somersault

As an example, click to see this Somersault blog as an ebook (shortened URL http://goo.gl/3nTtN)

Shantanu Bala a student of Arizona State University created Ebook Glue, which has only been live for a few weeks.

Read this in full.

See TeleRead’s (@teleread) article, “Turning Blogs Into E-Books: Meet the Founder of Ebook Glue”

Also become acquainted with Readability (@readability), “a free reading platform that aims to deliver a great reading experience wherever you are, and to provide a system to connect readers to the writers they enjoy.”

Download our white paper, “Tech, Trends, & Retail Success: See the Future and Act Now,” in which we detail the elements of creating extreme retail in-store experiences.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you strategically publish and market pbooks, ebooks, and audiobooks.

Learn about SomersaultSocial (@SomersaultHelp), our Web-based author online marketing education modules.

Add our Facebook page (http://facebook.com/SomersaultGroup) & Twitter stream (http://twitter.com/smrsault) to your Flipboard account on your iPad, iPhone, or Android. Or download our blog as an ebook to your ereader (http://goo.gl/3nTtN). 

Get our blogposts delivered into your email inbox.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard; especially the Book Discovery Sites tab.

On the APM radio program On Being (@Beingtweets), host  Krista Tippett (@kristatippett) interviewed author, speaker, and marketing leader Seth Godin (@ThisIsSethsBlog). Tippet says Godin is “an original and helpful voice on this landscape of digital connection for which there are no maps. He is a singular thought leader and innovator in what he describes as our post-industrial, post-geography ‘connection economy.’ Rather than merely tolerate change, he says, we are all called now to rise to it. We are invited and stretched in whatever we do to be artists — to create in ways that matter to other people.”

In the interview, Godin says, “Marketing is the life we live. The question is, will we choose ethical marketing: weaving a story, weaving a tribe, and weaving a network that mean something?” ...

Read this in full.

Listen to the interview.

Read Godin’s blogpost about his On Being interview, “Slow media.”

Also see our blogpost, "Seth Godin Ends Domino Project with Lessons Learned."

Download our white paper, “Tech, Trends, & Retail Success: See the Future and Act Now,” in which we detail the elements of creating extreme retail in-store experiences.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you strategically publish and market pbooks, ebooks, and audiobooks.

Learn about SomersaultSocial (@SomersaultHelp), our Web-based author online marketing education modules.

Add our Facebook page (http://facebook.com/SomersaultGroup) & Twitter stream (http://twitter.com/smrsault) to your Flipboard account on your iPad, iPhone, or Android. 

Get our blogposts delivered into your email inbox.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard; especially the Book Discovery Sites tab.

This article in The New York Times (@nytimesbusiness) says, “Reviews on Amazon are becoming attack weapons, intended to sink new books as soon as they are published.”

Books used to die by being ignored, but now they can be killed — and perhaps unjustly killed,” said Trevor Pinch, a Cornell sociologist who has studied Amazon reviews. “In theory, a very good book could be killed by a group of people for malicious reasons.”

...The retailer, like other sites that depend on customer reviews, has been faced with the problem of so-called sock puppets, those people secretly commissioned by an author to produce favorable notices. In recent months, Amazon has made efforts to remove reviews by those it deemed too close to the author, especially relatives. The issue of attack reviews, though, has received little attention....

Attack reviews are hard to police. It is difficult, if not impossible, to detect the difference between an authentic critical review and an author malevolently trying to bring down a colleague, or organized assaults by fans. Amazon’s extensive rules on reviewing offer little guidance on what is permissible in negative reviews and what is not....

Read this in full.

Download our white paper, “Tech, Trends, & Retail Success: See the Future and Act Now,” in which we detail the elements of creating extreme retail in-store experiences.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you strategically publish and market pbooks, ebooks, and audiobooks.

Learn about SomersaultSocial (@SomersaultHelp), our Web-based author online marketing education modules.

Add our Facebook page (http://facebook.com/SomersaultGroup) & Twitter stream (http://twitter.com/smrsault) to your Flipboard account on your iPad, iPhone, or Android. 

Get our blogposts delivered into your email inbox.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard; especially the Book Discovery Sites tab.

Media pundit Bob Garfield (@Bobosphere) sunccinctly explains the unique aspect of social media marketing. He says, “In the Relationship Era, sales tactics drive consumers away.”

Yes, we are all of us in business with transactions in mind. Yes, more transactions are almost always better than fewer transactions. Yes, we hope our social media efforts -- like everything else we do -- will be followed by more people purchasing our goods and services. Indeed, if you succeed in forging relationships with your various constituencies, and you are open and honest and share (i.e., in both directions) compelling and relevant stuff, loyalty and trust will grow and from that will flow more business at lowers acquisition costs.

But if you are cultivating community and conversation for the purpose of corralling cattle into the slaughterhouse, you are not engaging in a social strategy. You are engaging in a sales strategy, which is pretty close to the antithesis of social marketing. We are in the Relationship Era. This is no time for manipulation.

Read this is full.

See also our previous blogpost, “Forget Product Positioning, This is the Dawn of the Relationship Era” and others with our Social Media marketing tag.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you strategically publish and market pbooks, ebooks, and audiobooks.

Learn about SomersaultSocial, our Web-based author online marketing education modules.

Add our Facebook page (http://facebook.com/SomersaultGroup) & Twitter stream (http://twitter.com/smrsault) to your Flipboard account on your iPad, iPhone, or Android. 

Get our blogposts delivered into your email inbox.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard.

Michele Linn (@michelelinn), content development director of the Content Marketing Institute (@CMIContent), offers suggestions in the above presentation and ebook on how to use the most popular social media channels for effective sharing of your marketing communication messages. For example,

·         On Facebook, spend time posting well-edited photos and well-written copy. Volume isn’t everything; consistent quality is much more significant.

·         Use Facebook’s Page Post Targeting service.

·         Make use of hashtags on Twitter.

·         Enable the embedding function on your YouTube videos.

Read the ebook (pdf) in full.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you strategically communicate your brand message through content marketing.

Learn about SomersaultSocial, our Web-based author online marketing education modules.

Add our Facebook page (http://facebook.com/SomersaultGroup) & Twitter stream (http://twitter.com/smrsault) to your Flipboard account on your iPad, iPhone, or Android. 

Get our blogposts delivered into your email inbox.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard, especially the Social Media / Word of Mouth Marketing tab.

At the recently held LitFlow-Thinktank (@LitFlow) in Berlin, publishing pundit Jane Friedman (@JaneFriedman) said publishers must demonstrate their continued relevance in light of current technology that minimizes the barrier to entry for authors to publish their own books apart from depending on established publishers. She said:

Publishers, for the first time, have to earn their keep by providing a value that extends beyond production and distribution — and possibly even editorial direction. The biggest problem that authors must solve for themselves, year after year, is (1) staying competitive, current, and discoverable in a shifting digital landscape (2) having the right tools to be effective and in touch with their readers, and (3) having a strong network of connections that helps them better market and promote. All of these things are well within a publisher’s ability to assist with, only they haven’t been putting any resource into providing such assistance. They have been focused on their own corporate problems of shifting to a digitally enabled business, and squeezing as many sales as possible out of their mastery of print book sales and distribution. Most of the thinking is centered on self-preservation. But I’d like to suggest that the best self-preservation measure of all is becoming a house that’s known and respected for — in the eyes of its authors — being an active, long-term partner and resource. By empowering each author to do better, the publisher is ensuring more sales over the long run.

Friedman suggests 3 ways publishers should add value to continue attracting authors:

1. Create an author collective, where authors assist each other in branding, marketing, and promotion.
2. Make available an author education program of 101/evergreen education in the form of white papers, webinars, tutorials, screencasts, Q&As, and events.
3. Devote at least one person full time to nurturing author development and community.

Read her presentation in full.

Listen to her presentation.

Also see eReport’s (@nztaylor) coverage, “How publishers can stay in the game.”

See our previous blogposts, “Guy Kawasaki's New Self-Publishing Instruction Book” and "Publishing Must Reinvent Itself."

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you publish and market your ebooks and pbooks.

Learn about SomersaultSocial, our Web-based author online marketing education modules.

Add our Facebook page (http://facebook.com/SomersaultGroup) & Twitter stream (http://twitter.com/smrsault) to your Flipboard account on your iPad, iPhone, or Android. 

Get our blogposts delivered into your email inbox.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard, especially the Publishers tab that includes links to self-publisher services.

Random House (@randomhouse) and Random House Audio (@RHAudiobooks) have produced the above videos in an effort to elevate their brand reputation among authors, agents, booksellers, and consumers. Are they over-selling?

Also see Digital Book World’s (@DigiBookWorld) article, “Random House Explains What Publishers Do.”

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you publish and market your ebooks, pbooks, and audiobooks.

Learn about online marketing with SomersaultSocial.

Add our Facebook page (http://facebook.com/SomersaultGroup) & Twitter stream (http://twitter.com/smrsault) to your Flipboard account on your iPad, iPhone, or Android. 

Get our blogposts delivered into your email inbox.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard, especially the Publishers tab.

Martin Taylor (@nztaylor), founder of the Digital Publishing Forum, says bookstores should adapt the example from the technical industry in order to succeed in today’s fast-changing retail environment. He points to the strategy known as co-opetition, in which it’s “in each supplier’s self-interest to help competitors reach its customers.” He says, in the advent of Web 2.0, “even traditional media sites found that opening up and sharing widely, even with competitors, was good for business.”

Bookshops are already operating in a world where readers have lots of choices for new book discovery with bookshops just a small part of their repertoire. In this world, the idea that a store in some way ‘owns’ a customer who is disloyal if they stray elsewhere to buy seems quaint.... So a better strategy than closed walls might be a welcoming and respectful openness.

The lesson from co-opetition is that when barriers come down and markets open up, your best strategy might be to work with competitors in ways that make your customers’ lives easier.

Influence – amplified through partnerships, online media, and other channels – rather than location, price, or convenience might be the currency of the leading bookstores of the future. At an industry level, that influence – whether or not the purchase happens in bricks and mortar stores – is the best antidote to the too-common view of an industry in terminal decline.

Read this in full.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you publish and market your ebooks and pbooks.

Learn about online marketing with SomersaultSocial.

Add our Facebook page (http://facebook.com/SomersaultGroup) & Twitter stream (http://twitter.com/smrsault) to your Flipboard account on your iPad, iPhone, or Android. 

Get our blogposts delivered into your email inbox.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard, especially the Book Discovery Sites tab.

Edelman (@EdelmanPR) Millennial consultancy (@Edelman8095) (#Edel8095) is the driver of 8095, a global benchmark study on how Millennials connect with brands, make purchasing decisions and share their opinions on products and companies with family, friends, and extended networks. The study, first conducted in 2010 and updated this year, focuses on people born between 1980 and 1995.

(Above graph is from MarketingCharts, @marketingcharts)

·         Over 3/4 of millennial consumers worldwide want to be "entertained" by brands, and a similar proportion are willing to provide feedback on goods and services.

·         About 80% want brands to "entertain" them, with co-creating products the most popular option, mentioned by 40%, ahead of receiving real-time answers to social media enquiries (33%).

·         32% want sponsoring events

·         31% desure companies to deliver engaging online content

·         21% would like to connect with other fans. Forming tie-ups with admired celebrities or public figures score 19%.

·         More broadly, a 74% majority of respondents say they influence the purchase choices of peers and older buyers

·         63% regularly go shopping with their friends, partner, or family.

·         For 73%, sharing feedback with companies after a good or bad experience is a "responsibility," peaking at 90% in China and India, but falling to 59% in Germany and 57% in Canada.

·         When making purchase decisions, 94% of participants use at least 1 external information source and 40% use 4 or more, with search engines and word-of-mouth from friends and family the most common.

·         When asked what wider assistance brands could be in their lives, 77% want financial assistance, such as grants and scholarships for studying.

·         75% desire opportunities for more "life experiences" like trips and lessons in interesting subjects, and 65% want a mentor to help guide them.

·         60% want to tap a brand's "audience," like its Facebook page or ads, to connect with similarly-minded people, and 56% say the same for sharing their views with a wide group.

In 2013, the oldest of the Millennials will turn 33 – many of them are now parents, have careers, and wield spending power and influence in today's world.

Read the news release.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you understand and reach the Millennial market.

Learn about online marketing with SomersaultSocial.

Add our Facebook page (http://facebook.com/SomersaultGroup) & Twitter stream (http://twitter.com/smrsault) to your Flipboard account on your iPad, iPhone, or Android. 

Get our blogposts delivered into your email inbox.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard; especially the Research tab.

11-year-old James Groccia, who has Asperger syndrome, saved his money for 2 years to buy his dream toy: the LEGO Emerald Night Train set. But when he was able to finally buy it, he discovered it was discontinued.

He wrote of his disappointment to LEGO (@LEGO_Group) and the company replied with a cordial, corporate-sounding apology letter. Then, a few days before his birthday, a package arrived containing the discontinued set with a sweet letter commending his will power and even suggesting someday he might work at LEGO. His parents hid a camera to catch James' reaction when he opened the package.

The resulting video above, with the title, "Why LEGO is the BEST Company in the World!," has become a viral sensation with over 1 million views and mentions on major newscasts.

It demonstrates the power of consumer generated media on a brand’s reputation (for the cost of a single Emerald Night Train set). Contrast this with the stilted, long-winded, slow-moving corporate video LEGO produced earlier this year.

In many ways, successful branding depends on delighting the consumer with stellar customer service.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you protect and strategically manage your brand's reputation.

Learn about online marketing with SomersaultSocial.

Add our Facebook page (http://facebook.com/SomersaultGroup) & Twitter stream (http://twitter.com/smrsault) to your Flipboard account on your iPad, iPhone, or Android. 

Get our blogposts delivered into your email inbox.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard.