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MobileMarketingWatch (@MobileMW) reports on the findings of a new Greystripe (@Greystripe) study that says better than 66% of moms are plugged into their mobile devices while engaged in the act of shopping:

• 57% search for mobile coupons via their mobile device.
• 45% of connected moms use their smartphone to locate stores.
• 36% utilize some form of price comparison app or service.
• 31% use their smartphones to research products, read reviews, and check product availability.
• 91% prefer free apps with ads over paid apps without ads.

Read the MMW report.

Also see our April 14 blog post, “Motherhood Sends Moms to Smartphones.”

And see Marketing Charts' "1 in 3 Smartphone Shoppers Often Accesses In-store Coupons."

What are you doing to publish content that will reach these moms? Let Somersault help.

This Infographic (#Infographic) by Ad Age (@AdAgeStat) displays social media demographics based on actual user profiles, not just Web traffic. Also see detailed tables of the age breakdowns of Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn.

This article in Internet Retailer (@IR_Magazine) says Facebook is today for marketers what ABC, CBS, and NBC TV networks were in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s: mass media that could reach practically all US consumers with a sweeping marketing message.

Today, the way to market to the masses is through Facebook, where 135.7 million US consumers spent time in March, according to market research firm Nielsen Co.

And consumers don’t just click on Facebook and leave — they spent on average more than 6 hours and 35 minutes on the social network in March, nearly 5 times the one hour and 21 minutes the average Web user spent on Google, Nielsen says. What’s more, while on Facebook they share information about themselves, interacting with the site 90 times in an average month — posting photos and updates, commenting on friends’ posts, Liking products and articles, and more.

In short, millions of shoppers are constantly telling Facebook Inc. about themselves, what interests them, where they live, what they buy and who their friends are. That’s a treasure trove of consumer information. And in the last year or so Facebook has regularly been introducing innovations that enable retailers and other marketers to use that detailed information to precisely target the consumers they wish to reach.

Read the article and its examples in full.

How are you using Facebook to advance your brand?

Writing at iMedia Connection (@iMediaTweet), Brian Monahan (@brionic), EVP, managing partner, at IPG Media Lab (@IPGLAB), succinctly describes and analyzes 5 trends converging at the “crossroads of technology, consumer behavior, and marketing effectiveness:”

·         The identity of things: The proliferation of smart mobile devices are allowing consumers to access information and content tied to objects via various means like bar code scanning, 2D tags, near field communication, or visual search. The digital industry has already seen two waves of content development. The first was anchored to URLs. The second was anchored to social profiles. We are about to witness the third wave of digital content development anchored to objects.

·         Mobile is infused: Mobile has become so critical to consumer behavior that it has progressed beyond being a “feature;” it’s now a necessity for all hardware devices and services.

·         Life is a game: Game design principles are clearly being woven into all we do. As mobile devices are built with location and context aware technology, the world is being turned into an arena in which consumers enjoy playing. For retailers and brands, this means creating advertising that recognizes users and knows their preferences, delivering messages of value and experiences in the form of rewards, rankings and other game-derived forms of incentives and virtual currency.

·         The rise of content marketplaces: To serve the propagation of tablets (which now number 82) and other popular hardware, brands are focusing attention on creating recurring, billable, and easily accessible content. (For example, see Warc’s (@WarcEditors) article, “Tablets lure media owners.”)

·         Continuous partial attention: The continued fragmentation of consumer attention is being driven by changes in the device, media, and distribution landscapes. To compete for consumer attention in this complex media environment, brands must develop immersive, empathetic communications to fully engage their audience.

Read this in full.

Do you agree with this summary and analysis?

Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, CA, has approved the new Common English Bible (@CommonEngBible & @VersesForToday) as a translation for use in biblical studies courses for its more than 4,000 students, and particularly for all master’s-level instruction in the seminary’s School of Theology, School of Psychology, and School of Intercultural Studies on all eight of its campuses.

“Fuller's mission is to prepare men and women for the manifold ministries of Christ and his church. We work out this calling with an eye toward both academic excellence and service to the church. The Biblical Division's decision to approve the Common English Bible for classroom use reflects these commitments,” says J. R. Daniel Kirk, assistant professor of New Testament at Fuller. “We’ve approved the Common English Bible because it’s an academically excellent translation, because it communicates the underlying Greek and Hebrew texts in a clear and accessible fashion, and because it reflects the reality that the communities for which the Bible was written consist of both women and men.”

Fuller has more than 35,000 alumni in 130 countries, serving as pulpit ministers, mission leaders, academic leaders, mental health professionals, chaplains, translators, and community and marketplace leaders. The Common English Bible joins two other translations officially approved by Fuller: the New Revised Standard Version and Today’s New International Version.

Combining scholarly accuracy with vivid language, the Common English Bible is the work of more than 200 biblical scholars and church leaders, including members of more than 20 denominations, who translated the Bible into English directly from the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts. More than 500 readers in 77 groups field-tested the translation. Every verse was read aloud in the reading groups, where potentially confusing passages were identified. The translators considered the groups' responses and, where necessary, reworked those passages to clarify in English their meaning from the original languages.

The digital revolution is accelerating changes in language and its everyday usage. The new Common English Bible is written in contemporary idiom at the same reading level as the newspaper USA TODAY—using language that’s comfortable and accessible for today’s English readers. With the complete Bible arriving in stores in August, this new translation strives to make Bible reading more clear and compelling for individuals, groups, and corporate worship services.

“The Common English Bible is a brand-new, bold translation designed to meet the needs of people in all stages of their spiritual journey,” says Paul Franklyn, associate publisher for the Common English Bible. “For students—whether at colleges and seminaries or outside a formal institution—it combines and balances highly respected ecumenical biblical scholarship necessary for serious study with responsiveness to 21st century clear communication requirements for comprehensive clarity. The Common English Bible can help students experience the insight and knowledge that comes from a fresh reading of the Bible.”

The Common English Bible is an inclusive translation, using male and female pronouns where appropriate to indicate the meaning of the original Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek text when referring to general human beings. Pronouns for God, Lord, Jesus, or the Holy Spirit are translated as he, his, or him.

Another unique feature of the Common English Bible is the inclusion of exclusive, detailed color maps from National Geographic, well known for its vibrant and accurate map making.

Visit CommonEnglishBible.com to see comparison translations, learn about the translators, get free downloads, and more.

The Common English Bible is a denomination-neutral Bible sponsored by the Common English Bible Committee, an alliance of five publishers that serve the general market, as well as the Disciples of Christ (Chalice Press), Presbyterian Church (Westminster John Knox Press), Episcopal Church (Church Publishing Inc.), United Church of Christ (Pilgrim Press), and United Methodist Church (Abingdon Press).

(To schedule an interview with Paul Franklyn, contact Brandi Lewis at 615-749-6211).

Start getting the Common English Bible verses on your Facebook page.

Listen to audio samples from the Common English Bible audioBible (like you’ve never heard before).

Previous post: “The Common English Bible Translation is Complete.”

Trendwatching.com (@trendwatching) has coined “The F-FACTOR” to describe the power and reach social media has on commerce and branding.

• The F-FACTOR is currently dominated by Facebook, as over 500 million active users spend over 700 billion minutes a month on the site. (Source: Facebook, April 2011)
•  And its impact isn’t just on Facebook itself. Every month, more than 250 million people engage with Facebook across more than 2.5 million external websites. (Source: Facebook, April 2011)
• The average user clicks the ‘Like’ button 9 times each month. (Facebook, 2010)
• Three-quarters of Facebook users have 'Liked' a brand. (Source: AdAge/ Ipsos, February 2011)

Here are 5 ways the F-FACTOR influences consumption behavior:

1. F-DISCOVERY: How consumers discover new products and services by relying on their social networks.
2. F-RATED: How consumers will increasingly (and automatically) receive targeted ratings, recommendations and reviews from their social networks.
3. F-FEEDBACK: How consumers can ask their friends and followers to improve and validate their buying decisions.
4. F-TOGETHER: How shopping is becoming increasingly social, even when consumers and their peers are not physically together.
5. F-ME: How consumers’ social networks are literally turned into products and services.

Read further explanation of the above points.

Also see Marketing Charts (@marketingcharts) “Consumers Tap into ‘F-Factor’”

Keep in mind, according to a March 2011 survey by RetailMeNot.com and Harris Interactive, search engines are still the most popular online means of finding deals (67%), outpacing retailer emails/ads (30%), coupon websites (23%), and price comparison sites (22%).

Let Somersault help you optimize the F-FACTOR for your brand.

While at Apple, Mike Matas (@mike_matas) helped write the user interface for the iPhone and iPad. Now, co-founder of Push Pop Press (@pushpoppress), he's helping to rewrite the electronic book. In the above video he demos the first full-length interactive book for the iPad – with clever, swipeable video and graphics, and some cool data visualizations to play with. The book is Our Choice, Al Gore’s sequel to An Inconvenient Truth.

See the video at TED.

Be sure to read the discussion started by David Wees (@davidwees) titled “What is this ‘ebook’ missing?”

I'd have to argue that this ebook is missing some of the most important features of the interactive Web.... [W]hat I see is interactivity with static content, which in my mind is a dead concept.

...Most importantly, how is this book integrated with social media? How can we comment on the book, annotate it, share passages of the book with other people? If I want to share the book, like we can do easily and all the time with print text, do I need to share my entire iPad? How do we tag content? How do we set multiple bookmarks, so we can go back and reread our favourite sections? Can I read the same book on my laptop? Is it possible to make edits to the book when I see errors or omissions, or just want to play with the text?

In today’s digital age, we should be very suspicious of any ebook which doesn't offer all of the features listed above.

Read this discussion in full.

Let Somersault help you publish meaningful enhanced ebooks.

According to Sympatico.ca News (@Sympatico), a plastic smartphone as thin and flexible as a credit card has been invented by researchers from Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada.

Roel Vertegaal, director of the Human Media Lab at Queen's University, first came up with the idea of using “bend gestures” as a new way of interacting with computers. He envisioned a device that would feel and behave like a sheet of interactive paper, so he named it the PaperPhone.

He expects consumer devices similar to the PaperPhone to hit the market in 5 to 10 years.

Vertegaal will demonstrate the prototype - and the bend gestures used to control it - at the Computer Human Interaction conference in Vancouver May 10 (#chi2011).

Read this in full.

Read the BBC News story.

Read the news release at Human Media Lab.

What are you doing today to prepare for the continuous changes in publishing so that you’ll be ready for the new book formats of the future?

Harvard Business School (@HBSNews) professor Lynda Applegate says one of the forces that threatens established companies — disruptive change — can also be a source of salvation. She encourages executives to leverage disruptive change as a platform for innovation.

Disruptions in the business environment cause economic shifts that destabilize industries, companies, and even countries. They allow new entrants or forward-thinking established players to introduce innovations — in products, markets, or processes — that transform the way companies do business and consumers behave.

These disruptive innovations are not just novel inventions. Successful innovators take ideas and turn them into opportunities by adding a business model that creates sustainable economic value for all stakeholders. They then go one step further and exploit the opportunity by creating a sustainable business.

She lists the following guidelines to positively leverage disruption to create value:

• Listen to — and learn from — the market: Identify sources
• Expand your horizons
• Identify potential disruptors that could be a source of opportunity
• Select ideas for further evaluation
• Turn promising ideas into opportunities
• Implement to reduce risk and manage uncertainty
• Collaborate!

Read this article in full.

Let Somersault help you turn the revolutionary changes occurring in the publishing world into a playground of possibilities for your brand.

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

The purpose of the National Day of Prayer (@NationalPrayer) is “to mobilize prayer in America and to encourage personal repentance and righteousness in the culture.”

Since the first call to prayer in 1775, when the Continental Congress asked the colonies to pray for wisdom in forming a nation, the call to prayer has continued through our history, including President Lincoln’s proclamation of a day of “humiliation, fasting, and prayer” in 1863. In 1952, a joint resolution by Congress, signed by President Truman, declared an annual, national day of prayer. In 1988, the law was amended and signed by President Reagan, permanently setting the day as the first Thursday of every May. Each year, the president signs a proclamation, encouraging all Americans to pray on this day. Last year, all 50 state governors plus the governors of several US territories signed similar proclamations.

And as recently as last month, a panel of the US court of appeals overturned a ruling that previously found the law requiring the President to proclaim a National Day of Prayer each year as unconstitutional.

When I pray for another person, I am praying for God to open my eyes so that I can see that person as God does, and then enter into the stream of love that God already directs toward that person. — Philip Yancey