Julie Shaffer

Julie Shaffer

Julie Shaffer is Vice President, Digital Technologies at Printing Industries of America. She heads up the Digital Printing Council (DPC), as well as the Center for Digital Printing Excellence at Printing Industries headquarters in Sewickley, PA. In her position, Julie plays a lead role in developing programs and tools to help members grow their businesses with digital technologies.

Known for her graphic production expertise, Julie has a 20-plus year background in pre-media and print. She is often called upon for training, presentations and to provide on-site consulting throughout the industry on diverse range of topics, including PDF, color management, digital printing, social media and Web-to-print implementation. Julie is co-author of several books, including “The PDF Print Production Guide” (1st, 2nd and 3rd edition), the “Web-to-Print Primer” and the forthcoming “Field Guide to Social Media.”

Do You Have Social Media Kred?

So you have a LinkedIN account, a Facebook Page and a Twitter account. Now, do you know what your social standing is? Do you have Kred? Do you have Klout? Klout measures, as the language distorting name implies, your social “clout.”

The Cloud Gets Personal

The “cloud”—once the purview of IT geeks and software developers—has gotten personal. For several years, there’s been a movement to transition software from the desktop or local server to the cloud. One example is Web-to-print software, typically offered as Saas (software-as-a-service).

Is ‘Do Not Track’ Good or Bad for Print?

Some in the industry are already saying that this Do Not Track movement could drive marketers back to print—but it is naïve to think that this will happen en masse. The digital movement is a giant snowball rolling downhill and this legislation is not got to stop it.

Printers Monetizing Social Media

A new StrongMail study asked 925 marketers where they are spending their marketing dollars in 2011; 57 percent said they are increasing their social media spend. While the ROI on this investment is not entirely clear, that hasn't deterred businesses of all sizes from deep and increasing engagements.

Leveraging Social Media to Better Your Business

Social media is not going away. If printers want to stay ahead of their customers’ needs and provide them with 360 degrees of customer service, they better begin to take advantage of this new communication platform.

Web-to-Print : Finding the Right Solution

The first step is to determine what you want to accomplish with a print e-commerce offering. Think of it as a needs assessment for your shop, but, more importantly, for your customers. Would it make your clients' lives easier to be able to order print projects on a self-service basis (that's ultimately what most consumer-based, e-commerce stores offer)?

Getting Peanut Butter on Your Chocolate

While sitting around a table with a group of printers, I was hearing that business is starting to pick up after last year, but the commoditization of print is making pricing ever more cut throat.