Graphic Arts Magazine December 2017 / January 2018 | Page 21

Feature
Going for Broker Content Is Like Water
Publishers do it all the time. A publisher’s business develop-
ment representative will contact a company – say, Ace
Widget Corp. Ace has a new Widgetmaster 3000 about to
hit the market, and, instead of a boring old ad, wouldn’t they
like to promote it using some kind of content marketing?
They can offer, say, a white paper, which will be created as
a PDF and offered for download on the publisher’s site, via
banner ad and other drivers such as social media links. Ace
says, “Sure,” the two decide on a fee and the publisher hooks
Ace up with a writer. The writer goes off and comes up with
a draft, Ace vets it, and when the content is signed off, the
publisher has a designer run it into a template, and it goes
up on the site. A metaphor that has been applied to responsive design is to
make content like water: it takes the shape of the container
into which it is poured.
Once live, the white paper is promoted in varying ways
(social media, banner ads on the publisher’s and Ace’s sites,
etc.), and users who click the links to the white paper hit a
landing page and register to download the content. These
prospects are captured and if the number of downloads hits
or exceeds an agreed-upon amount, the campaign is
deemed a success.
This is the basic process for content marketing, although
whitepapers are only one kind of content that can be mar-
keted. There is social media-based content, blogs, and, at
the ambitious end of the spectrum things like video.
There is nothing keeping a print business from offering clients
some kind of content marketing services. It involves forging
relationships with writers and content creators conversant in
the customer’s industry, but once that issue is solved, it really
becomes a question of distribution and dissemination – things
you or your client may already be doing, such as maintaining
a blog or social media feed. And running content into an
InDesign template for a white paper is not especially difficult
for a graphic communications business.
Responsive Design Conversions
At the moment, the future is in phones. Just as desktop and
laptop computers are exponentially smaller, and yet expo-
nentially more powerful, than the room-sized mainframe
computers of the 1960s and 70s, so, too, are today’s handheld
dev ices that much smaller and that much more powerful than
the Mac or PC you had on your desk as little as a decade ago.
As a result, there’s a strong demand for what is called
“responsive design.” Essentially, responsive design, or
responsive web design RWD), refers to the creation of a
website that can automatically detect what kind of device
is accessing it, and dynamically reformat the content so that
it is optimized for that device. So if a site detects that a user
is accessing the site content on a laptop, it can use one
particular template, while if it detects instead that a user is
accessing it via a smartphone, it reformats the content in a
much simpler way that is easier to view and navigate on a
tiny screen.
@graphicarts
You have no doubt experienced the problem that responsive
web design has been developed to solve: when you visit a
website on a smartphone and it is very hard to read and
navigate.
This issue is only going to
get more acute. Of the esti-
mated 273.3 million Internet
users, more than three-
fourths
of
them
(seventy-eight percent) are
dual-device users. And while
mobile-only users currently
account for only fifteen per-
cent of Internet users, that
number is growing rapidly,
as desktop/ laptop-only
users continue to decline. As
a result, more and more sites
will need to be made mobile-
friendly. Desk tops and
laptops aren’t going anywhere (well, laptops aren’t – for now),
but there will be more and more dual-device users comprising
the overall number of Internet users.
Responsive design
will likely always
be necessary. It's
a form of graphic
communication and can
also be a good service
to offer to clients
It’s a safe bet that “mobile” computing technologies are going
to keep evolving, so there will always be a need to adapt web
and other electronic content such that it can “respond” to
whatever device is accessing it. So “responsive design” will
likely always be necessary and required, even as the devices
it is responding to change. Also, it’s a form of graphic com-
munication and can also be a good service to offer to clients
– especially if they are clueless as to how to accomplish it.
This is also the kind of service that lends itself to an alliance
approach, rather than hiring staff. Ally yourself with a web
developer who is adept at responsive design – you can
outsource work to them; they can use you as a print services
provider.
Dr. Joe Webb is one of the graphic arts industry’s best-
known consultants, forecasters and commentators.
He has written numerous books analyzing the industry
and speaks often at industry conferences
Richard Romano, is a veteran writer and analyst in the
graphics industry. He contributes to many industry
publications and websites, has written several books,
and speaks at various seminars and shows
To order The Third Wave please go to
amazon.com/Third-Wave-Joseph-Webb-Ph-D
GRAPHIC ARTS MAGAZINE | December 2017 / January 2018 | 21