somersault

The New York Times (@NYTimes) reports the Digital Public Library of America (#DPLA) is still in its infancy, but it’s a concept supported by librarians from major universities and officials from the National Archives and the Library of Congress. The project’s ambitious mission, recently described in a four-page memorandum, is to “make the cultural and scientific heritage of humanity available, free of charge, to all.”

The project is playing catch up not only to Google, but also to Europe, where several countries have proceeded with large digitization projects. The European Commission has backed Europeana, (@EuropeanaEU) a website where users can search for digital copies of 15 million works of art, books, music and video held by the cultural institutions of member countries.

Read this in full.

Also see LibraryCity (@LibraryCity).

• The most retweeted tweets occur between 2-5pm Eastern Time, Thursday & Friday.
• Twitter links click-through-rate (CTR) dips on Mondays & Thursdays; all other days are strong.
• Twitter CTRs are strongest 10am & 5pm ET.
• Twitter CTRs don’t decline at night.
• Don’t be afraid to tweet more for maximum effectiveness.
• Post updates to Facebook pages every-other day.
• Weekends are best for Facebook sharing of links for both B2C & B2B.
• Articles published in the morning are shared on Facebook slightly more often than those published in the afternoon.
• Most people check their email in morning (but percentages are still very high into the evening and night).
• Email open rates tend to be higher on weekends and early in the mornings.
• Emails get more attention on weekends.
• Emailing frequently doesn’t diminish CTRs as long as the content is valuable and relevant to the subscriber.
• Frequent emailing of quality content does not increase unsub rates.
• The newest subscribers to your email list are your best.
• Most people read blogs in the morning and afternoon. More men read blogs in the evening and night than women.
• Monday is the day for heavy blog reading; Tuesday dips; Wednesday through Friday are equal; dipping again on the weekend.
• Blog posts at 10-11am ET tend to get more views.
• Blog comments spike on weekends.
• Blog early in the morning to get more links by the linkeratti.
• Blog more frequently; even multiple times per day.

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See the recorded webinar.

Jon Hirst (@generousmind), account manager at Novo Ink (@novoink), identifies the problem of non-working Web URLs linked to by authors in their ebooks. He says, “With the instability of links on the Web, I am finding that many of the links that authors share in their books do not work even a short time after their book is published.” Among the solutions he suggests:

1. The first and most obvious is to discipline yourself to use references and citations from major organizations or Web sites that will be more stable than “Joe’s Favorite Founding Fathers Quotes.” You know that if you use Wikipedia, The New York Times, American Heart Association, etc. you will be more likely to present a valid resource to your readers.
2. When dealing with links to connect with the author, the publisher should encourage the author to centralize all such links to the URL they are most likely to keep over time. Many times this ends up being the author’s name or the name of their organization. Book websites seem like a good idea when the book launches, but after five years many of them are gone and that contact is lost.

Read other solutions he offers.

Provide your suggestions in the comments below.

Jack Hird (@Jake_Hird), senior research analyst for Econsultancy, offers the following social media stats:

• Twitter has 175 million registered users; 95 million tweets per day; 4 million tweets per hour.
• LinkedIn registrants number more than 100 million
• Facebook population officially is more than a half-billion, but some unofficial counting has it at 640 million. At least 250 million users log in every 24 hours; 200 million access it through mobile devices. The average Facebook user creates 90 pieces of content each month.
• Flickr hosts more than 5 billion images; 3,000 images uploaded every minute.
• Wikipedia now has more than 17 million articles and 91,000 active contributors.
• YouTube video views number more than two billion every 24 hours; more than 24 hours of video are uploaded every minute.

Read this article in full.

Graham Charlton (@gcharlton) has assembled statistics about the mobile Internet:

• People use mobile search at home in the evening (81%) than any other time or places more frequently than anywhere else (81%), followed by at home on weekends (80%).
• 66% use mobile search while while watching TV, something which should get advertisers thinking, while 61% said they use it at work.
• 75% said mobile search makes their lives easier, 63% said access to mobile search has changed the way they gather information, and 32% said they use mobile search more than search engines on their computers.
• 84% use mobile search to look for information on local retailers, such as opening hours, address and contact details. 82% look for online retailers, 73% find a specific product or manufacturer website.
• Tying in with the crossover in TV viewing and mobile search, 71% learn more about a product or service having seen an ad, 68% use it to find the best price for a product.

Read this article in full.

Also see Social Media Today’s “Best Social Media Stats and Market Research of 2010 (So Far)” by Tom Pick (@TomPick).

Let Somersault help you create an integrated social media marketing strategy. And be sure to use daily our SomersaultNOW dashboard to remain current with the latest developments in social media marketing and digital publishing.

This article in Book Business (@bookbusinessmag) highlights the online tools that are enabling publishers to spread the word about their books to more targeted audiences — sometimes, at a much lower cost — than traditional marketing methods.

Simon & Schuster recently launched a brand-new way to connect with its customers through Foursquare, the popular, location-based mobile social networking community.

Users who follow Simon & Schuster Foursquare receive information and tips culled from Simon & Schuster books and authors when they "check-in" at certain locations, be it their favorite diner in London, a resort in Arizona, or the Pyramids in Egypt. For example, they'll receive facts about historic landmarks, a dish their favorite chef enjoys at a restaurant, or a tidbit such as 21 elephants walked across the Brooklyn Bridge in 1884, proving its stability.

Read this article in full.

Somersault has identified more than 500 online services to leverage for successful social media marketing. Let us know how we can help you. And be sure to daily use our free SomersaultNOW dashboard, created especially for publishing and marketing professionals.

We hope you’re finding our online dashboard for publishing and marketing professionals, SomersaultNOW (http://netvibes.com/somersault), to be useful in staying current with the latest important news and information relating to your work. (Read our announcement about SomersaultNOW.)

We created the dashboard tabs to reflect Somersault's focus on book publishing, editorial oversight, innovation, leadership, branding, marketing/PR, social media, and research for the publishing community. We also included a tab to quickly read breaking religion news stories, another tab to help you monitor your brand every day, and another with links to sites for reading on your mobile device.

One of Somersault’s values is to be flexible and nimble. We’re keeping our eye to the horizon to anticipate the next change-wave coming. So we’ve added to the dashboard the new tab “Future,” where articles by futurists can be read as a way to help you prepare for future technology, future cultural norms, future reading habits, etc., that will impact your publishing strategies and sustainable growth. We hope you’ll benefit from it.

Interested in a free website that collects in one location the links and RSS article and news feeds from more than 300 media sources written for publishing, editing, and marketing professionals, and provides multiple services for monitoring a brand’s online word-of-mouth? Created by international publishing strategy and services agency Somersault Group™ (http://somersaultgroup.com) especially for publishing executives and content creators, the SomersaultNOW dashboard (http://netvibes.com/somersault) is intended to be used as an Internet start-up page, browser homepage, bookmarked favorite, or mobile portal.

You can use the dashboard as is, or customize it for your personal needs by registering a free account with Netvibes.

==> If you find this free online dashboard useful, please tell others about it on your blog, in your tweets, on your Facebook updates, by email, etc. Please include the hashtag #SomersaultNOW in your tweets. Here's a suggested tweet you may want to use: Check out the new #SomersaultNOW free Web dashboard created for #publishing & #marketing professionals http://bit.ly/fLYNYe .<==

The site contains news feeds and links divided into 9 tabbed categories: Publishing, Editing, Innovation, Leadership, Branding, Marketing/PR, Social Media/Word-of-Mouth, Research, and Religion News. Two additional tabbed sections consist of resources to assist users who want to monitor their brands’ current online and social media buzz, and selected links to publishing and marketing content designed to be read on mobile devices using Wi-Fi connections.

Among the daily RSS feeds on the SomersaultNOW dashboard are those from such media as Publishers Weekly, The New York Times bestseller lists, Shelf Awareness, American Booksellers Association, CBA bestseller lists, ECPA, The Association of American Publishers, Digital Book World, mediabistro.com, and Seth Godin’s blog. Direct links are included to websites like BookWire.com, Chicago Manual of Style Online, and Common Errors in English Usage. The dashboard even has the daily edition of the Dilbert comic strip, and words-of-the-day from Oxford English Dictionary, Dictionary.com, and Merriam-Webster Dictionary.

The dashboard’s “Monitor Your Brand” tab offers the ability to conduct real-time Twitter searches as well as back-tweet and hashtag searches, Addict-o-matic and BoardTracker searches, image and video searches, and services including MonitorThis, Social Media Fire Hose, Google Alerts, and TweetBeep.

“We created the SomersaultNOW dashboard to help users leverage the swiftly shifting landscape of today’s publishing world by staying informed about it,” says Jonathan Petersen, Somersault’s social media evangelist. “Our dashboard assembles quickly accessible collective knowledge in one convenient place.”

Somersault Group™ (Somersault™) is a partner-managed LLC with offices in downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan. The company’s purpose is to enable publishers, agents, ministry organizations, and Christian authors to quickly leverage rapid changes in communication technology, emphasize excellence in branding and marketing communication for an author’s business development, and extend the highest editorial standards to achieve the goal of helping people experience God’s kingdom. Somersault’s mission statement: to change lives by connecting inspirational content creators with readers using exceptional creativity, right-now technology, and old-fashioned personal care. For more information, visit somersaultgroup.com.

In a blog post on Publishers Weekly (@PublishersWkly), Barbara Vey expresses her frustration at authors who don’t keep their websites updated or worse, don’t have a site at all. She says, “To me, being an author is a business and as a business you need people to see the product. What’s available and what’s coming up at the very least.” She says the site doesn’t have to be complicated. “Just something that says I take my job seriously and here’s why you should read my work.”

The next worse thing is an author having a website that’s not updated. I’m embarrassed for them when I see their latest release showing 2003 when I know they’ve written more since then.  I’m not saying to blog something everyday or even update daily, but once a month would be nice. Just a little something to say, “Hey, I’m still here and working hard on getting out my next exciting book.”...[E]ven saying what they’re reading not only updates the web page, it also helps out a fellow writer.

An even easier way is to attach a Twitter feed box. That way, every time you Tweet something it shows up on your website. Instant updating and you only had to type 140 characters (or less).

Read what else she says.

Publishers Weekly (@PublishersWkly) reports on the much eagerly awaited debut of Google eBooks. Here’s an excerpt:

After months of anticipation, Google today launched its long-awaited cloud-based ebook program, Google eBooks. Rebranded from its original moniker, Google Editions, Google eBooks overnight becomes the largest ebook provider in the world, at least in terms of its offerings, launching with nearly three million books available for purchase or download, including “hundreds of thousands of ebooks” available for purchase and over two million public domain titles available for free.

The launch includes a redesigned Google Books page, featuring both a store where consumers can find and buy ebooks, and a research option for those who wish to search and use the repository. It also includes a Google Web reader, and apps for both Apple and Android devices, which are available for free. Google's cloud-based ebooks can be accessed and read anywhere, on any device with a modern, HTML5-enabled browser, whether desktop computers, laptops, netbooks, tablets, or via apps for iPhones, iPads, and Android-powered smartphones. Because it is an open platform, Google eBooks will also be accessible on any e-reader that is based on an open platform, like ePub, including, the Sony Reader and the B&N Nook. Announced over two years ago, the program launches just in time for the 2010 holiday season, with roughly 4,000 participating publishers. Although it is currently limited to the US, Google will roll out international editions of Google eBooks beginning in early 2011.

Read the article in full here.

For an inspiring video presentation on the advances in social networking, watch this