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Schools.com (@schoolsEDU) has created the above Infographic to show that nearly half of all Americans get some form of local news on a mobile device, and 46% of people get their news online at least 3 times a week. Online news sources officially surpassed print newspapers in ad revenue in 2010. Thanks to social media, we're getting news as it happens — sometimes even before news organizations have a chance to report it.

Also see our previous blogpost, "Infographic: Pew's State of the News Media 2012."

Be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard; especially the Religion News tab.

Launched in 1996, AbeBooks (@AbeBooks) is an online marketplace where consumers can buy new, used, rare, and out-of-print books, “as well as cheap textbooks.” It’s a connection point between shoppers and “thousands of professional booksellers around the world who list for sale millions of books.

One way it markets its brand is through video; lots of video. It’s produced 140 videos so far and offers them on its YouTube channel. Here are 3 examples.

Also see our previous blogposts, “A Video About a Poster Masks a Bookstore's Promotion” and “The 3 Qualities That Make A YouTube Video Go Viral”

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you produce effective videos for your brand.

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

In the Personal Tech section of The New York Times (@NYTpersonaltech), Alan Finder explains why you may or may not be able to digitally check-out your favorite books from your local library; and, if you find them, exactly how to do it.

Five of the six major publishers of trade books either refuse to make new ebooks available to libraries or have pulled back significantly over the last year on how easily or how often those books can be circulated. And complaints are rampant about lengthy waiting lists for best sellers and other popular ebooks from the publishers that are willing to sell to libraries....

These complexities may only increase with the announcement [April 11] that the Justice Department had filed a civil antitrust action against major book publishers and Apple, accusing the companies of colluding in 2010 to raise the prices of ebooks [on this subject, see the Publishers Weekly (@PublishersWkly) article, “ABA Calls DoJ Ruling ‘Baffling’” and its other coverage]. In the meantime, though, if you can find the ebook you want in the library, it’s easy to check it out. You can browse a library’s digital holdings from the comfort of your living room at any time. You don’t have to go to the library to borrow a book, and even better, you don’t have to go there to return it. Books vanish from your device when they are due. And you can get access to a library’s ebooks from myriad devices, including e-readers, tablets, and smartphones.

You do have to learn one of the two basic systems. One is for Amazon’s Kindle, which works directly through Amazon.com and is the easier of the two. The other requires you to download software from the Adobe website, and works for other e-readers.

Read this in full.

For a historical view on the topic of libraries and ebooks, see Mathew Ingram’s (@mathewi) article on GigaOm (@gigaom), “Kindle Lending: Book Publishers Still Not Getting It.”

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you navigate 21st century digital publishing.

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

Alexis Madrigal (@alexismadrigal), senior editor at The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic), offers this chart of statistics drawn from Gallup (@gallupnews) surveys to show that book reading has not diminished with the rise of digitization; on the contrary, it’s expanded. Interesting!

Also see The Christian Science Monitor's (@csmonitor) "Ebook revolution: We're reading more than ever" and our previous blogpost, "Extensive New Study: The Rise of E-reading."

If you’re a book lover like we (@smrsault) are, be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard; especially the Research tab.

The Pew Research Center’s (@pewresearch) Project for Excellence in Journalism (@PEJPew) summarizes its State of the News Media 2012 report in this Infographic.

TV is still a strong news source, but digital is the growth area, with tablets the fastest-growing platform. Social media is a fair source of news recommendations, though news consumers prefer to find stories themselves, and direct from sources like CNN.com, newspaper, and network sites. Among the findings:

·         23% of U.S. adults get news from two devices

·         44% own a smart phone, and 18% own a tablet computer

·         70% get their news from a desktop computer, and 56% from tablets

·         64% of those employed full time own a tablet computer

·         Twitter is more highly regarded than Facebook as a source of news story recommendations.

Read this in full.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you understand the sea-changes occurring in media and publishing, and how they affect your brand.

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

CNBC Business magazine (@CNBC) contributing editor Colin Brown (@colinmlbrown) writes

You don't need to be BP, Toyota, News Corp, or even Tiger Woods to know how quickly ‘brand equity’ can be destroyed by screw-ups, cover-ups, and indiscretions. In the face of such PR fiascos, the accepted repair strategy has been to come clean as quickly and as contritely as possible. But in an era when corporate skeletons are subject to constant social media scrutiny, your business can suffer just as easily by being too transparent. Ask Bank of America....

Many see measurement of reputation — trust quotients, if you like — as the next big frontier on the Web. Just as Google unleashed the search potential of the Internet with its PageRank analysis that assigned a numerical weighting to every nugget of information, so a new breed of reputation brokers is starting to define Web 3.0 with the equivalent of 'PeopleRank' scores. You might think of these as Yelp ratings for people, creating a hierarchy of individuals and companies based on reputation scores....

Read this in full.

Also see Warc's (@WarcEditors) article, "Corporate Social Responsibility Could Benefit Brands" quoting Nielsen's (@NielsenWire) report, "The Global, Socially-Conscious Consumer."

Let Somersault (@smrsault) help you strategically understand your brand’s reputation management.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard; especially the Marketing/Public Relations tab.

Why would a 2-minute video (created by the Canadian forestry machinery maker Hakmet) of a machine cutting and splitting tree trunks go viral with more than 3 million views? Is it the hypnotic combination of lilting music, buzz saw noise, and captivating visual rhythm? Probably.

It reminds us of another hearty industrial company’s viral video success: Blendtec’s (@Blendtec) “Will it Blend” campaign. The video below of an iPad being destroyed in a blender has more than 13 million views. Wow.

Amber Mac‘s (@ambermac) article “The 5-Video Work Week: How to Build Your Brand On YouTube” in Fast Company’s Co.LEAD (@FastCoLead) offer tips on what makes a video successful:

·         The briefer the better; 60 seconds is best

·         Content that’s useful to the viewer

·         Keep fresh with regular updates

Read this in full.

Rico Andrade’s (@andrade_rico) article “The Rise of the Explainer Video” in TechCrunch (@TechCrunch) suggests reasons to create overview videos:

·         Increase press coverage

·         Help your fans evangelize your product

·         Improve the SEO of your site

·         Repurpose them everywhere

He says the best explainer videos answer the question “How does this product fit into my life?” or “Why should I use this?” before they answer “How does this work?”.

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 produce riveting videos for your brand.

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

57% of US consumers say that they’re increasingly checking product labels to see what company is behind the product they’re buying, and the same proportion say they get annoyed when it’s not obvious what company is behind a product, according the study The Company Behind the Brand: In Reputation We Trust by Weber Shandwick (@WeberShandwick). Roughly 2 in 5 US consumers also say they hesitate to buy products when it’s not clear what company makes them, and that they do research to learn about the companies that make the products they buy.

Our study identified 6 New Realities of Corporate Reputation. Each reality serves as a reminder to business leaders that they cannot view their company’s reputation and their product brands as separately as they once did. Aligning and integrating both optimizes their respective strengths to achieve strong business results.

1.    Corporate brand is as important as the product brand(s).

2.    Corporate reputation provides product quality assurance.

3.    Any disconnect between corporate and product reputation triggers sharp consumer reaction.

4.    Products drive discussion, with reputation close behind.

5.    Consumers shape reputation instantly.

6.    Corporate reputation contributes to company market value.

“In this fast-moving information age, consumers can now readily connect the dots between the brand they buy and the company behind the brand,” says Leslie Gaines-Ross, Chief Reputation Strategist, Weber Shandwick. “Whereas it has long been known that a strong brand shines a light on a company’s reputation, it is now clear beyond a shadow of a doubt that a strong company reputation adds an undeniable brilliance to the brand.”

What impacts consumers’ opinion of a company?

·         Word of mouth (88%)

·         Online reviews (83%)

·         Online search results (81%)

·         News sources (79%)

·         Company websites (74%)

·         Awards and rankings (63%)

·         Leadership communications (59%)

·         Advertising (56%)

·         Social networks (49%) (are companies not embracing social media in a way that fully resonates with the public?)

Read this in full.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you identify blue ocean strategy for your brand.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard.; especially the Branding and Marketing/Public Relations tabs.

Infographic by MBA Online (@MBAOnline).

Also see our previous blogpost, “Computers: The New Consumers?.”

How does the Internet of Things—where not only is everyone connected to the Internet, but also everything—impact your publishing strategy and planning? Let Somersault (@smrsault) help you think it all through.

And bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard; especially the Futurist News tab.