This week I wanted to give you a quick heads up about another cool app for iOS and Android devices – Flipboard. This is a tool that helps you find information on the subjects that interest you, and it’s great for reading all the latest news on film releases/art journalling/cricket/insert random hobby here in one place. But did you know you can also use Flipboard for business? It’s a fantastic (and free) way to promote your services ….
You see, one of the things you can do on Flipboard is create your own “magazine” – you give it a title and then run a search and add any interesting articles to it. You can make your magazine private or you can keep it public – so anyone searching for the topic in your title (because of course you’ll have used a keyword in there, won’t you!) will find your magazine and can subscribe to it.
But how would that help you promote your business? This is where it gets clever – because you can also add content from anywhere on the web using the browser addon, so you can add content from your own website … meaning within all the interesting and useful articles you share you’ll also include some information that actively promotes your business!
A couple of examples for you. I have created two magazines on Flipboard so far. One is called ADHD News and I’ve added to it lots of articles from all over the web on ADHD, medication, behaviour strategies etc … but I’ve also included a couple of reviews of my book, an article I had published on behaviour management, a post from my own blog and so on. These are mixed up within a whole load of content so it’s not a blatant plug for my book, but with 85 subscribers to the magazine I’m sure a few of them will have had a look, and perhaps bought it too.
I’ve also just started one called The Writers’ Self Publishing Toolbox. Originally this was simply for me to keep track of articles I wanted to re-read, but I’ve also started including my own blog articles amongst the mix – again, it doesn’t come across as a blatant sell but anyone subscribing to the magazine will come across me and my business – and as they are obviously already writers thinking about self publishing (because why else would they be reading something called The Writers’ Self Publishing Toolbox?) they are target customers!
There are some nice aspects to Flipboard. For example, you can invite other people to contribute – so you could get a group of people together to curate a magazine, perhaps on financial news, social media or health and fitness. And while you do need to set up and add to your magazines on an iOS or Android device, you can add content, edit, share and view them on the web – so you can give anyone access to your magazine, and they can subscribe online or on their phone/tablet.
As with many web tools, the only limit is your imagination. So what magazine are you going to curate today? I’d love to hear your ideas!
