When i watch something like this I think guerrilla marketing. These guys are just having fun but it’s a short step to turning these types of stunts into something you can use for your business.
Given that i had a bizarre past life as an Improv actor myself, I felt very comfortable contacting some old friends at an Improv troupe in Atlanta to see what they could throw together for me. We’re see where it goes…
Charlie Todd: The shared experience of absurdity | Video on TED.com.
Here’s an old but goody i just found while digging through my Evernote clippings. It quantifies & explains how some products like Pintrest get that explosive hockey stick growth (find themselves with 30m users and then get snapped up for $1bn). It’s also a good metric to measure and strive toward if you have an web application of your own you are building. – Phil
In this post, you will learn is that there are two key parameters that drive how viral growth happens, the Viral Coefficient, and the Viral Cycle Time. To fully illustrate the arguments, I have included two spreadsheet models (embedded) that you can play with interactively to see how viral growth works. There is a risk with this level of depth, that some readers will find this too technical, and if you find yourself reacting that way, may I recommend that you jump straight to the conclusion, which is under the heading Lessons Learned towards the bottom of the article.
via Understanding the key variables in Viral Marketing | For Entrepreneurs.
So, I’m starting a new business and I’m wondering where to begin marketing my products. I’m looking no further than where I live.
My home town is Atlanta, GA and it has a metro population of 5.3 million people (2010 US Census). Putting this is context that is larger than 126 other countries in the world. Here’s some of the countries that we’re larger than (by population):
(Here’s the complete list if you’re interested)
Why is this relevant? What does it mean? Well, if you consider that Croatia (population 4.3m) came 3rd position in the 1998 World Cup (soccer); Atlanta should therefore be able to field a team and come pretty close to winning the largest sporting event on the planet.
Maybe, not, but here’s my point.
I was trying to explain to a co-worker the other day that we can validate our new product (FlashIssue) by looking no further than our own door step.
If Atlanta existed on it’s own, as an island, we have enough people to sell to right here in front of us. Go talk to them first.
If we cant sell our product to an entire “nation” of 5.3 million people then may be we dont have a product to sell at all.
So, if you live in a larger City than Atlanta things get better and better:
And viewing it in terms of soccer. NYC, LA and Chicago should be beating the following countries at soccer:
If you dont live in one of these large metro US cities, then find someone who does and have them market your product.
If you find someone to work for you in New York and they just sell for you there and nowhere else, then you you’re tapping a market equivalent to 183 countries (that’s 76% of all countries on our planet). That’s a big enough market for you.
Content curation is a sure fire way to add compelling stories to your blog. One problem that can arise though, is how do you avoid cluttering your home page with lots of articles you want on your blog site but not necessarily at front stage. For example, you may not want a curated story competing with the blog posts you write yourself.
What i tend to do is send most of my curated articles to the background using a wordpress plug-in WP Hide Post.
Here’s an example of how i put together a series of curated articles on guerrilla marketing. Only one of the posts actually appears on my home page; I tagged the others with a common tag (How-To-Market-Like-A-Guerilla) and then point people to the tag summary page so they can view all of the articles as a list - http://philhill.net/tag/How-To-Market-Like-A-Guerilla.
Here’s how the plug-in works – I grabbed this from the wordpress website:
This plugin excels in giving you full control over the visibility of your a post. By default, any post you add to your WordPress blog will become the topmost post, and will show up immediately on the front page in the first position, and similarly in category/tag/archive pages. Sometimes, you want to create a “low-profile” addition to your blog that doesn’t belong on the front page, or maybe you don’t want it to show up anywhere else in your blog except when you explicitly link to it. This plugin allows you to create such “hidden gems”.
In particular, this plugin allows you to control the visibility of a post in various different views:
The posts will disappear from the places you choose them to disappear. Everywhere else they will show up as regular posts. In particular, permalinks of the posts still work, and if you generate a sitemap, with something like the Google XML Sitemaps the post will be there as well. This means that the content of your post will be indexed and searchable by search engines.
For a WordPress page, this plugin also allows you to control the visibility with two options:
This means, technically, whenever pages are listed somewhere using the get_pages filter, this plugin will kick in and either filter it out or not according to the options you choose. The same rules apply regarding permalinks and sitemaps as they do for regular posts.
“WP Hide Post” plugin is a great tool in your arsenal for SEO optimization. It allows you to add plenty of content to your blog, without forcing you to change the nature and presentation of your front page, for example. You can now create content that you otherwise would be reluctant to add to your blog because it would show immediately on the front page, or somewhere else where it would not belong. It’s a must-have feature of WordPress.
Please enjoy this plugin freely, comment and rate it profusely, and send me feedback and any ideas for new features.
Download the free plugin from here.
The Fed Court has just made a ruling that permits us to grab excerpts and link to them online…just like i’m doing here. It’s a thumbs up for curation.
The Electronic Frontier Foundations Kurt Opsahl analyzes an important declaratory judgment from a Nevada federal court, which held that excerpting news articles in online postings was fair use. Judge Roger Hunt’s judgment confirms that an online forum is not liable for its users’ posts, even if it was not protected by the safe harbors of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s notice and takedown provisions. The decision also clarifies that a common practice on the Internet – excerpting a few sentences and linking to interesting articles elsewhere – is a fair use, not an infringement of copyright.
via Fed court: quoting newspaper articles online is fair use – Boing Boing.
I love the way this post uses a story to deliver SEO tips. According to Unbounce, this was one of their most successful blog posts from the point of view of engagement. It takes some time to create a post but wrapping a story around the post works – phil hill @philhill
I’m going to be honest with you. I think rap music sucks in other languages. I’ve been around the world and met a lot of talented emcees in various different countries and I’ve listened to people rap in Czech, Japanese, German and countless other languages that I can’t speak. I might smile and nod my head just to be polite but – I don’t like it. What makes rapping in English so awesome is the elegance of the English language and its beautiful ambiguity. However for Search Marketing that same ambiguity is a gift and a curse. I’ve invited a poet we all know and love to help explain how to conquer that ambiguity using A/B testing. He’s rhymed his way into saving the day before. No it’s not Johnnie Cochran.
As is normally the case with these books, it could be shorter but over all it’s a great entre to the world of curation, how the segment is developing and what it means. Effective social media is based on generating connection and engagement from your audience and without doubt content curation is an effective path to doing this. I buy into the over arching premise of this book i.e. that mashing, mixing and enhancing content that is already out there will be an ever more important trend. Read this book if you want an insight to a new and important corner of the Internet and what it could me to your business or personal brand – Phil Hill
It’s time to get going on looking at some new business ideas. Here’s the process i’m following:
I’ve given myself a budget of $2,500 to test this model and it’s needs to be completed by end of May.
Here’s a list of the component parts in the business model process i’m using – there are nine. I created a short YouTube video for each (i’need to upload the videos but i have included one as an example). I’ve done this to help myself get understanding of the process because i’m trying it out for the first time. BTW – the concept of business modeling i’m using is from a book called “Business Model Generation” by Alex Osterwalder.
Here’s the 9 building blocks (you can see my rendition of this canvas at the top of the page):
9 Building Blocks to a Business Model
Here’s one segment (Customer Segment) explained in a video i created.
The business experiment concept i’m following is a mish-mash of ideas developed by Eric Ries (Lean Start-Up) and Steve Blank (4 Steps to the Epiphany).
I’ll post a video later about Business Experiments.
I’m looking for some feedback on my business model as i move forward, so please get involved. If you sign up for my newsletter, you’ll be added to the test group (see top right of this page to sign up).
This one caught my eye for it’s creativity. Simple question: How do you reduce *male toilet spillage* by 80%? Simple answer: Add a picture of a fly to the toilet bowl.
Forgetting the somewhat unsavory subject matter, this is actually an amazing exercise in product design and knowing your customer. How the product designer for urinals came up with an idea of a fly, I have no idea know but it’s an elegant solution for one of the globes most pressing problems (trust me, spend a summer cleaning toilets at summer camp and you’ll know what i mean). I’m sure his inspiration came from being a user of his own product and involved pieces of chewing gum (a big must for a product manager ).
Next up: how do you enhance this design concept and make it still more efficient. Leave your reply below (a good revenue model is needed). This may get you started
Next stop, a version for Smudgy…
