Your Mother was right - you should like sprouts

According to the Kitchn.com (no, it’s not a typo), the sprout is “…a love 'em or hate 'em kind of vegetable… mostly because they're horribly misunderstood and so often badly prepared.”

Nowadays you expect some new online widget or whatnot every two minutes, but have you heard of ‘the Sprout?’ It's incredibly easy to understand and prepare - and perhaps you should have one, it's free. Sprout is the quick and easy way for anyone to build, publish, and manage “living content” -widgets, mini-sites, mashups, banners and more.

It looks like growing into one of ‘the’ tools to use in social marketing of the future, offering a quick online way to build, display and transport content in a mini-portfolio all in one place - and it looks great.

Users create content (“sprouts”) by dragging and dropping rich media such as video, audio, images, text, shapes, and interactive services such as chat (Meebo), phone (Ribbit), fundraising (ChipIn), surveys (PollDaddy), and more. The resulting Flash file can be embedded onto any Web site, blog, or social networking profile or published via widget platforms such as Gigya, Clearspring and SpringWidgets.

Founded by the Hawaiian based entrepreneur and Sprout CEO Carnet Williams, (the same as responsible for the vampire biting game-style gadget on facebook who sold that having decided, wisely, it was just a fad) sproutbuilder.com launched on January 31, 2008 at the DEMO ‘08 conference.

This ‘green’ looks to me to have a more popular online presence than its culinary counterpart. To non-developers, from the outside it looks like a mini website. A host of live pages which can be pasted via the ‘html’ code onto other pages. As its basic function, you could think of it as a transporter for distributable web content of all kinds, the only boundaries being load time and your creativity. It brings your content, all in one place, to someone else's doorstep. The interactivity that this offers to your viewers is an opportunity to engage them rather than just entertain, to enlist as well as inform.

You can see some wonderful examples in the forum of sproutbuilder.com. Once you have the raw materials, you can easily create an incredible promotional tool for posting to blogs, social media and other web pages. It can be easily emailed, embedded and shared by its viewers.

Any future changes are automatically made wherever it has been posted.

What's the benefit vs posting just a weblink or a single audio or video file on a social networking site? Viewers see your content without following a link. It's easy to make it look extremely professional (watch out 'cheap' video trailer providers who make just elaborate slide shows, your market will be eaten into by DIY sprout creators) and gives you the ability with no tecchie knowledge to put your content on pages that already have a high visibility without having to drive viewers to your own site. Like pizza home delivery, anyone who visits the website where you have stored your pizza box, gets to see your whole delivery, without having to order it specially or know to ask you for it.

Now, what potential does this have for you as an author and your book promotion?

Remember the good advice about sprouts “…a love 'em or hate 'em kind of vegetable… mostly because they're horribly misunderstood and so often badly prepared.” Make sure you understand a little of what people want to see and listen to, prepare carefully, and don’t overdo it. You can add an endless number of pages, but don't spoil it. Why not use this as a taster to encourage people to visit your website for all the detail? Don't be over zealous in your content. An author bio may not be necessary, the synopsis or blurb and perhaps a video or audio extracts will do. And if you want to encourage interaction then cosider adding a poll or a survey. Don't forget, people remember something in which they are involved 80% more than if they are just told the same information.

So go on, why not get a helping. Go to sproutbuilder.com and check it out. Sprouts always were my favourite vegetable.

PR and the Pope - self-promotion, service and the truth

Truth lies at the heart of Pope Benedict XVI's message for this year's World Communications Day, May 4th. The theme is: "The Media: At The Crossroads between Self-Promotion and Service. Searching for the Truth in order to Share it with Others". He looks at the important role that the media plays in the lives of individuals and society at large. Whether or not you have any religious beliefs does not matter regards what we can learn from his manner and methods of promotion, and his key messages certainly give some food for thought on the role of the media and promotion. (Full text here.)

Whatever our personal goals, it is certainly always worth taking time to review and take stock of what has been achieved, through which methods and at what cost. What are the results: directly and indirectly?

Do you ensure that your goals and strategy co-exist with your overall premise? For example, at a recent trade event, I saw stacks and stacks of printed media packs in the press room, dedicated to the news of a new, environmental program. The irony was surely lost, not only on me. Do you ensure that your target audience is in-line with your product ethics? Perhaps if you sold your product to a large supermarket, you would see potentially larger business, but do they pursue fair-trade purchasing and no-child-labour policies that meet your own standards?

"The media, taken overall, are not only vehicles for spreading ideas: they can and should also be instruments at the service of a world of greater justice and solidarity. Unfortunately, though, they risk being transformed into systems aimed at subjecting humanity to agendas dictated by the dominant interests of the day."

How do your interests align with the current political, environmental and ethical climates? Are you prepared to stand up to your own beliefs?

I recently heard the story of German children's book author Rotraut Susanne Berner whose "Wimmelbücher" series, a wonderful range of detail-packed, board books, was courted by a publisher in the notoriously fickle US market. She decided not to pursue a potentially lucrative deal after ludicrous requests from the prospective publisher to censor some of the minor background artwork, depicting nudity - museum statues showing Roman figures typically do. You must wonder what those publishers think parents do when they take their children to a real museum or manage a trip-of-a-lifetime to Europe. We have nude statues. Lots of them. We don't stare or get upset. And we don't cover them up. Just as Frau Berner decided, she would not cover up her artwork and stood by her convictions to leave her work as intended.

Take stock once in a while. Are you on track with your promotional plan, and how does the detail fit in with your big picture? Are you censoring, and editing according to the whim of the individual or of the day or standing by your guns? How far is too far, when making a pitch or trying to achieve your goals?