When Steve Jobs died Oct. 5th, digital media outlets published instant tributes to the man who changed how people consume media and software.

Every major news source covered his death; tech gurus like The Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg wrote essays, the President issued a statement and millions of social media users posted their respects.

Wired magazine took one of the more interesting approaches, publishing an eBook about Jobs two days after his passing and weeks before Simon and Schuster’s Jobs biography arrived in print.

The magazine, having reported on Jobs and Apple through the years, assembled a greatest-hits package of their articles. The magazine’s editors added a new essay and quickly published it in iBook, Kindle and Nook formats.

Meanwhile, National Geographic used a similar approach anticipating the world’s seven-billionth citizen, publishing its “7 Billion” global demographics iPad app.

The free app is an excellent example of content marketing, showcasing the publication’s editorial while promoting magazine subscriptions and fee-based apps.

These are the new realities of digital publishing. Of course, quality is important, but being the first can be the difference between profit and loss.

Purpose-built publishing generates real-time attachment to topics that organizations can associate with their value proposition. Blogs and other social media naturally support it and more tools continue to reach the market.

Broadcast appeal

Purpose-built publishing isn’t limited to the written word. It includes audio and video broadcasts as well. Creativity, regardless of format, best distinguishes success.

Salesforce.com secured a keynote speaking opportunity for CEO Mark Benioff at this year’s OracleWorld conference this past October. But when competitive sparring between him and Oracle CEO Larry Ellison prompted Oracle to cancel the engagement, Salesforce found accommodations across the street and offered a livecast of Benioff’s speech on Facebook that they later posted on YouTube.

The workaround drew media and analysts away from Oracle’s event during prime time, and an online audience of thousands watched Benioff de-position Ellison’s views, hours before his own keynote.

Format variety

Audio alone can be effective when applied in a timely manner. Hal Bringman, president of the Los Angeles-based NVPR, used Spreaker, a free online app that the agency represents, to broadcast commentary from the TechCruch Disrupt conference in Beijing on Oct. 31-Nov. 1.

According to Bringman, Spreaker does for audio what Twitter does for text and  what  YouTube does for video, making it easy to broadcast live radio from your mobile device to Facebook and other platforms.

Regardless of which format that you choose, you must have content that can be shared in more meaningful ways with digital communications.

To start, consider what you can repurpose from seasonal or trending perspectives. I write a “12 days of  Tactics” blog post in December summarizing and linking to my Digital Dialogue columns from the year.

What content do you recast? I’d love to hear (or see) them.

This post also appears as the December Digital Dialogue column in the PR Tactics Journal, published by the Public Relations Society of America.

Ok, add me to the list of marketers, PR practitioners and bloggers who feel compelled to comment about Apple without any prompting from the company whatsoever. Or have I been prompted in some cosmic way?

Last week’s “at last” arrival of the iPad, its launch event in San Francisco and the PR halo surrounding it signaled yet another moment of truth for the company’s recipe of experience-driven innovation, secrecy and consumer buzz.

Apple’s iPad even made an appearance on the Grammy Awards television broadcast. I found this to be cheesy product placement (I’m not aware if it was an Apple tactic or otherwise), but the Grammys is certainly where eyeballs were last weekend and only an iPad in the President’s pocket during his State of the Union address would have trumped it.

As the Grammy telecast kicked off comedian Stephen Colbert just happened to have an iPad inside his tuxedo pocket when announcing the Song of the Year award winner. I will say that Colbert made the prop “fit” his routine with a funny “what, you didn’t get one of these in your gift bag?” quirk to Jay-Z and the celebrity audience. He further passed it off as trying to be cool for his daughter who was in attendance.

Making the iPad “fit” is really a fitting point here. The cool factor that is Apple products makes many industry observers, techies and consumers want to find viable uses for them. This power of attraction is such an asset for brands. And this doesn’t always require revolutionary but rather evolutionary product strategies, as CRM industry analyst Denis Pombriant commented on in his recent Apple post.

My perspective is less technical and more focused on the communications aspects Apple have at play. I mentioned the company in my “Inside Inbound Marketing” post last week and, the more I ponder, it certainly employs a form of Inbound Marketing, not so much by creating tons of its own compelling and sharable Web content per the intended Inbound definition, but certainly via content. Apple’s content is great products. It’s also the music, videos and iPhone apps it sells (which it does not create but profitably distributes). And most notably it’s the word-of-mouth the company’s presence generates.

The elements of Apple communication mainly boil down to: innovation, mystery and community.

Innovation’s inherent leadership quality

There’s a pecking order to power and influence in just about any market. Apple certainly makes the short list of enterprise-level organizations that move technology markets. Testimony to this was offered this week from a former Microsoft employee. In a New York Times piece Dick Brass contemplates what might be the diminishing impact of Microsoft when compared with Apple on the scale of innovation. In short, fusing its focuses on customer experience and technology has netted the easy-to-use products that have placed Apple in an enviable leadership position.

The moat of mystery (and its occasional, strategic leaks)

Apple seems to make a living out of being quiet and letting the rest of us tell its story. There are pros and cons to this approach, of course, and it is best reserved for a few solidified brands that can weather the cheers and jeers of its publics. Apple has launch events down to an art form and between these occurrences a sort of super sleuth mentality produces much of the Apple chatter. Take these iPad prototype photos for example, or this lavish timeline about the iPad’s history – the iPad that didn’t officially claim until last week. Such examples of speculation and debate usually require a kernel or two of fact, so Apple soft peddles information in some fashion to influencers. It’s all permissible when you have a charismatic leader like Steve Jobs who surfaces occasionally at events to confirm and add context. (I profiled Jobs’ persona in my keynote presentation to PRSSA chapter presidents at their Leadership Rally last May.)

The pure power of communities

For Apple it’s communities of developers and techies. It’s the blogerati. It’s admired tech columnists and reviewers like Walt Mossberg, David Pogue and Lance Ulanoff. It’s consumers. I’m sure there are many other community types but you get the point. Word gets around.

The innovation, mystery and eventual facts feed the communities that create a surge of Apple interest. How long can it last, and what other lifestyle and communication standards will Apple innovation create? I’m certainly not claiming to know Apple’s inner workings from a communications standpoint, or any other, yet even removed from specifics I find that watching its marketing machine work offers an educational and entertaining view. How about you?