Are you ready for International Print Day? Started for the first time last year, this International Print Day aims to create a global 24-hour phenomenon in which social media highlights the creativity, importance, and power of print and paper. During the inaugural celebration last year, 8,683 Tweets were delivered to 23,023,968 timelines with 1,271 contributors. That’s a lot of print related information shared around the world! Deborah Corn, Intergalactic Ambassador to The Printerverse at PrintMediaCentr.com, is the driving force behind International Print Day. We chatted about this year’s efforts and what we hope printers will gain from participating in the movement.   PIA: We love this year’s theme for International Print Day. How did #PrintNow come about, and how do you think this idea relates to the current state of the industry? Deborah: Our 2015 theme was crowd sourced during our weekly #PrintChat and Jonathan McGrew (@JEMcGrew) submitted #PrintNOW. To me, #PrintNOW embodies the current state of the industry and all of the amazing advances to marketing and communication we are creating and implementing. Equally, #PrintNOW can be used as a call to action. Luckily the chatters agreed and, voilà, our theme was born! PIA: A strong call to action is definitely important in a movement such as this. International Print Day intertwines a lot with social media. How important is it for printers to embrace social media marketing in their business plans? Deborah: Communication professionals must understand how to communicate with customers and prospects how and where they want to communicate. I am Gen-X, so maybe I will have some tolerance when I visit a printer’s site that doesn’t use social, but I am thinking “old;” I am thinking “not up on technology;” and I am thinking “how can they help me with my marketing when they don’t embrace some major channels on the multi-channel highway?” PIA: Definitely. Anyone in any industry should always be thinking about where their audience is and how they can best reach them. Besides getting involved in an awesome social media campaign, what are some other advantages for those who get in on the #PrintNow fun? Deborah: Creating Connection. #IPD15 is an opportunity for everyone to tell the world what they do, connect and engage with the community on a global scale, grow their audience and create thought leadership on subjects that are relevant to customers, prospects and #PrintNOW. There are long-term benefits of reach and awareness for a few hours of effort (and fun!) helping print trend the planet on October 14th. PIA: It sounds like there are lots of great benefits to joining the International Print Day movement. So, what’s your favorite part? Deborah: Creating Community. We all live in bubbles. Sometimes...

Are you ready for International Print Day? Started for the first time last year, this International Print Day aims to create a global 24-hour phenomenon in which social media highlights the creativity, importance, and power of print and paper. During the inaugural celebration last year, 8,683 Tweets were delivered to 23,023,968 timelines with 1,271 contributors. That’s a lot of print related information shared around the world! Deborah Corn, Intergalactic Ambassador to The Printerverse at PrintMediaCentr.com, is the driving force behind International Print Day. We chatted about this year’s efforts and what we hope printers will gain from participating in the movement.   PIA: We love this year’s theme for International Print Day. How did #PrintNow come about, and how do you think this idea relates to the current state of the industry? Deborah: Our 2015 theme was crowd sourced during our weekly #PrintChat and Jonathan McGrew (@JEMcGrew) submitted #PrintNOW. To me, #PrintNOW embodies the current state of the industry and all of the amazing advances to marketing and communication we are creating and implementing. Equally, #PrintNOW can be used as a call to action. Luckily the chatters agreed and, voilà, our theme was born! PIA: A strong call to action is definitely important in a movement such as this. International Print Day intertwines a lot with social media. How important is it for printers to embrace social media marketing in their business plans? Deborah: Communication professionals must understand how to communicate with customers and prospects how and where they want to communicate. I am Gen-X, so maybe I will have some tolerance when I visit a printer’s site that doesn’t use social, but I am thinking “old;” I am thinking “not up on technology;” and I am thinking “how can they help me with my marketing when they don’t embrace some major channels on the multi-channel highway?” PIA: Definitely. Anyone in any industry should always be thinking about where their audience is and how they can best reach them. Besides getting involved in an awesome social media campaign, what are some other advantages for those who get in on the #PrintNow fun? Deborah: Creating Connection. #IPD15 is an opportunity for everyone to tell the world what they do, connect and engage with the community on a global scale, grow their audience and create thought leadership on subjects that are relevant to customers, prospects and #PrintNOW. There are long-term benefits of reach and awareness for a few hours of effort (and fun!) helping print trend the planet on October 14th. PIA: It sounds like there are lots of great benefits to joining the International Print Day movement. So, what’s your favorite part? Deborah: Creating Community. We all live in bubbles. Sometimes...

Jason Falls Jason Falls is a leading digital strategist, author, speaker, and thinker in the digital and social media marketing industry. He leads digital strategy for CafePress, a publicly-traded internet retailer consistently ranked as one of the top online shopping destinations. He also continues to serve as founder and chief instigator at SocialMediaExplorer.com, an industry-leading blog and digital marketing agency.  Jason will be speaking at the Integrated Print Forum in May, and he recently talked with us about social media, marketing, and what attendees can expect from his session. What’s the best way for a business with an e-commerce outlet to use social platforms to drive traffic to the site? Draw your audience in with interesting, engaging posts including stories, photos, and questions that encompass your particular worldview. Then occasionally give them a benefit (a deal) for being connected there. The real answer, though, will vary by industry, audience, competitive marketplace, and more. What works for CafePress won’t work for some of you. What works for you won’t work for a business similar to yours and so on. You have to test and iterate within your environment to see what works best for your business. Specifically, I’ve seen e-commerce businesses do quite well with sharing imagery of products that links back to the product page. But that’s boring and very brand-centric. I’ve seen businesses do better by generating content that delivers an audience-centric focus (helpful tips, entertaining articles, initiates discussion on industry topics) to draw in those they’re trying to reach, then ensuring that for every 4-5 posts that engage, they offer one that rewards the audience with an offer, coupon, or free item. What do you say to small/medium business owners who claim there is no time for social media interaction? They may not be wrong. But they will eventually lose out to their competition. Social media fuels both search engines and word-of-mouth advertising in interesting and powerful ways. So if you don’t have time for social, you’re eventually going to lose out on the primary mechanisms—search engines and word of mouth—that customers use to decide to buy from you. Does it make sense for a small-business owner to personally spend time on social media interaction? What about if the company has a dedicated person whose job it is to manage the company’s social interaction? It depends on the person, the time commitment, and more. If the owner isn’t good with people and can’t communicate well, please stay away from social media. You’ll hurt more than help. The best bet is to have someone to interact on social channels on your company’s behalf who is as close to the bone as possible. Sure, you can use an agency...

Print is all around us: it’s in the books and magazines we read, on the packages on our shelves, on the fabric of our clothing. Some of the most visually stunning printing have even won Premier Print Awards. Print is alive, and it is to this idea that we dedicate our new social site. If you have not joined Printing Industries of America on Pinterest yet, we would love to share with you our “Gallery of Print.” We are showcasing everything that is important to us—and important to you. What Is Pinterest? Some of you may be asking, “What is Pinterest?” It is, basically, a “virtual board” that lets you organize and share interesting photos that you find online. Voted one of TIME Magazine’s “50 Best Websites of 2011,” the new social media craze allows you to socialize with other pinners because you can browse their boards and “re-pin,”” like,” or “comment” on their photos.  Just visit Pinterest.com to start an account, start building your boards, and following others. Is It Time for You to Get Involved? We asked our resident expert, Julie Shaffer, Vice President, Digital Technologies at Printing Industries of America and head of the Digital Printing Council, which will also host the 2012 Integrated Print Forum this October, for some tips on how to utilize Pinterest to fit into your marketing mix by highlighting your printing products and services: “You might think that Pinterest has more value for individuals than businesses. After all, while stats show that Pinterest is growing rapidly. With over 21 million unique visits, it is heavily skewed toward females (over 80% of users) interested in crafts, hobbies, interior design, and fashion. Why, then, would a printing company want to have a presence there? Because,  unlike most other widely-used social media platforms, Pinterest provides a way to present a highly organized grouping of visual elements—so a company can show off specific products around a vertical market (like the ones already there, including retail and hobbies), a product type (calendars, stickers, books), or a holiday, event, or specific topic. Pinterest has become a top driver to many well-known websites, including those for Martha Stewart, Cooking Light, and Country Living. Note that all of those aforementioned brands have a magazine, too, so odds are it’s a potential print driver for them as well! Interactive marketing solution provider Strongmail considers Pinterest an effective channel that can be integrated into existing direct mail marketing initiatives. (The company recently announced the integration of Pinterest sharing with its word-of-mouth customer acquisition product Strongmail Influencer.)  Pinterest offers a business library on the site that provides case studies, statistics, vertical markets, tutorials, and many other valuable materials to help businesses leverage...

So you have a Linkedin account, a Facebook Page and a Twitter account. Maybe you check in to your gym or the place you have lunch on Foursquare, post videos on YouTube and try your best to figure out how to fit Google Plus into the mix. In short, you’re doing what people like me have been urging you to do — you’re engaged in social media conversation. Congratulations. Now, what do you know about your social standing? Do you have Kred? Do you have Klout? Just as a bank uses your credit score to measure your financial soundness, and Google Analytics measures your website’s reach, services Klout.com and Kred.com measure your social media influence. If you haven’t used either of these services, it’s worth the time to head over to each site and check it out. But be warned, once you sign up and see your scores odds are human nature will kick in and you will become obsessed with improving them. Klout measures, as the language-distorting name implies, your social “clout.” When you sign up, you authorized the service to connect to at least one of your social accounts (Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus) and linking to more will yield a more accurate measure of your influence across the entire social web. Klout can also connect to Linkedin, YouTube, Foursquare, Instagram, WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr, Last.fm and Flicker with half a dozen more on the way. Klout uses these connections to come up with your Klout Score, reported as a number on a scale of one to 100. The average score is in the 20s and as one’s score moves up the scale, it’s much more difficult to increase one’s Klout Score. Klout defines influenced as “the ability to drive action” and looks at interaction through social networks over a rolling 90-day period. Engagement is key, and Klout will rank a person with fewer connections but more engagement (via Retweets, Mentions, new Follows, Likes, Wall Posts) higher than one with many connections but little interaction. Klout also lets you compare your score, side by side, with anyone else using the service. Depending upon whom you choose, this can be an uplifting or depressing activity. How does Klout make money? By hitting up vendors, of course. Brands pay Klout to offer Klout Perks to Klout users in an effort to get these “influencers” to talk nicely about specific products. As a Klout user, I’m told there are no strings attached to this Klout swag and just like the material world, the people with the most Klout, get the biggest Perks — we’re told this can be a great gift like airline tickets or computer gear. Personally, all I’ve gotten so...