The Blippar Insider: Five tips for delighting readers with interactive print

Liz on the cover of More magazine (inside an interative blipp)

Lovely Liz Boufford is Senior Account Manager on the Business Development team at Blippar in New York, where she focuses on enlightening the publishing industry about turning their print interactive via mobile.

Before joining the Blippar family in August 2012, Liz worked for New York City real estate firm Anchor Associates and completed an internship as a marketing intern with SRM. She graduated from Syracuse University College of Visual and Performing Arts in 2011, with a BS in Communication, Rhetoric Studies and Public Communications.

A keen advocate of all things mobile and magazine, here Liz shares her tips on the best ways to turn print interactive if you really want to make your readers smile.

Listen up, publishers!

Liz with Blippar CEO Rish in New York, left, and inside a Christmas blipp for Greggs, right

When I was in Middle School I got my first mobile phone. It was bright pink and basically the coolest thing to happen since the Tamagotchi. Picking your ring tone, setting your BFFs in your 'favorites' list, calling everyone you knew just for the sake of using the device… all these things made mobile phones awesome, plus the best way to stay connected.

Swiftly, mobile capabilities advanced, and our behaviours changed with them. We went from dialing to texting; Snake to Candy Crush; QR codes to image-recognition; handsets to wearables, and so on...

Since my role at Blippar focuses keenly on activating print media via image-recognition and augmented reality technologies, I have witnessed exactly how these mobile trends have influenced the publishing industry, and what sort of interactive print features make readers break out in the widest smile.

With that, here are my Top Five Print-to-Mobile Tips that will keep you on top of these behavioral changes and put your publication on every reader’s ‘favourites’ list.

1. Games, games, games

With King games such as Candy Crush, Pet Rescue, Farm Heroes and Diamond Digger taking over everyone's subway commute, traditional text alone just ain't gonna get your readers to engage like they used to.

By gamifying content you will see readers engaging for hundreds of additional hours every month. Try a Guess Who? game on your print page (see below), with answers revealed via mobile - perhaps using an enhanced digital edition, or a scanning app, or both! It's simple, compelling and requires no additional content.

For example: Who wore this horrendous dress to the Oscars?

2. Exciting, exclusive extras

What’s more compelling than exclusive content? Extra photos, behind-the-scenes videos, alternate cover options and audio interviews can all be shown through mobile. Don't let content that hit the cutting room floor go to waste; turn it into a mobile exclusive!

3. Make it move!

We all saw how The Daily Prophet newspaper (Harry Potter’s daily read) sprang to life with moving images and updated its content in real time. It was freaking awesome, and nowadays it’s genuinely available outside Hollywood…

By enriching print with beautiful animations, image sequences or videos that can be unlocked through mobile, you’ll transform your print pages into singing, dancing, moving masterpieces that will make readers think you’re a wizard. (Or at least that you know what your doing when it comes to awesome augmented reality experiences…)

Which brings me to my next point...

4. Book Vs. Movie?

This makes me a little sad, but to stay hip with mobile it must be addressed. We have all done this: you’re reading an article on your favorite news site, when suddenly you find a video telling the same story. So you stop reading and watch it.

I’m not saying reading will exit our lives as quickly as handwriting has, but video is the preferred source for 99.9999% of audiences. If you have a video, make your print readers happy: let them access it on their mobile.

5. Use the space between print and mobile

There is a beautiful new space out there, invisible to the human eye. It can only be found by looking at something through a mobile lens such as Blippar. This new space is called augmented reality (AR). The AR space is one in which editorial and advertising content can co-exist.

Readers today are not oblivious to sponsored editorial/advertorials; they can spot advertorial a mile off. The beautiful thing about AR is that it is entirely pull-based; readers who engage with it genuinely want more content, sponsored or not – they asked for it! No one enters the AR space unless they choose to, and millions of people are doing it every day.

Publishers, I’m speaking to you: make the most of this space. Sponsored editorial content can (and should) live in the space between print and mobile. So go sell it!

For more information about turning your print output interactive, get in touch at info@blippar.com