How difficult is it to use Web 2.0 social networking tools to connect with and grow our client base?

In this new blog series from AEP, “What’s Keeping You Up At Night?, experts offer their advice on the most pressing issues facing the educational publishing industry. AEP members may sign up for a free half-hour consultation with the experts for 30 days after their entry is posted.

The following question was posed to our current featured expert, Andrew Pass of Pass-Ed.

Q. How difficult is it to use Web 2.0 social networking tools to connect with and grow our client base?

A. You’ve probably heard of many social networking tools: blogs; podcasts; videocasts; mini-blogging platforms, such as Twitter; social networking sites including Facebook; and, video/picture hosting platforms. It’s easy to become overwhelmed when considering the vast array of social networking tools that exist. It’s even easier to feel uncomfortable when you recognize that the most popular tools that exist today will likely be obsolete next year.

In the face of this discomfort I like to keep three principles in mind.

What tool should I use to post and manage my content online?

In this new blog series from AEP, “What’s Keeping You Up At Night?, experts offer their advice on the most pressing issues facing the educational publishing industry. AEP members may sign up for a free half-hour consultation with the experts for 30 days after their entry is posted.

The following question was posed to our current featured expert, Tim Frick of Mightybytes.

Q. What tool should I use to post and manage my content online?

A. Choosing the right content management system for your site can be a tricky and daunting prospect. There are literally hundreds of solutions on the market, each claiming to be the best at what they do, the most cost-effective, the easiest to use, and so on. So how do you figure out which one is right for you?

AEP Awards Finalists Announced

AEP has announced the finalists for the 2009 AEP Awards. One of the largest and longest-running recognition programs in the industry, the AEP Awards give credit to the organizations who are leading the way in the field of educational resources and education marketing and set benchmarks to which the rest of the industry can aspire.

How can I develop interactive content that can be used across different media platforms?

In this new blog series from AEP, “What’s Keeping You Up At Night?, experts offer their advice on the most pressing issues facing the educational publishing industry. AEP members may sign up for a free half-hour consultation with the experts for 30 days after their entry is posted.

The following question was posed to our current featured expert, Pegeen Wright of Pegeen Wright Associates.

Q. How can I develop interactive content that can be used across different media platforms?

A. With proper planning you can develop interactive resources such as learning games, activities, and simulations to be deployed across multiple products and platforms. You need to begin by considering the potential uses for your new media products. For example, if you’re developing learning games for use on Interactive Whiteboards (IWBs) in a whole-class setting, you may want to be able to post these same resources (or slightly modified or enhanced versions) on your website to be used by students in a small-group or individual learning setting. Additionally, you should be able to use one set of resources on any IWB. Developing resources that are platform-neutral saves you time and money in development, manufacturing, inventory, marketing and sales.

How much will it cost to go digital?

In this new blog series from AEP, “What’s Keeping You Up At Night?, experts offer their advice on the most pressing issues facing the educational publishing industry. AEP members may sign up for a free half-hour consultation with the experts for 30 days after their entry is posted.

The following question was posed to digital publishing experts Michael Johnson of Full Potential Associates and Michael Jay of Educational Systemics.

Q. How much will it cost to go digital?

A. For just a moment, let’s change the question to something with which many of us are familiar, especially as we get older: How much will it cost to go low-carb? First off, it requires a life style change. Some of the benefits are apparent in the near future where as others are much longer term. Just as if all you ever ate was pasta and bread, if you work only in print and used movable type for all your typesetting, the move would be expensive and very time consuming. The good news is that, just as most of us have a varied diet on which we can base our new habits, most, if not all of us, use computers in our daily work for page layout, media creation, printing, and much more on which we can develop new habits around going digital.