How digital portfolios work harder for grads

In PUBLISHING
6 June 2019
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As the end of the school year approaches, students everywhere are getting ready for graduation. Whether they’re finishing college, high school or just math class, many students are capping off their work with beautiful digital portfolios.

Online publishing offers a smart choice for students and anyone planning to present their work on the web. In this article we will reveal why digital publishing is perfect for portfolios!

Digital portfolio on Calaméo showing flipbooks

PRESENTATION ALL-STAR

For school final projects, like this Guide to Marketing for the Performing Arts, digital publishing takes the worry out of presentations.

Keep your audience focused on your ideas by choosing the streamlined Slide mode. Then when it’s time to present, your portfolio’s shareable link means it’s accessible online from any device. Say goodbye to lost USB keys, forgotten passwords or unreadable files! Plus, your publications load fast on Calaméo. They’re ready to go in under a second, even on mobile 4G networks.

PUBLISHED TO IMPRESS

Just because your digital portfolios are online doesn’t mean you have to give up sharp visuals. For example, take a look at this polished interior design and architecture portfolio.

Our innovative conversion technology handles a wide variety of file types with ease. Even files up to 500 MB are transformed into superb digital publications, with high-quality images, crystal-clear text and fun flipbook effect. And did we mention our in-text search feature? It’s built in, so potential employers can use the search bar to find the right information faster.

TOP MARKS IN SEARCH

Speaking of search, there’s a lot to applaud about this design and project management portfolio:

The publisher has included links to her professional profiles so that readers browsing her work can click to learn more. In addition, she’s organized other materials by publishing them on her Calaméo account page, too. That’s a brilliant strategy for helping more people find your work.

Thanks to online publishing, digital portfolios will not only stand out but also do more to increase your visibility on the web. More great features like private publications, easy embeds and advanced statistics make Calaméo the right tool for putting your work out there.

Hats off to all of our creative users publishing digital portfolios this graduation season!

Did you know it’s now easier than ever to get creative by customizing our viewer? Our Elements feature lets you upload your own logo, background and viewer design directly to your Calaméo account. To try it out for free, request your two-week PLATINUM Demo now!

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Our top tips to improve your publications’ reading time!

In PUBLISHING
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.

START MY FREE TRIAL

PUBLISHING

Looking to grow your subscribers? Here’s how!

In PUBLISHING
16 July 2020

There’s no denying that building a subscriber base for your magazines, catalogs or professional content requires a lot of hard work. In fact, standing out is a big part of the challenge to grow your subscribers!

In this article, we’ll explain the strongest strategies for attracting subscribers to your publications. Plus, get tips on how to manage them with ease using Calaméo.

Use Digital Publications

Because more and more people access their content solely online, it would be unwise not to have a digital presence for your magazine.

Calaméo offers an excellent Platinum plan that enables you to convert your print publications into multimedia digital publications. Designed specifically for professional use, its exclusive interactive features help to enrich your documents and set your publications apart from the rest. Getting creative with your digital content will make it more engaging and more likely to draw new subscribers.

Adapt your content to your audience

First and foremost, your magazine must be seen as a valuable source of content to your audience. Therefore, be sure that your publications are targeted specifically to your readership. For example, the Washington Post was able to grow its ‘digital only’ subscriptions 145% in just one year. This rise was partly due to the fact that it broadened newspaper’s opinion and politics coverage, two areas that the Post’s subscribers were particularly interested in.

Be consistent

No matter what the theme of your content, your readers still need to know that it is coming from you. You can achieve this by making sure that your content and visuals maintain the same look and feel of your brand.

To put these measures in place using Calaméo, insert your brand logo and upload a consistent and professional background image in your publication viewer. Such steps will help to make your digital publications more professional, inviting and trustworthy. And as a result, you’ll increase their potential to grow your subscribers.

Rely on detailed insights

Calaméo provides statistics that let you see where your readers are coming from and track how long they stay on each page. These insights are essential to identify the content that works best for your audience. Once you know what engages your readers, you can build on this information to improve your subscriber numbers.

Share your content

If you want to get noticed, consistently promoting your publications on your blog, website or social media channels is important. Readers see the value in online visibility and will subsequently be more inclined to browse, share and subscribe. Need ideas on how to develop your strategy? Check out our Digital Publisher’s Guide to Social Media for tips and trends.

Subscription forms and pop ups

The simplest way to add to your subscriber count is to ask your audience to subscribe. It’s as easy as that! In order to achieve growth, your website or blog needs to be a subscription driver. Although pop-up subscription forms on your website may be a nuisance to some, they are often very effective in increasing subscriptions. Create a compelling call to action for best results.

💡 TIP: Did you know you can include forms in your Calaméo publications? Learn more in our Help Center.

Provide Exclusive Access

Never underestimate the power of exclusivity to grow your subscribers. In other words, subscribers value knowing that they are the only ones who can get this privileged information from your content! Calaméo offers you the possibility to assign exclusive access to your subscribers. While exclusivity can keep subscribers happy, it also has the ability to attract a lot of new readers and can give a definite boost to your chances of building a loyal subscriber base.

Here’s how:

Control the Distribution

You can further control the distribution of your content on Calaméo by limiting the way your readers can view to your content with individual usernames and passwords. Calaméo allows you to assign three types of access:

  • Single – the subscriber is assigned access to selected individual publications
  • Period – the subscriber can access all of your publications published between two chosen dates
    For example: all publications between January 1, 2020 and January 1, 2021
  • Series – the subscriber will have access to a set number of publications published from a specific date onward
    For example: 12 publications beginning on January 1, 2020

Read more on how to manage your subscriber sessions here.

For more tips and ideas to inspire your digital publishing, have a look at our review of the year’s top strategies.