TOOL TUESDAY: Turn Your Print Pieces into Google Juice With Scribd

July 19, 2011 by Kerri Karvetski

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:

Wildfire Safety

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.

Posted in Blogging, Communications, Content, Tools | Comments

Don’t Fear the Weekend

April 30, 2011 by Kerri Karvetski

Do you avoid sending email, posting to your Facebook page or Tweeting on the weekends because you think no one will see it?

Fear not the weekend! It could be your secret weapon.

In his recent webinar presentation The Science of Timing: When to Post Everything, Dan Zarrella talked about contra-competitive timing - posting your content when other marketers aren’t. Instead of shouting when everyone else is shouting, speak when it’s quiet and more people can actually hear you.

I confess that I try to go off the online social grid on Saturdays. I’m online all week long and need to play and dig and garden and cook on the weekends. (I do sneak on for recipes, but only when I have to.) I didn’t give much thought to sending stuff on the weekends until I saw Dan’s webinar.

The scheduling features in Hootsuite (for Facebook and Twitter) and WordPress (this blog) mean I can have my freedom and my weekend posts, too.

Turns out that most marketers jam posts into the Monday through Friday slot, leaving the weekend a lot lighter. But weekend click-through rates either hold steady or rise, and sharing actually peaks on those days.

Check out that spike on Facebook shares on Saturday!

And this spike on email opens on Saturday:

The weekends get a little trickier with blogs. Blog reading (and also linking) goes down…

…but blog comments go up on weekends.

So if you want links to your blog, post during the week. If you are looking to jazz up your comments, post on the weekends. Try a little of both!

Posted in Blogging, E-Mail, Facebook, Planning, Twitter | Comments

Is Facebook Your Achilles Heel?

April 29, 2011 by Kerri Karvetski

What would you do if you woke up one morning and were suddenly locked out of your Facebook page?

It happened Thursday to technology news site Ars Technica. Read an ongoing account of their saga at Facebook shoots first, ignores questions later; account lock-out attack works.

What did they do to offend the Facebook gods? Someone (not named) accused them of copyright infringement. Ars Technica never saw it coming.

Prior to the account lockout, we had received no notices of infringement or warnings. Truly, we awoke to find that Facebook had summoned a judge, jury, and executioner and carried out its swift brand of McJustice all without bothering to let us know that there was even a problem.

Ouch. It gets worse.

Further investigation has revealed just how flawed Facebook’s infringement reporting system is. To begin with, someone making a complaint can provide any third-party e-mail address they choose. So it is rather easy to spoof the origin of a complaint, while giving Facebook and the accused no chance for a direct rejoinder.

Face it. It’s Facebook’s world and you are just playing in their sandbox. They make up the rules. They can wipe you out without warning. You own nothing about your relationship with your fans, er, likers.

What’s a marketer to do?

You can’t ignore it. Facebook is ubiquitous, inescapable. If it were a country, it would be the world’s third largest behind China and India. The opportunity to reach and influence people is phenomenal.

You can focus more resources on your basics – website, email marketing, blog. You own these. You have control over the content. Growth is slower, but it’s all yours.

Facebook, Twitter, Slideshare, Flickr, YouTube – these social sites are outposts. They have the potential to reach huge audiences, but they aren’t home. They lead you home.

Facebook is NOT your website, nor should it be your entire online strategy. It’s a part of your strategy that complements and supports your fundamentals.

SPOILER ALERT: Ars Technica got its page back.