML5-based publication viewer requires no plug-ins and adapts perfectly to any screen.

Moreover, with our high-speed document conversion technology and user-friendly Editor, you can transform your documents from dull and lifeless PDFs to enriched interactive documents in a matter of minutes.

You can also make the most of our Statistics. The detailed insights about your readership they offer can be vital for optimizing your publications’ content, ad revenue and more. 

Conclusion

Of course, PDFs are still a valuable resource for the sharing and viewing documents. However, we strongly advise using intuitive conversion platforms such as Calaméo to help you to publish and share your documents in the most professional manner. Our online solution gives your digital publications in the best possible presentation, guiding your readers from browsing to action.

Haven’t tried digital publishing for your documents yet? Join Calaméo today and see the difference for yourself. It’s fast, easy and free to start.

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