Social Marketing & Digital Agency

Digital publishing on iPad

First we had the Kindle from Amazon, and then Apple’s iPad, both offering ‘books on the go’ in a small nifty packet. Despite the price difference, there isn’t really much between them – Kindle is cheaper, better for students (you can take notes and highlight), and has the slightly bigger library (88,000+), while the iPad looks more gorgeous (obviously), has the neater app, and also has a brand new iPad-only magazine.

So is it a step forward for all things digital and companies wanting to market and advertise in that medium? Of course. Is it the death knell of ‘proper’ books? Well, I would be seriously surprised, at least in the foreseeable future, and to be honest I really wish the newspaper babies would endeavour to keep their doomglooming to themselves just for once. If history is anything to go by, then the new medium will simply slide in alongside the existing ones, so those who read books and magazines will continue to read books and magazines, in whichever format they come.

Lolita to go on Kindle

If you like to curl up of an evening with a good book, you will be able to read both of these classic titles soon in e-book format exclusively from Amazon’s Kindle store.

Needless to say this is ruffling feathers in the publishing world as the traditional publishers who produce the hard copy versions can see their world being threatened.  As e-books didn’t exist when contracts for classic books were drawn up, the whole area of electronic versions of older titles is a very murky one.

Mashable have the full story here http://mashable.com/2010/07/23/amazon-deal-threatens-ebook-market/ but it looks clear that the new technologies will ensure that there is some jostling for position between agents and publishers for quite a while yet.  And in the meantime the consumer may find that they may not be able to read certain titles in e-book format if, for example, they have bought a Sony e-reader rather than a Kindle.

In the long-term though we think that the e-books will find a comfy home amongst the plethora of online reading material as well as the hard copy stuff.  As lovely as e-books are, few readers can resist the lure of a good bookshop (assuming that they can figure out a way to stay in business that long that is!)

It’s just another facet of these fascinating e-times that we live in.

Talking publishing, our very own Claire is in the middle of writing her forthcoming book about using social media in an integrated way for b2b, which is being published traditionally and on kindle, and we are also about to update our  ‘WTF can social media do your business?’ e-book to take in the changes in the online world during 2010. If you would like us to produce an ebook (or white paper or seo content) for your company or business, or would like to know more, email us on hello@themediamarketingco.com

Book To be Published by Bookshaker.

I wrote an ebook last year to help businesses understand what social media can do to help them market themselves and increase their traffic. It was a takeaway product for The Funky Agency, the digital marketing and PR agency that is now all grown up and known as The Media Marketing Co, where we help clients plan and implement their marketing and PR, micro manage and depth mine their Social Media, sort out their SEO in every part of their digital arena, create SEO-rich and compulsive content and products, and join all the dots to establish a robust and cohesive online brand or campaign.

Called ‘WTF Can Social Media do for Your Business’ it soon proved a great hit with our visitors and is often quoted to me as a trusted source.. and then…cue trumpet fanfare!… I was signed up by Bookshaker (Lean Marketing Press) to write a full-length version for publication in eBook, Kindle and paperback.

The new extended edition includes the expected drill down descriptions and guidelines for businesses using the main social media sites, including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr, Squidoo, MySpace, smaller and more niche sites, and Bookmarking sites, such as Delicious, Stumbleupon and Digg. What to do, who should be doing it, how to do it and how to measure it to keep tabs on your ROI and not lose heart. All as expected.

However, my book on using social media for b2b business goes much further as it also includes setting up and running a business/corporate blog for maximum leverage, how to plan your PR and marketing alongside your social media to amplify your messaging, plan your digital strategy, raise your brand’s profile and protect it in the digital space, join the dots and make it all happen seamlessly.

Basically it’s a brain dump – but a beautifully written and edited one, obviously!

Lean Marketing Press have a history of being innovators, with ‘Dangerous Debs‘, one of their two founders, being very active in internet marketing, well, since forever. This bodes well as Lean Marketing Press’s marketing is much better focused than any other publisher I know, and this coupled with our comprehensive digital media marketing expertise, could mean that, to rip off a fairly well known advertising campaign slogan, this book I am currently gestating may very well reach areas other books fail to reach…