Becoming a First Time Publisher: Digital Content on The Rise

In the Issuu 2020 Year In Review, we spotlighted that there was a 3.6x increase in first-time publishers creating and distributing Flipbooks, Social Posts, GIFs, Articles, and more on the Issuu platform. We expect this trend of first-time digital publishers will continue as more industries, organizations, and businesses build out their digital presence and content marketing.

In 2020, across various industries and organizations, from schools, local restaurants, and real estate—to name just a few—the ability to deliver beautiful and engaging digital content became a priority. Due to stay-at-home orders, we could no longer gather together whether it was in the classroom, on a home tour, or in a shop. Nor could we teach or talk in-person to customers. Instead, we needed to replace these physical experiences or items with digital content for education, sales, marketing, and more. 

In the education sector, teachers needed to create online lesson plans and deliver digital worksheets. For businesses, menus turned digital, and product shelves needed to be turned into online catalogs, and real estate agents needed to create a first impression with their digital brochures. Plus, the most useful digital content needed to be easily shared for users to access with a smartphone, right from your website, on social media platforms, via email, or even over text. Of course, this increased focus on digital content had been years in the making, but the global pandemic really sped up the need for all industries to build out their digital information and offerings.

Start Creating Content

Calling all first-time publishers! You may find yourself in the position of needing digital content for your job or business, but not sure what type of content you want to create and share online? Don’t get overwhelmed with all the potential content pieces you might create. Identify a content piece that will help your business or organization right now. 

New Content that You May Want to Start Creating:

• Seasonal or promotional flier 

• Class presentation

• Real estate brochure

• Restaurant menu

• Employee or student training

To create the content piece, you can utilize a designer who you already work with, leverage a file you already created but haven’t published online yet, design in Adobe InDesign, create something new in Google Slides, or use Canva. Most likely you will end up with a designed file in a PDF or JPG format. But how do you transform these large, clunky files into sleek digital content that is shared easily?

That’s where Issuu comes in! Issuu is the perfect digital content platform that is easy to use for first-time creators. Just upload your PDF to Issuu and Issuu automatically creates a flipbook from your original PDF with a simple link you can share. Plus the flipbook is optimized for all screen sizes, making it perfect for mobile reading and ordering. You can even add interactive elements from shopping links and embedded video such as a video introduction to really set your content piece apart. Once you have your published digital flipbook, start to distribute it by posting your digital content to Facebook, use Stories to drive sales, Visual Stories for the perfect mobile scrolling experience, embedding it on your website, or send the link in an email to your customers.

Content to Check Out

Need a little more inspiration or encouragement as you embark on creating digital content for the first time? Check out the below digital content examples on Issuu that are definitely made to impress!

Menu

Lesson Plan

Real Estate Brochure

Join other first-time digital publishers today! Sign up for Issuu.com and start uploading to publish beautiful and effective digital content.