Before blogging and Tweeting and Facebook, there was paper. Remember newsletters, annual reports, brochures, guides and white papers?
There are great stories in print pieces, keyword-rich content that could help your nonprofit or business get found by search engines, and therefore donors, volunteers and customers. Google juice! But all those beautiful keywords remain trapped in dead wood and dry ink.
Photo credit: Johannes P. Osterhoff
You’ve also spent time and money designing your print pieces. Reconstructing them for web consumption can be costly and time-consuming. In many cases the content is simply too long for viewing online.
Sure you can turn your document into a pdf and post it online. But that puts a small hurdle in front of your visitor. Your visitor must download the document, and some folks will choose not to take the leap.
There’s a better option.
Turn your print pieces into Google juice with Scribd.
Scribd publishes your document online with your formatting intact. Fonts and graphics stay put. The service surrounds your document with features that make it findable (keywords, descriptions, categories), shareable (Facebook, Twitter, email, download), sticky (follow), social (comments), measurable (stats) and portable (embedding).
The American Red Cross posts safety checklists, disaster relief reports and white papers to its Scribd channel. (via Wendy Harman @wharman)
Here’s a sample of a Red Cross document hosted on Scribd and embedded on this blog:
Check out what these nonprofits are doing with Scribd:
- Action Against Hunger uses Scribd to convert lengthy documents into web-friendly content. Check out their Publications section powered by Scribd (via Johanna Bates @hanabel)
- Reconciling Ministries Network posts its newsletters on Scribd and embeds them on its website (via Debra Askanase @askdebra)
- United Nations Environmental Programme shares its reports on Scribd
Scribd accepts a wide array of file formats:
- Adobe PDF (.pdf)
- Adobe PostScript (.ps)
- Microsoft Word (.doc/ .docx)
- Microsoft PowerPoint (.ppt/.pps/.pptx)
- Microsoft Excel (.xls/.xlsx)
- OpenOffice Text Document (.odt, .sxw)
- OpenOffice Presentation Document (.odp, .sxi)
- OpenOffice Spreadsheet (.ods, .sxc)
- All OpenDocument formats
- Plain text (.txt)
- Rich text format (.rtf)
Categories include presentations, books, business/law, creative writing, government docs, puzzles, recipes, speeches and op-ed pieces. Topics include business and marketing; cooking, food and wine; parenting; news, politics and nonprofits; and self help.
I highly recommend starting with Scribd 101, which links to related guides for uploading, sharing and stats, among others.
Give yourself time to learn how Scribd works, and if you want to convert some newsletters or annual reports, start with recent publications and work your way backwards. Your new stuff is probably the most topical.
Think strategically about why you are putting particular documents online. Let your supporters know about your newly available content by mentioning it in your online newsletter, Facebook page and Twitter feed.
Give your print content wings! Good luck.
