Posts categorized ‘Publishing’
When it comes to the first few days on the job at a new company, many of us have probably had similar experiences: dull orientations, awkward alone-time spent at your desk, hurried trainings (if any), and then it’s sink or swim! I’ve even heard horror stories about new employees starting without a computer or phone.
For HR Professionals and Hiring Managers, the harsh reality is that the first few weeks in a new role makes a huge impact on a new employee’s perception of the company, its culture, and its leadership. Finding and hiring the best talent is only the first hurdle; setting them up for success is the critical next step.
It’s important to note that new employee onboarding should go far beyond the basic first day orientation and office tour. At Zmags, it involves comprehensive and engaging training sessions that expose each new hire to our product, our various departments, and our senior leaders within the first two weeks of their employment.
Our training sessions and meetings are done in small groups or one-on-one, allowing for a more personalized learning experience. The information itself covers everything from company history and corporate vision, to our product roadmap and customer support overview. The objective is for each employee to have a solid understanding of the organization as a whole and how their individual role contributes to our company goals.
Finally, we believe that every Zmags employee should be able to understand and use our product – regardless if they work in Sales or Accounting. After receiving several product demonstrations and tutorials, each new hire is asked to publish their own personal Zmag with fun facts and information about themselves. It’s a hands-on product training exercise that also helps the global Zmags organization get to know each new employee.
Check out some real examples of what our new employees have created with the Zmags platform!
Project Manager Tom Majoch’s personal Zmag
Building a brand that is unique, consistent and powerful across all channels and at every point of engagement is imperative to your customer experience as well as your company strategy.
Delivering that brand representation online often requires a suite of web assets that provide the same look and feel online as if you are in store or interacting directly with the brand offline.
At Zmags, we recognize how powerful these web assets are. The release of our Commerce solution opens up the possibilities of bringing those directly to your online publication.
An online magazine, catalog, lookbook or other publication is an engaging linear way to drive consumers though an interactive shopping experience that can leverage your rich media assets and commerce suite. If a consumer knows what they want, they will ultimately use Google to find the product and buy it. That’s not shopping, it’s buying. Your shoppers want to feel like they are interacting directly with your brand as they seek for ideas and inspiration. That branded experience that your consumers know, love and believe in is what then encourages purchase.
The Zmags Commerce Advantage
Your website will already have the vehicles to drive those conversions that occur when a customer knows what they want. An online Publication or Catalog is the vehicle to drive your “shoppers” through an experience to inspire purchase and it’s at this point you want to bring your commerce infrastructure to the forefront for transaction. A branded journey, from click to conversion.
Hello Zmags Commerce. Using either Zmags Plugins or new ecommerce platform integrations, Zmags enables existing ecommerce functionality to be layered onto your online catalog – ensuring shopping carts can be filled and customers can continue to shop. Shopping behavior translates from in-store to the online catalog: a shopper will walk around the store selection items, making sure he/she has seen everything to make the best available purchase decisions.
Zmags is a self-service platform that is designed integrate seamlessly with your existing infrastructure. Zmags Commerce layers can be married with other powerful rich media assets to drive a fluid shopping experience that delivers true ROI.
In essence, your Zmags-driven online content is “talking” happily to your web infrastructure, so when a customer clicks on a product in your Publication it calls up the product information from your website. This seamless integration utilizes the quick view and product information you have already designed to be in-line with your brand. You can add clear call to actions, product videos and other rich media to entice and encourage clicks and embed the Zmags content directly into your site. Being a self-service tool, it’s quick and easy to build commerce-enabled online catalogs and requires no development, coding or anything “tech-y”. As our product evolves, additional features become available and as your product views or information changes it is automatically represented across all online content (past, present or future).
I can write with confidence that Zmags have both the product and the service team available to ensure success with the new Zmags Commerce solution.
In 1867, Harper’s BAZAAR became America’s first fashion magazine. The magazine has now achieved another first with the launch of ShopBAZAAR, a breakthrough online store that allows the viewer to complete the purchase without leaving the magazine, closing the gap between seeing and buying. The readers, inspired by the items on display, can purchase in a fully integrated and seamless experience.
Unlike conventional ecommerce stores where business managers decide what to sell, the editors of ShopBAZAAR handpick items for sale. This brings to life an authentic content-to-commerce preposition, allowing viewers to experience special one-of-a kind products inspired by editorial features and enjoy contextual shopping experience to the fullest. ShopBAZAAR showcases about 1000-1500 products at any given time, with global brands like Saks Fifth Avenue, Salvatore Ferragamo, Derek Lam, Hirshleifers, Les Nouvelles, and Donna Karan Cosmetics.
In March this year, Harper’s BAZAAR embarked on a brand transformation exercise that started with a redesign and culminated in ShopBAZAAR. The BAZAAR Book app provides the monthly mag-alogue and the contextual shopping experience to iPad users. ShopBazaar.com also appears as a sub-domain of www.harpersbazaar.com, accessible as a “Shopping” tab on the home page. A tab on the Harper’s BAZAAR Facebook page takes the users directly to the BAZAAR Book on harpersbazaar.com. The innovations are poised to continue, with Digimarc watermarks that allow readers to shop the pages using smart phones. Expect that in early 2013.
ShopBAZAAR was launched in collaboration with American Express. American Express card holders receive exclusive perks and benefits, including access to specially-produced pieces from key designers, special gifts and private shopping events.
Check out the full online shopping experience to get an idea of how BAZAAR has truly used digital publishing to their advantage.
The fierce competition among brands means that marketers have to roll out innovative ways to attract and retain customers. A crucial task in this regard is developing digital content that provides an intuitive, rich and engaging experience.
The focus of successful digital content is a neat design. The two essential considerations when doing so include providing a highly interactive experience, and ensuring they provide a consistent experience no matter what digital point he consumer chooses to access the content.
In today’s multiple digital touch point environment, the marketers’ job is not done when he weaves an attractive story to entice the consumer to click on the provided interactive elements such as buttons, navigation panels, forms or other call to action elements, or even by making such call to action elements attractive. The CTA depends largely on how easy the customers can access such elements using their device of choice.
For instance, a keyboard-heavy interactive experience would fail to impress the tablet consumers. Rather, a tab button, accessible easily by either a tap or a mouse click would suit all devices.
With consistency a key requirement of success, it is imperative to design in such a way that the consumer has the same commerce experience when accessing the content through the Web browser, smart phone, tablet, Facebook, or any other medium.
Marketers would do well to tap into Zmags vast experience gained by developing over one million digital brochures, catalogs and magazines to design digital content that works.
Digital journals allow readers to consume content in a much better way than any other delivery medium and nothing exemplifies this more than CVS Caremark Insights 2012, the newest digital publication from the pharmaceutical major CVS Caremarks.
Dissemination of information required either printing a journal or publishing an e-book/website. All these methods have their limitations. The CVS Caremark Insights 2012 publication, developed by Zmags, true to any digital publication, not only combines the best of the print and digital medium, but also delivers several new possibilities that allow the reader to consume the content in the best and most convenient manner.
To a detached observer, the digital journal is a replica of the print journal that gels well with the tablet. The various standard features of the digital journal—such as a vertical scroll bar that functions as a preview-based menu and allows proceeding directly to a page; the ability to email, print, share or download as PDF any particular page of the journal—provide user-friendly options to make navigation and content consumption an enjoyable experience in itself. Among the new functionalities featured in this journal is the option to crop any part of the page and download or email it.
Other enhanced possibilities include clicking on the reference note, which leads directly to the list of references and from there to the external link of the reference, allowing the journal reader to seamlessly pursue the topic of interest with ease.
Needless to say, the video and flash elements add life to the otherwise dry information, keeping the customers connected and visually engaged.
Print magazines and newspapers, while providing static and non-interactive content, still hold ground over the more interactive and dynamic content provided by desktop browsers due to its mobility and reading ease. The tablet, however, is set to change that.
Latest research by ComScore spread between July and August 2012 reveals that almost two out of every five US tablet owners use tablets to read the digital version of print magazines and newspapers. 11.5 percent of people read newspapers daily, an equal percentage of respondents did so weekly and 37 percent did so at least once a month. 9.7 percent of the people used the tablet to read print magazines or periodicals daily, 13.3 percent of the people did so at least once a week and 39.6 percent of the people did so at least once a month. There was no significant difference in these stats across age or demographics, which is probably an indication that tablets, initially a device of the youth, is now becoming popular across the board.
Overall, tablets drive 7 percent of the total page views of newspapers.
The popularity of tablets as a medium to access news and information from traditional print newspapers and magazine sources underscores the ability of the tablets to deliver the best of both worlds. Tablets have the ability to replicate the way people are accustomed to receive news and information through the print medium while at the same time incorporate the advantages of dynamic content, interactivity and ability to customize provided by the digital medium.
How can you use digital publications to increase your readership?
Tablets are making a fundamental change in the way people access, create, and share content.
A November 2011 Gartner survey, covering 510 consumers in the US, UK, and Australia, listed reading news, checking the weather, and engaging through the social media as the top three activities on the tablet. 69% of the respondents use tablets regularly to read news, 63% to check the weather on a regular basis, while 62% use the tablet extensively to access social media.
But what is more critical for content marketers is the shift in reading habits – from print media to electronic media. Over 50% of tablet owners now prefer to read news, magazines, and books on their tablets rather than on paper. The proportion of people preferring such electronic mediums over paper is the highest among tablet users compared to users with other computing devices. While one in every three tablet user prefers ebooks over print editions of the same book, only 13% and 7% of smart phone users and other mobile phones users respectively prefer ebooks over print editions of the same book.
The study also reveals that 81 percent of the respondents now check their email from tablets rather than PCs. In general, tablets are usual for casual and off-work purposes than for business related tasks. The fact that tablet usage is the highest during weekend evenings confirms this trend.
Are content marketers paying attention to this? Do they market content any more differently for tablets? What do you think?
