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TechJournal South (@TJ_South) reports on a new University of California, Davis (@ucdavis) study of “buzz” marketing on YouTube that says the quality of videos aren’t as important as “seeding” them to influential people (bloggers, tweeters, etc.).

The study’s author, Hema Yoganarasimhan, professor at the UC Davis Graduate School of Management, says seeding information in social media outlets through handpicked agents is crucial.

“It’s not the number of people; it’s focusing on the right people,” she explains. “They need to ask who are their friends, and who are their friends’ friends — and how are they positioned in the network?”

While a close-knit community may be committed and loyal to a dispenser of information, that community may generate low video popularity in the long run, the study showed. That’s because people in a close-knit community don’t interact much with outsiders, resulting in few interactions with 2nd- or 3rd-degree “friends.”

The study, Impact of social network structure on content propagation: A study using YouTube data, finds that while 1st-degree friends are important for initial marketing, 2nd- and 3rd-degree friends are essential for “viral” spread.

The study says video ratings are important — but it doesn’t much matter if the rating is good or bad. Yoganarasimhan’s analysis shows that video quality, as measured by viewer comments and ratings, have little effect on viewership in the long run. However a video with any rating is likely to have more viewers than one with no rating.

Read this in full.

Tim Schmoyer (@timschmoyer) of ReelSEO (@Reelseo) offers 6 tips in “How to Connect with Key Video Influencers in a Social World.”

1. Become engaged in other creators’ blogs and videos....

2. Be genuine....

3. Start with your niche....

4. Collaborate with others at your level....

5. Give a glowing review....

6. Invest the time....

Read this in full.

Also see our previous blogpost, “The 3 Qualities That Make A YouTube Video Go Viral.”

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you strategize and produce videos that effectively communicate your brand’s message to your target audience.

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

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).

In Forbes (@Forbes), Jacquelyn Smith (@JacquelynVSmith) writes, “We live in a world where word-of-mouth is the No. 1 driver of sales and competitive advantage — and because there’s a strong correlation between a company’s reputation and consumers’ willingness to recommend it, businesses need to focus on building those strong bonds with stakeholders. Companies should of course strive to earn the trust and esteem of consumers in its native land, but given that a multinational gets a majority of its revenue from international markets, it really needs to be liked everywhere else, too.”

A newly released global reputation study of more than 100,000 consumers shows that who you are as a company is more important than what you produce, with BMW, SONY, and Disney topping the list of the most reputable companies.

The third annual Global RepTrak™ 100, by reputation consultancy firm Reputation Institute (@Reputation_Inst), identifies how stakeholders perceive companies and how those perceptions affect purchasing behavior.

The companies with the 10 best global reputations are:

1.    BMW

2.    Sony

3.    Walt Disney Company

4.    Daimler

5.    Apple

6.    Google

7.    Microsoft

8.    Volkswagen

9.    Canon

10. LEGO

Each company earned a “Global RepTrak Pulse” score of zero to 100, representing an average measure of people’s feelings for it. The scores were statistically derived from calculations of 4 emotional indicators: trust, esteem, admiration, and good feeling.

Reputation Institute also analyzed what it calls the 7 dimensions of corporate reputation. That’s where it found that perceptions of the enterprise (workplace, governance, citizenship, financial performance, and leadership) trumps product perceptions (products and services plus innovation) in driving behaviors.

Read this in full.

Read the news release (pdf).

Also see our previous blogpost about the value of brand reputation, “Ford Gets Its Logo Back.”

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you manage your brand’s reputation.

Be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard, especially the Marketing/PR tab.

In Search Engine Land (@sengineland), SEO expert Rick DeJarnette (@rickdejarnette) says a webpage’s <title> tag “has the most SEO power of any tag on the page for establishing keyword relevance.” He offers the best practices to achieve optimized results:

1. Use only one per page, placed within the <head> tag…

2. Place top-performing keywords in descending order…

3. Ensure site branding goes last…

4. Use no more than 70 characters, including spaces…

5. Avoid using stop words (“the”, ”an,” “a” and many others)...

6. Reflect the most important keywords used in the page’s body text…

7. Keep it unique between pages…

8. Avoid duplicating the exact text string within the <h1> tag text…

9. Avoid keyword stuffing…

Read this in full.

Let Somersault (@smrsault) help you optimize your Internet branding presence.

Be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard.

And please LIKE our Facebook page. Thanks!

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.

The above Infographic is by First Scribe (@firstscribe).

Let Somersault (@smrsault) help you plan and execute your social media marketing strategy.

And bookmark and use daily our SomersaultNOW online dashboard.

Marketers should make an effort to understand and cultivate so-called brand advocates as social media becomes more prominent. According to a Zuberance (@Zuberance) study, half of brand advocates make a recommendation online because of a good experience with a product or service. The second most prominent motivation for brand advocates: they want to help friends make better purchase decisions.

Though brand advocates are formally defined as making one recommendation a year, without pay – the highest percentage of them (38%) do so 5 to 9 times a year, with 16% making 10 to 15 recommendations and 16% making 15 or more. Other findings:

·         Brand Advocates are even more active than previously thought.

·         Brand Advocates have even larger social networks than previous studies showed.

·         Brand Advocates’ recommendations aren’t limited to consumer brands and products.

See the recorded webinar.

Also see our previous blogpost, “Consumer Trust in Online, Social, & Mobile Advertising Grows.”

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you identify and reach your brand advocates.

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

Consumers’ reliance on word-of-mouth in the decision-making process – either from people they know or online consumers they don’t – has increased significantly.

According to Nielsen’s (@NielsenWire) latest Global Trust in Advertising report, which surveyed more than 28,000 Internet respondents in 56 countries:

·         92% of consumers around the world say they trust earned media, such as recommendations from friends and family, above all other forms of advertising — an increase of 18% since 2007.

·         70% trust online consumer reviews, an increase of 15% in 4 years.

·         58% (nearly 6-in-10) trust messages found on company websites.

·         Half trust email messages that they signed up to receive.

·         4-in-10 respondents rely on ads served alongside search engine results.

·         36% trust online video advertisements.

·         One-third believe the messages in online banner ads — an increase of 27% since 2007.

·         Sponsored ads on social networks, a new format included in the 2011 Nielsen survey, are credible among 36% of global respondents.

·         Display ads (video or banner) on mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones are trusted by one-third of global respondents, which is slightly higher than the reported consumer trust level of text ads on mobile phones (29%). While the reported consumer trust level in mobile phone advertising is still low, it increased 61% since 2007 and 21% since 2009.

·         When it comes to traditional paid media, while nearly half of consumers around the world say they trust television (47%), magazine (47%), and newspaper ads (46%), confidence declined by 24%, 20%, and 25%, respectively, between 2009 and 2011.

Read this in full.

Interestingly (perhaps confusingly), the 92% statistic above contrasts with April 2012 survey results from Ipsos (@ipsosnewspolls & @ipsosna), which finds that, while consumers worldwide may turn to their friends for advice on purchases, only 38% will trust a product or a service more because friends recommend it. Hmmmmmmm!

Possibly our previous blogpost, "Matching the Medium with the Message in Word-of-Mouth Marketing," might shed some light on the confusion.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you communicate your brand’s message through owned media, consigned media, earned media, and paid media.

Be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard (and tell others about it, too).

Who says branding isn’t valuable? Yesterday, Ford reacquired its logo. Back in 2006, when other automakers in financial distress accepted government bailouts, Ford Motor Company pledged its assets as collateral – including its historic Ford blue oval logo – in a loan agreement with banks. The New York Times says:

Ford put up its logo, headquarters, factories and other assets to qualify for $23.5 billion in loans that helped it survive the recession without needing a government bailout like General Motors and Chrysler.

Read the Ford news release.

Bloomberg BusinessWeek offers a brief history of the logo:

The carmaker’s emblem first appeared in 1927 on the nose of Henry Ford’s new Model A. The cursive script inside it dates to at least 1906, when it appeared on the radiator of the Model N and later on the more famous Model T, according to automotive historian John Wolkonowicz. It was trademarked in 1909, the company says.

The script logo is not, as often thought, based on the founder’s signature. Rather, it was created by Childe Harold Wills, a draftsman for Henry Ford. “The font was similar enough to Henry’s own signature that it looked as if he was signing every car,” says Bob Casey, senior curator of transportation at the Henry Ford museum in Dearborn, Mich. “But that was more happy coincidence than by design.”

So what’s a logo worth as a guarantee for a multi-billion dollar loan? Ford hasn't placed a value on the trustmark. But Interbrand (@Interbrand), which tracks brand values, says the Ford brand is worth $7.5 billion, and it ranked Ford 50th out of its top 100 brands in a recent survey.

What are you doing to add value to your brand?

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you strengthen and effectively communicate your brand’s message.

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

An article on Marketing Charts (@marketingcharts) says QR Code scans by consumers were up 157% in Q1 2012 over Q1 2011, according to a report by Scanlife (@ScanLife), the mobile barcode solution provider.

Read this in full.

That’s good news for the town of Monmouth (Wikipedia entry) in Wales (pop. 8,877) which recently embarked on the "Monmouthpedia" (@Monmouthpedia) project — a community-wide 6-month project to affix QR codes to all its landmarks, organizations, and even people, and write Wikipedia entries on each of them, which the codes link to. Adweek (@Adweek) says:

The idea came from a TEDx talk in Bristol, where a Wikipedia editor suggested that Wikimedia's UK chapter should "do a whole town" using QR codes. Residents and businesses in Monmouth stepped up, did all the legwork (there are more than 1,000 QR codes in total), and introduced Monmouthpedia this weekend.

A Wikimedia blog entry says:

Lest you think this is a passing interest, the town of Monmouth is in it for the long haul. Many of the QRpedia codes are printed on ceramic plaques that should last for decades. The information in articles is backed by the Wikipedia community and will be continually improved and expanded. Physical guides and maps will become outdated, but the Wikipedia articles will always be able to be updated. This potential for on-site access to up-to-date information in any language is what makes the Monmouthpedia model so exciting.

A simple concept and coordinated effort put this Welsh community on the social media map. Does this spark any dreams you may have for your own brand?

Read the Wikimedia blog entry in full.

Read the Adweek article in full.

Read coverage by psfk (@psfk), by Amanda Kooser (@akooser) for cnet, and by Joseph Volpe (@jrvolpe) for engadget.

Also see our previous blogpost, "Small Swiss Village Hits it Big with Facebook Fans."

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you strategize unique promotions for your brand.

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