SmartSymbols^tm

If content is king, then fresh content is the jewel in the crown. No place is that more evident than in Internet marketing. Online consumers are savvy and demanding when it comes to content.  They expect and demand up to date information as is evident by their use of Facebook, Twitter and Youtube.  So, what’s happening to products who have static content at their distribution points, blog posts and other online references?  Nothing, and that’s the problem.  Stale, out of date content fails to engage customer, increase product interaction or produce sales.  How to avoid this?  Well, for Celebrate Green! the shamrock provides the opportunity.

Celebrate Green! is a book dedicated to the greening of holidays, celebrations and special occasions. A must have for the eco-friendly host or party planner (purchases can be made using their SmartSymbols™ BUY button in the right sidebar).  Celebrate Green! already utilize SmartSymbols™ to deliver fresh content including real time Twitter and blog posts, so their content is always fresh.  What makes Celebrate Green!’s SmartSymbols™ special is that they add a holiday icon to match the upcoming holiday.  As of this writing that would be St. Patrick’s Day, therefore the shamrock icon.  After St. Patrick’s Day the shamrock icon will be replaced with the next holiday icon and so on.   In this way Celebrate Green! delivers both fresh content and a fresh SmartSymbols™ icon set.  A new SmartSymbols™ for each holiday pushed to all distribution points instantly and consistently.  Now that’s fresh!

Check the SmartSymbols™ for Celebrate Green! in the right sidebar for the latest holiday icon.

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“If you can’t beat them - join them”
- Author Unknown

There seem to be no shortage of bad news and challenges that book publishing industry is facing now. The challenges revolve around the apparent conflict between the traditional print format and the new, electronic media. But if publishing industry embraces the quote at the beginning of this article, it might find itself in a much better position, even better than it was before the conflict has started.

But what are the strategic steps the industry should take in order to become a winner in the new market and technological conditions? Here are some specifics.

Step 1: Lead the Electronic Format
True, some companies have already made an alliance with Apple for the iBook and iPad deals. But what is really needed is for them to embrace the electronic format fully and lead the way. Leading the way is different from the reactive response to new technologies we have seen so far. In Step 1 publishers have a huge advantage over others businesses:
a) they have vast experience in book publishing
b) they have direct connection with authors
c) publishers and authors have an ability to connect directly with their readers

Using these advantages publishers can re-position themselves to become de-facto leaders in any the new format.

Step 2: Add Rich, Multi-dimensional Content
We have written a number of articles on this could be done with SmartSymbols (”Who is the Author“, “Secret of the Compass Icon“, and more), but fundamentally (SmartSymbols or not), new technology allows publishers to aggregate all the marketing and promotional materials and attach it to any book in any format: book trailers and movies based on the book, interviews with authors and book illustration; the list is endless. The key is to figure out what readers really want (here is my tip on that) and make it easy for the readers to access the information.

Step 3: Create Book Eco-sphere
This one is really easy: book fans and book clubs have been around for ages. New technologies, such as SwapTree and GoodReads, makes it even easier for publishers to create very rich book eco-sphere. All publishers really need to do is package Step 1 and Step 2, so we, the readers, can easily access information we are looking for, which is the very foundation of Permission Marketing (probably the most cost-effective marketing approach today).

One Last Point.
Investment in this strategy, or its specific steps, not only addresses immediate survival needs of the publishing industry, but also opens doors to new developments and innovation that will propel books and publishers back to their rightful place as the leaders of one of the most needed and valuable industry in history.

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Celebrate Green - Valentine's Day

Lynn Colwell & Cory Colwell-Lipson’s book Celebrate Green has a unique quality: it’s useful year round. Unlike typical abstract ideas about how to have a more eco-friendly lifestyle in general, the ideas in their book are practical. They are also specific to a particular holiday that’s coming up on the calendar.

Check out their suggestions for the Valentine’s Day for example: “one high quality organic chocolate bar instead of a handful of conventional candy on Valentine’s Day”. It turns out, that organic chocolate bar also tastes a lot better than typical candy, as testified by people who know best - kids.

You can also explore SmartSymbols for Celebrate Green book above. To buy the book simply go here: http://www.celebrategreen.net/buy/

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Here is an example of why SmartSymbols is  a perfect case for book promotion.

1.  Big Dead Place is a book about life in Antarctica from a grunt-contractor point of view.

2.  The book also has an associated website - BigDeadPlace.com, which is a great resource for people who are considering getting to Antarctica as contractors.

3.  Encounters At the End of the World (Discovery Films) is a film by famous director Werner Herzog, about life in the Antarctica from the point of view of people who work there from all walks of life, including scientists, programmers and backhoe operators.

Werner Herzog and His Camera Man

(Image from: http://www.bigdeadplace.com/herzog.html)

4.  BigDeadPlace.com has a review of “Encounters At the End of the World” by Bill Jirsa person who has actually been interviewed by Werner Herzog in the movie.

Now, these four different pieces of information are completely invisible if you just look at the book in an online bookstore (or a physical one for that matter).  Also, as the book publisher, I would probably want people to know, that one of my site contributors have been interviewed by Werner Herzog in a famous movie.  Lastly, if you were to look at those 5 links separately, you cannot see how they can be related to one another.  And the important thing here, is that the book is not at all a stand alone item - the author is truly plugged-in into all things Antarctic and obviously is a true authority on the subject.

This is a perfect case where SmartSymbols could shine and bring forward all the wonderful things that the book and aggregate all separate pieces of information into a coherent and powerful marketing message.

Can you think of another book that fits this profile?

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We have officially released a symbol set for books: “SmartSymbols Offers Advanced Marketing Solution for Book Publishers and Authors“. It looks like this:






Here is the excerpt from the press release:

“This new industry-focused symbol set organizes real time social network and social media content, book reviews, interactive maps of the story’s geographic locations, calendar of events, video based author bios and both written and audio book excerpts for display across any number of Web-based environments including: ecommerce sites, publisher and author Web sites, blogs and mobile devices.


SmartSymbols™ social media marketing support includes real time feed capabilities from Twitter, Facebook and blog/RSS. SmartSymbols™ is the only author and book publishing marketing tool to combine traditional internal marketing material with external social media marketing strategies, bringing the total book community experience to all points of distribution.”

You can see a full demo here: http://www.smartsymbols.com/demo.html

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“What this means is that we shouldn’t abbreviate the truth but rather get a new method of presentation. ” - Edward Tufte

In addition to the Compass icon , that we discussed in the Secret of the Compass Icon article, SmartSymbols for Books has a number of other interesting icons. In this article we will discuss the Author icon .

Author Icon
Author icon provides basic summary about the author, such as his or her bio, books they have written and additional books related to the one you are viewing. An example would be an audio version of a book and other books in the series. You can see Author icon in action below, just put your mouse over to activate.

The neat thing about the Author icon is that you can put up-to-date interactive information right there. Example: a map of book signings for this week, something that is very easy to do with SmartSymbols - all we need is dates/times and locations; the map will show up automatically. Because all updates are instant anywhere SmartSymbols are displayed - you can update the info as often as you wish.

Other Uses
If you would like to collect feedback from readers and route it to the author, you can put a message textbox right into the icon pop-up to simplify the process.
In addition, you can pipe-in a feed directly from the author’s website.

There are many possibilities for the Author icon, the key is to figure out which information is the most interesting and relevant for your readers and site or blog visitors.

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