somersault

In the above video, Athena Dean of BookJolt (@BookJolt) explains the concept behind the website BookJolt, a new channel of book discovery and distribution. She says ebooks are offered for free http://bookjolt.com/hey-authors/ while the author shares in revenue made through banner advertising in BookJolt’s “free-embeddable-viral-book-reader-widget.”

See the website.

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.

(Enlarge the above Infographic)

From televisions and smartphones to tablets and game consoles, Americans are consuming content on every device under the sun.

According to Nielsen’s (@NielsenWire) new US Consumer Usage Report 2012, nearly 120 million people within television homes own 4 or more TV sets, and 16% of television homes own a tablet. Smartphone owners officially make up the majority of mobile subscribers, as 56% owned a smartphone as of Q3 2012. The number of social media users continues to increase across all platforms as consumers use social networking as a vehicle to navigate the ever-expanding media universe.

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.

Reading books has always included a social element (“What books have you read lately”). But it’s now been given a bump as new technology allows readers, without regard to geographical boundaries, to converse with each other — and the author — in real time while still reading.

Among the just announced winners of Digital Book World’s (@DigiBookWorld) Publishing Innovation Awards is the ebook 11 Days in May: The Conversation That Will Change Your Life by JD Messinger (@JDMessinger); voted Best Non-Fiction Ebook.

The PIAs honor “the most innovative ebooks, enhanced ebooks, and book apps....It is the mission of the PIAs to highlight excellent publishers/authors, encourage new thinking, and improve the reading experience in the digital age.”

11 Days in May utilizes Democrasoft’s (@Democrasoft) WeJIT (@myWeJIT) technology, in collaboration with Vook (@vooktv), to allow readers to communicate directly with the author and other readers. These topic-based discussions are made possible with embedded WeJIT links in the ebook that direct readers to an online discussion forum. Conversations can be shared beyond the confines of the ebook via email, Facebook, Twitter, and other sharing methods built into WeJITs.

Read this in full.

WeJIT discussions and polling links from the ebook 11 Days in May.

News release: “WeJIT Connects Readers and Authors Inside the eBook.”

The following video explains how WeJITs work:

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.

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.

Google is working on a range of projects seeking to extend the role of its search engine beyond PCs and mobile phones, in an indication as to how digital media use may evolve. This will probably have implications for book publishers, as well.

Google is currently assessing the possibility of creating screens that could be built into kitchen walls, dining tables, and equivalent surfaces, offering features like voice- or touch-activated interaction.

Google Glass, the eyewear frames hosting a small screen, have been displayed in prototype form and mark another step in this direction. The firm is considering similar ideas for items such as watches.

Read this in full.

Also see our previous blogsposts,

·         “Behind the Google Goggles, Virtual Reality”

·         “A Day Made of Glass”

·         “The Future of Screen Technology”

·         “The Internet of Things”

·         “NY Times Builds Interactive Wall Mirror”

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.

·         93% of Fortune 500 companies place their logo in the top left corner.

·         27% of logos include a tagline or slogan.

·         63% of companies have content above the fold. Users scroll on the remaining 37% websites to find content.

·         87% of websites have a search field.

·         50% of websites features a scrolling content window of some kind.

·         47% of websites have clear call-to-action buttons on their homepages that take users 3 seconds or less to find.

·         Only 11% of Fortune 500 websites have social media links above the fold; 89% below the fold.

·         60% of companies feature latest news and blogposts on their homepages.

·         Contact information is hard to find on 63%.

·         More than 80% of companies do not have a newsletter signup feature on their homepages.

·         More than 70% of Fortune 500 companies use favicon icons.

·         Average loading time of a homepage is 6.5 seconds; average size of homepage is 766 Kb.

·         Average width of website is 877 pixels.

·         Only 3% of websites use Flash to display content throughout the entire homepage.

·         80% of websites primarily use a light background and color scheme.

·         93% of websites have centered-approach navigation.

·         63% of websites use high quality images on their homepages to connect with users.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you strategically design your online brand presence.

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.

Consultant Steven Van Belleghem (@StevenVBe) draws 10 conclusions from the above study by InSites Consulting (@InSites) of the current state of social media around the world:

1. There are more than 1.5 billion social network users worldwide....

2. Fast adoption of smartphones boosts social media use....

3. Most internauts use no more than two social network sites....

4. Pinterest and Instagram are the rising stars....

5. Klout is a niche....

6. Half of consumers are connected to at least one brand....

7. 1 in 2 consumers occasionally post brand-related content....

8. Pinterest is probably more interesting for brands than Instagram....

9. People don’t really trust brand fans....

10. 80% of people are open to co-creation....

Read this in full.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you understand and maximize social media marketing.

Learn about online marketing with SomersaultSocial.

Get our blogposts delivered into your email inbox.

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

The above image is by Chart of the Day (@chartoftheday) using research by 33across.com’s (@33Across) tynt (@tynt). See the news release. Also see eMarketer's (@eMarketer) article, "Copy and Paste Drives Sharing."

Social sharing buttons may be sexier, but according to research...copy and paste is the sharing method of choice 82% of the time.

...For users, copying and pasting to share content holds obvious appeal: It's almost frictionless, and it allows the sharer to choose exactly what to pass on to a friend or social network.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you make your brand content strategically and easily share-able.

Get our blogposts delivered into your email inbox.

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

ZondervanAcademic / Koinonia Blog (@ZonderAcademic), along with 49 other publishers/exhibitors, is at the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society this week in Milwaukee, WI. While there, it’s live streaming all plenary speakers, including Calvin Beisner, Russell Moore, Richard Bauckham, and Douglas Moo, and a panel discussion on Friday at 11:10 am EST.

And beginning this weekend in Chicago, IL, the annual gatherings are taking place of the Institute for Biblical Research, the Society of Biblical Literature (@SBLsite), and the American Academy of Religion (@AARWeb) — Somersault will be there.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you publish and market your print and digital resources to the academic market.

Get our blogposts delivered into your email inbox.

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