How digital publishing helped businesses adapt during the pandemic

22 July 2021

Well before the pandemic arrived, many companies were already using digital publishing in their strategies. However, practically all business activities were compelled to adapt to online-only in the early spring of 2020. Businesses quickly pivoted to using digital publishing in creative ways. Here we’ve compiled some of the ways that digital publishing helped businesses adapt during the pandemic.

Touchless menus

Due to the risk posed by people touching the same menu, many restaurants and bars turned to touchless menus. And while posting menus online is not a new phenomenon, the pandemic was the catalyst for more restaurants to start publishing their menus digitally. More specifically: a digital format available for diners to consult instantly on their mobile devices while at the restaurant.

How it works: using their own mobile device, diners scan a QR code on their table. They are then redirected to the digital menu that is posted on the restaurant’s website or a digital publishing platform such as Calaméo. No need to touch a physical menu!

Thanks to digital publishing, restaurants are able to update their menus easily. Also, the public appreciates the convenience of reading the menu without coming into contact with a high-touch object like a physical menu. Our prediction? Digital menus are here to stay!

Digital business cards

Gone are the days of trading paper business cards with a new contact, only to lose them in the shuffle of countless other business cards in your possession. And as businesses moved online during the pandemic, there weren’t opportunities to meet face-to-face and trade business cards. Now it is easier than ever to create and publish business cards digitally. Consider switching to digital business cards so that contact information can be saved digitally in one place and there will be no risk of cards going missing.

Services

Limiting time in an enclosed space where other people are present is essential for stemming the spread of the virus. With this in mind, many businesses decided to upload their services onto digital publishing platforms. Now, customers can choose what they want before they come in person to receive their service (think: salons and spas). This avoids unnecessary time spent together inside. It also means that more time can be devoted to the service itself rather than discussing and deciding.

With many in-person businesses limiting the number of appointments they provide per day, posting their services on a digital publishing platform where customers can read and decide in advance eliminates the need to have long buffer periods in between appointments; therefore the business can accept more clients every day. It’s a win-win!

💡 TIP: Platinum members can use the “Overlay” option which inserts forms that open in your publication, useful for implementing pre-booking and virtual check-ins, for example

Digital flyers, brochures

In-person events are slowly coming back, but enthusiasm for the printed materials that come with them is not. Much like paper business cards, printed materials such as flyers or brochures are going out of fashion. Whether it’s a company brochure or a flyer announcing a new event, it’s likely that the printed materials will just end up in the trash. In addition, due to the risk of community spread, sharing materials digitally is a safer option. Not to mention the resources saved when you opt to go digital!

By using Calaméo’s platform and optimizing your content, your digital publication will wow potential clients. They won’t even miss the paper brochures and flyers of the past!

💡 TIP: Don’t know where to start? Check out our Ultimate Guide to Digital Publishing and you’ll be a digital publishing whiz in no time

Digital publishing became a crucial tool that helped businesses adapt during the pandemic. The events of 2020 and 2021 have shown the world that digital publications are an efficient and safe way to distribute information. Now individuals and companies alike have adapted to this new way of consuming, creating, and sharing content.

PUBLISHING

Tips for multilanguage digital publications

25 June 2020

Publishing your digital materials in different languages can be a rewarding strategy—and sometimes a headache to get right. From translating an entire website to translating social media posts, details matter when managing multilingual content. Since we work in seven languages here at Calaméo, today we’re sharing our best tips for managing multilanguage digital publications.

Set a realistic schedule

First things first: it’s easier to start small with multilingual content than it is to translate every single word you publish. Before beginning to plan, you should know which new language(s) you’ll be using and the audience that you’ll be targeting. For example, imagine your product catalogs are not yet available in the language of a fast-growing market. Providing a translated catalog for users to browse may benefit your online sales.

Once you know which content needs translation, you can update your production schedule. Remember that creating multilingual content requires time and resources! You’ll need to budget time to translate your content, as well as format and publish each version. If you work with outside translation services, request an estimate of time and cost to help stay on track.

Keep content organized

Next, choose the best tools to share your multilingual content. If you’re translating pages of your website, research how your CMS handles different language options. For more substantial content like tutorials, white papers and brochures, our platform makes creating beautiful multilanguage digital publications simple. You can upload PDFs, Powerpoints and more to your account in just seconds.

💡 TIP: Have lots of different languages to get online? Our advanced conversion technology accepts batch uploads of up to 10 files at a time.

Then, think about how you’d like to present your multilingual publications. Group them either by the type of content, like magazines and e-books, or by language. Thanks to the Folders feature on Calaméo, you can easily organize multilanguage digital publications according to your needs. Share a Folder directly with your audience, or embed a convenient Library Widget in your website for viewers to explore.

Update search basics

So your content is translated, formatted, uploaded and organized online—whew! But if you haven’t thought about search, don’t start celebrating just yet. Taking a few minutes to improve the SEO of your multilanguage digital publications gives them greater visibility in the future and can help you meet your goals.

Fortunately, publishing your multilingual content with Calaméo means that you’re already a step ahead. That’s because in any language, all non-private publications are automatically indexed for search engines. By entering a title and description, you can associate your publication with relevant keywords in its language and make it easier for your target audience to find via search.

Consider the context

To publish successful multilingual content, you need to do more than copy and paste. In addition to careful strategy and organization, attention to detail within the overall context creates a seamless reading experience for your audience. A wonderfully produced prospectus in Spanish works best when presented in a Spanish-language publication viewer. Not only is this consistency a must for good UX, it’s also a snap to achieve with the right digital publishing solution.

Our viewer is fully translated and ready for you to use in any of the Calaméo platform’s seven available languages: English, French, Spanish, Italian, Portugese, German and Russian. When you share a link to one of your multilanguage digital publications, the viewer will automatically adapt to the reader’s browser. However, you can add a simple URL parameter to guarantee a specific viewer language:

https://www.calameo.com/calameo/read/0000000017fecd1302942?language=es

Go the extra mile

Although we’re proud of our multilingual platform, we know that our users publish in dozens of different languages every day. As a result, we work hard to offer options like RTL reading mode that make managing multilanguage digital publications smoother. But if there’s something missing to make your translated content really shine, you can add it to our viewer by creating a custom theme.

For example, custom themes allow you to control the tooltip text that labels different buttons in the viewer. That means you can translate the publication viewer into the language of your choice with only a few lines of code, as the tutorial below shows:

Plus, our Elements feature has everything you need to whip up themes in multiple languages built right in to your Calaméo account.

💡 TIP: Access to Elements is an exclusive feature of our PLATINUM plan. To test it out yourself, request a two-week free trial today!

Managing multilanguage digital publications often requires a bigger investment of time and energy than publishing content in just one language. With these tips, you should be ready to tackle translations and enjoy the benefits of a more direct relationship with your audience. Bon courage !

Do you have a great hack for handling multilanguage digital publications? Share it with us on Twitter @calameo!

PUBLISHING

KPIs to watch for your digital publications

30 July 2019

If you’re publishing digital documents on Calaméo, you probably have goals for them. Maybe you want to raise awareness about your brand and reach more people with your publications. Or maybe you want to drive traffic to your website and increase sales. Whatever your goals, it’s important to evaluate how your publications are performing. Establishing the right digital publication KPIs can help you get started.

In this article, we will explain the most important key performance indicators, or KPIs, for your digital publications and how to track them.

Views

The first KPI to watch for your publications is the number of Views they receive. While views can be a valuable measure of how many impressions your publications are making, views alone may not tell you the whole story. For example, a high number of views may not indicate better performance for a private publication meant to be shared with just a few sales prospects.

It’s essential to consider other relevant factors, too. You may also want to take the average number of pages viewed into account when tracking your publication’s views. Available in the Page Views section of your Calaméo statistics, this metric allows you to see how much of your publication readers tend to browse and appreciate the impact of its views.

Link clicks

Another KPI that matters to digital publishers is the number of times the links in their online documents are clicked. The ability to add and track external links with ease is a major advantage of creating digital publications and we’ve already discussed smart ideas to help boost your click-through rate on Calaméo. Calculating the CTR of all your links on Calaméo couldn’t be simpler—our advanced statistics give you the full picture, including a breakdown for video, audio and shopping clicks.

Clicks reflect your audience’s interest in learning more from your link, but any business with a digital sales operation will also want to know if those clicks lead to purchases. Luckily for our users, you can connect your Calaméo account to Google Analytics in no time to start following conversions from your publications.

Engagement

The final KPI to keep an eye on is your audience’s engagement with your digital publications. Depending on the type of audience you are targeting, the most meaningful statistics to measure engagement can vary. You may want to track the success of the ways that you promote your digital publications, like social media posts or email campaigns. You can also monitor the comments, favorites and shares that your publications receive right here on Calaméo.

However, other indicators may be more important for digital publications that help you generate leads. Note how many incoming contacts you receive via pop-up forms and contact buttons in your publications. Then how much time readers tend to spend with each publication and review the number of downloads it has to understand their interaction with the content. The more engaged your leads are, the better!

Whichever digital publication KPIs you decide to track, consistency is crucial. Be sure that you break out the numbers regularly—monthly, weekly or even daily—and analyze the trends. (Did we mention that PLATINUM users can access the all-time history of their statistics on Calaméo?) Up and running with the basics? There are plenty of other insights like source information, device and audience location stats to explore as you work toward achieving all of your digital publishing goals.

You can enjoy access to unlimited statistics for 14 days with our free PLATINUM Demo. It’s completely free to sign up and no credit card is required to try out our professional publishing features.