Skip to main content

Make Your Own Marketing Widgets!

How LAB-AIDS is using the new widgets.
Tizra now offers a Widget viewing mode that lets you embed your content in just about any standard web page just by inserting a little blob of HTML code.  It's great for letting users "leaf through" samples of your content without interrupting what they're doing...whether that's perusing your online book catalog, reading a review, or as you'll see below, enjoying a fascinating blog post like this!  It enables you to disseminate promotional samples widely via viral or conventional marketing campaigns, and to make the online shopping and buying experience as seamless and integrated as possible.

For example, say you were a well-known Tizra customer like LAB-AIDS. You could give bloggers a simple snippet of code that would let them show their readers a thumbnail-sized sample of one of your beautiful books like this...


All that's needed to embed the above sample is a little blob of code like this...
<iframe src="http://s75327680-sample.tizrapublisher.com/3lv4ul/82?zoomFactor=0.255" style="background-color: white; border: 1px solid black; height: 326px; overflow: hidden; width: 240px;"></iframe>
The web monkeys among you will immediately recognize it as plain old HTML that'll work just about anywhere.  This means it's easy for anyone with minimal web skills to spread the word about your content.

It also means web designers can customize the widgets without learning anything new.  With a few tweaks, samples can be made bigger, smaller, given decorative borders, or otherwise tailored to fit their surroundings.  Say you wanted to distribute a bigger sample, like this from Goodheart-Willcox, and frame it in orange...



Cooking Up Your Own Widgets

To create one of these blobs of code, you start with a pair of standard iframe tags, like this...
<iframe></iframe>
To indicate which content you want included in the sample, you use a special version of the Tizra URL for that content (to open up access to the content, you'll need admin privileges on a Tizra account and knowledge of the basic access control tools).  The URL is similar to the ones used to preview content in the private staging area of a Tizra site, but with a slight twist.  If the staging variant looked like this...
http://s45273646-preview.tizrapublisher.com/UT4_SE/3
...the version to use in your widget would look like this...
http://s45273646-sample.tizrapublisher.com/UT4_SE/3
...with the only difference being that "sample" is used in place of "preview."

Once you have the URL, you stick it into the iframe markup like this...
<iframe src="http://s45273646-sample.tizrapublisher.com/UT4_SE/3"></iframe>
From here, it's all about tweaking the cosmetics.  First you'll probably want to set the size of the iframe (essentially the window inside which your content will be displayed).  You can do that through standard HTML.  For example, you'd set it to 240 pixels wide by 326 pixels wide like this...
<iframe src="http://s45273646-sample.tizrapublisher.com/UT4_SE/3" style="width: 240pxheight: 326px;"></iframe>
You can change the size of the page images that appear inside the iframe by adding a zoom factor to the end of the URL like this...

<iframe src="http://s45273646-sample.tizrapublisher.com/UT4_SE/3?zoomFactor=0.255" style="width: 240px; height: 326px;"></iframe>
Increment the number up for bigger, down for smaller.  

Then you can decorate to your heart's content, say by adding a white background to bleed out to the edge of the iframe, and a nice crisp black border...

<iframe src="http://s45273646-sample.tizrapublisher.com/UT4_SE/3?zoomFactor=0.255" style="width: 240px; height: 326px; background-color: white; border: 1px solid black;"></iframe>


Comments

David McKnight said…
This is excellent. Great for content marketing, promoting events, a new publication, just about any content. With Tizra controlling access you can event share "member only" content without worrying about if the the promo gets shared...matter of fact...you would want it to so more learn about the great content you have and the value of membership.

Popular posts from this blog

Association of Research Libraries Goes Live with Tizra

After extensive internal testing, the Association of Research Libraries has begun offering recent issues of its flagship publication on a public test site hosted by Tizra. The organization announced recently that Research Library Issues is now available in full-text searchable form at… http://publications.arl.org We're thrilled about this, not only because because it's a vote of confidence from a high profile organization, but also because ARL's membership includes some of the most prestigious research institutions in the world (including the libraries of MIT and Indiana University, whose presses are already using Tizra). In addition to greater production efficiency and flexibility, ARL's use of Tizra stems from a desire to provide members with capabilities including… Better full-text search. More targeted references via social software and other links. Better compatibility with web enabled mobile devices like the iPhone. We are proud to count ARL—and RLI reade

Online Publishing for Tough Times

"I didn't invent the rainy day, man. I just own the best umbrella" Almost Famous In an economic climate that led Publishers Weekly to predict 2009 would be "the worst year for publishing in decades," eBook sales are growing at more than 100% a year, according to the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF). We think it's time more content owners—both inside and outside the traditional publishing industry—had access to serious online publishing tools that will open up this kind of opportunity. That's why we're rolling out free, self-service signups to Tizra Publisher. This is the same software that MIT Press is using to sell a collection of more than 170 computer science books on its CISnet site , and you can get your hands on it right now… FREE 60 SECOND SIGNUP If you'd like to learn a bit more, here's quick overview of what Tizra Publisher can do ( click the little TV icon at the bottom to see it big! ).

Slater Invests in Tizra

This is a big one for us. Rhode Island's Slater Technology Fund is betting $500,000 that Tizra will "really open the floodgates for book-based content from thousands of publishers." Their investment caps a year in which we've gone from four people , two dogs and an idea to a company that someone besides us and our friends and families believe will set online publishing on its ear. We even have our very own Forbes article . Thanks to the folks at Slater for being great advisors as well as investors, and to the many friends and family members who preceded them!