somersault

In the normal course of promoting their books, authors are interviewed by the media. Sometimes questions are asked that a well media-trained author feels is off-topic, so she deftly bridges from the question to the answer that will bring the conversation back on-topic.

NPR’s program Science Friday (@scifri) featured this tactic in a discussion with social psychologist Todd Rogers, spotlighted in the Harvard Magazine (@HarvardMagazine) article, The Art of the Dodge. While the show focuses on politicians, the principles and conversation are of interest to anyone who wants to properly and strategically communicate a message through the media.

Hear this interview in full.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you or your authors become better speakers through media training.

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

Here’s a new page in the print-on-demand saga and its growing impact on book publishing (see our previous blogpost, “Mardel Acquires Espresso Book Machine"): 3D printing. There may be innovative applications for publishers to consider for print books, especially in light of the current capability to 3D print a functional human jaw and a working gun made out of resin.

Jonathan Zittrain (@zittrain), author of The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It (book) (blog), professor of law at Harvard Law School (@Harvard_Law), and faculty co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University (@berkmancenter), says

Resin is the toner of the modern 3D printer. No doubt 3D printers will come to be able to commonly use other raw ingredients. There's no reason they couldn't be someday in the mainstream metals and all sorts of forms of porcelain, but in this case we're talking plastic.

Read this in full at Marketplace Tech (@MarketplaceAPM).

Another foray into the future is the possibility that smartphones will be fashioned into glasses, and the opportunities this may bring to publishers.

"This idea of wearing glasses and being able to see data as we walk around is where I think things are heading," says Brian Chen (@bxchen), columnist for The New York Times Bits blog (@nytimesbits) and author of Always On: How the iPhone Unlocked the Anything-Anytime-Anywhere Future—and Locked Us In. And once the interface for glasses is less intrusive, he noted, the potential use cases are wide open. “Say you were giving a speech," he said. "Glasses could serve as a teleprompter."

Read this in full.

Let Somersault (@smrsault) help you sort out the fast-changing world of publishing.

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Knowledge@Wharton (@knowledgwharton) says, “Our current multi-channel, multi-screen, ‘always on’ world is giving rise to a new form of storytelling, dubbed ‘transmedia,’ that unfolds a narrative across multiple media channels.”

A single story may present some elements through a television series or a motion picture with additional narrative threads explored in comic books, video games, or a collection of websites and Twitter feeds. Depending on their level of interest, fans can engage in selection of these story elements or follow all of them to fully immerse themselves in the world of the story.

Andrea Phillips, author of A Creator's Guide to Transmedia Storytelling: How to Captivate and Engage Audiences across Multiple Platforms, offers her observations on the current shift happening in marketing, including stealth advertising across media:

It has to do with experience. There's a point where you enjoy ambiguity. The problem is that that point is a little bit different for everyone. And the audience wants to be in control of knowing where that line is. When you present yourself as real, you open yourself to creating problems for people.

Assuming that your audience can't possibly know it's fictional is ridiculous on the face of it…. The idea that admitting that something was fictional would ruin the whole thing winds up being a non-starter. An audience is a little more robust than that. They're not so fragile that when they can find out that it's not real, it will ruin it….

There's a myth that if you make something interesting and you tell a couple of people, it will spread virally across the Internet. That is, by and large, a terrible, terrible lie. It is not true that the cream rises to the top on the Internet.

When you launch something, don't just send someone a mysterious box. Send them a mysterious box if you have to, but also send them a letter with a URL telling them what you're doing. Send out a press release. Make sure people know what it is you're going to do, and make sure that they know before it's almost done or nobody will look at it.

These things do have to be marketed and promoted exactly the same way that every other entertainment medium does. It's frustrating to see campaigns start with no concept of a marketing budget, no concept of how they're going to spread the word beyond, "Well, people will know because it's cool."

...There's a lot of talk about the attention economy, where we're in a flat-out war for attention. Marketers have cottoned to the idea that people aren't going to look at marketing just because you put it in front of them. People simply don't notice banner ads. Calling [the impact of a banner ad] an ‘impression’ is a terrible lie, because it isn't making an impression on anybody. You just tune it out. It might as well not exist.

Marketers have started to realize they need to create content people will seek out because it has value to them, independent of the value to the marketer. You're seeing things like the Old Spice guy, which has tremendous entertainment value — partly because it's really funny and partly because Isaiah Mustafa is extremely beautiful to look at — and people seek that out because there's something there that they want. And the marketing comes in subtly.

Read this in full.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you cover all the bases in your marketing strategy.

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We think lessons can be learned from watching this 8-minute ESPN (@espn) documentary video. Consider how you’d go about turning customers of your brand into the kind of people who would identify themselves with it so strongly that they’d include it in their own send-offs.

Also see our previous blogpost, “Rest in Fleece: Woolen Coffins – Innovative Market.”

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you effectively communicate your brand’s message to create raving fans.

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

Chairman of Thomas Nelson Publishers (@ThomasNelson), Michael Hyatt’s (@MichaelHyatt) new book is Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World (#PlatformBook). It offers practical advice for anyone who wants to effectively communicate any kind of a message in today’s media-saturated world.

He says properly building a platform for your brand (either you or an entity you represent) provides visibility (elevation above the crowd), amplification (extend your reach to people who want to hear you), and connection (engage people with relevant and valuable information).

Hyatt maintains an active blog and Twitter stream. He says it took him 4 years to attract more than 1,000 readers a month, but today he has more than 300,000 visitors (and 130,000 Twitter followers). Read his post, “4 Insights I Gleaned from Building My Own Platform.”

Hyatt also conducted a teleseminar for Platform. You can hear it here.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you strategically and effectively build your platform.

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

Michigan Radio’s (@MichiganRadio) feature “That’s What They Say” says the words “funner” and “funnest” seem to be more accepted among younger people. Younger speakers are trying to make the word “fun” behave the same way as any other regular one syllable adjective. And, one syllable adjectives usually take -er -est; so tall, taller, tallest, therefore, fun, funner, funnest.

Anne Curzan, professor of English specializing in linguistics at the University of Michigan (@umich) says the word “fun” is a relatively new adjective.

“It’s been a noun since the 1700s, but it has only become an adjective in the second-half of the 20th century.”

Read and hear this in full.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you perfect your writing craft.

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

Above Infographic (enlarge it) is by Course Hero (@CourseHero).

The above film, EPILOGUE: the future of print (@EPILOGUEdoc) (vimeo channel) by Hanah Ryu Chung, is a documentary that explores the world of print books, scratching the surface of its future. Chung says:

The act of reading a “tangible tome” has evolved, devolved, and changed many times over, especially in recent years. I hope for the film to stir thought and elicit discussion about the immersive reading experience and the lost craft of the book arts, from the people who are still passionate about reading on paper as well as those who are not.

Also see our previous blogposts:

• "Paper is Stronger than Tech and Now its Aroma Comes Bottled"
• "Home Libraries Despite the Ebook Era"
• "Birth of a Book: The Handmade Bookbinding Process"
• "Book Seller Believes in Video's Marketing Power"
• "A Video About a Poster Masks a Bookstore's Promotion"
• "Video: What Books Do After Hours"
• "The Technology of Storytelling"
• "Photos: The 20 Coolest Bookstores in the World"
• "Introducing the New Book"
• "Even E-reader Owners Still Like Printed Books, Survey Finds"
• "In a Flood Tide of Digital Data, an Ark Full of Books"
• "The 'End' of Print and TV."

If you love books like we (@smrsault) do, we invite you to make our SomersaultNOW online dashboard your personal computer homepage (see instructions).

Traditionally, the metric used to assess return-on-investment for public relations efforts has been Advertising Value Equivalency (AVE), defined by Marketing Metrics Made Simple (MMMS) as “what your editorial coverage would cost if it were advertising space (or time).”

To calculate the AVE for one month, measure the space (column inches) occupied by a clip (for radio and television coverage, you measure time). Then multiply the column inches (time) by the ad rate for that page (time slot).

After you do the same for every clip for that month, add up the costs to get a total cost. The total cost is the cost of the ads that theoretically could have occupied the space (time) occupied by all your editorial coverage for that month.

However, MMMS explains how AVE numbers might be an inaccurate tool:

Consider that a highly positive article can be worth much more than a single advertisement in the same space. That's because readers consciously or unconsciously think of an advertisement as an instance of a company boasting about itself (and paying dearly for the privilege of doing so), and an article as an implied endorsement by a presumably objective and knowledgeable third party (the editor who approved the copy on that page). So, from this perspective, AVE underestimates the value of editorial.

...Generally speaking, advertising tends to command attention and create awareness. Publicity tends to build credibility. Normally you need both.

In an attempt to more precisely gauge a PR campaign’s influence on the decision-making steps of a consumer (awareness, knowledge, consideration, preference, action), the International Association for Measurement and Evaluation of Communication (@AmecOrg) (#Amec2012) has produced The Barcelona Declaration of Measurement Principles:

1. Importance of goal setting and measurement

2. Measuring the effect on outcomes is preferred to measuring outputs

3. The effect on business results can and should be measured where possible

4. Media measurement requires quantity and quality

5. AVEs are not the value of public relations

6. Social media can and should be measured

7. Transparency and replicability are paramount to sound measurement.

Public Relations is a broad discipline that requires multiple metrics tied to well-defined objectives. These guidelines provide many alternatives to AVEs and are intended to help practitioners identify a palette of Valid Metrics that will deliver meaningful measurement to reflect the full contribution of Public Relations.

Above are slides explaining the Barcelona Principles measurement activity and effect in each of the following PR areas:

·         Brand/product marketing

·         Reputation building

·         Issues advocacy & support

·         Employee engagement

·         Investor relations

·         Crisis and issues management

·         Public education / not-for-profit

·         Social / community engagement.

Read the presentation in full (pdf).

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you plan and execute the right integrated public relations communications strategy for your brand.

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

This article in Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) by Kent Annan (@kentannan) draws organizational communication lessons from a recent social justice viral video. He says, “We can all keep striving to better understand how to work toward justice not only with our actions, but also with how we tell people's stories. Jesus' so-called Golden Rule should serve as the overarching guide: ‘You should treat people in the same way that you want people to treat you’ (Matt. 7:12 CEB).”

His 6 principles are:

1.    People need a clear, compelling next step....

2.    The audience is who you're talking to—and who you're talking about....

3.    Be virally prepared....

4.    Take care when casting the hero and agent of change....

5.    The pitch is the message....

6.    Be attentive, not safe....

Read this in full.

Also see Ken Davis’ (@KenDavisLive) guest post on Michael Hyatt’s (@MichaelHyatt) blog, “4 Characteristics of Effective Communicators”:

1.    Prepare a message with a singular and crystal clear focus….

2.    Read an audience and customize the presentation to make that audience want to listen….

3.    Be passionate about the subject….

4.    Leave the audience no doubt about how to benefit from the talk’s objective….

Read this in full.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you tell your story.

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