Mitch Joel's Blog: Six Pixels of Separation, page 186

Write A Saleable Book With Nicholas Boothman - This Week's Six Pixels Podcast

Episode #522 of Six Pixels of Separation - The Mirum Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to.

It used to be that an individual could write a business book and leverage that medium to become an international celebrity. It still happens, just not as much as it used to. The barrier to entry has been lowered (almost anybody can write a book and self-publish it these days). The intrinsic value of writing a business book has changed as well (the entire book publishing industry is still in the midst of massive disruption). With that, many people - each and every day - try to write a bestselling book. Few will achieve what Nicholas Boothman has done with books like How To Make People Like You in 90 Seconds (or less), Convince Them in 90 Seconds (or less) and How To Make Someone Fall In Love With You in 90 Minutes (or less). He's not just a hugely popular author who has sold millions of books, appeared in every major news outlet and speaks all over the world, he's also using what he learned about creating compelling content and getting it published to teach the rest of us how to do it better (and make it work). Most recently, he published, How To Write A Saleable Book (in 10-minute bursts of madness), along with courses and seminars and more. Even if you are not looking to write your own book, how he thinks about content, publishing and more will change the way you tweet and post. Enjoy the conversation... 

You can grab the latest episode of Six Pixels of Separation here (or feel free to subscribe via iTunes): Six Pixels of Separation - The Mirum Podcast #522.

Tags:

advertising podcast

audio

blog

blogging

brand

business blog

business book

business podcast

convince them in 90 seconds or less

david usher

digital marketing

digital marketing agency

digital marketing blog

facebook

google

how to make people like you in 90 seconds or less

how to make someone fall in with you in 90 minutes or less

how to write a saleable book

itunes

j walter thompson

jwt

leadership podcast

management podcast

marketing

marketing blog

marketing podcast

mirum

mirum agency

mirum agency blog

mirum blog

nicholas boothman

social media

twitter

wpp

 

Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #316

Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?

My friends: Alistair Croll (BitCurrent, Year One Labs, GigaOM, Human 2.0, Solve For Interesting, the author of Complete Web Monitoring, Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Networks and Lean Analytics), Hugh McGuire (PressBooks, LibriVox, iambik and co-author of Book: A Futurist's Manifesto) and I decided that every week the three of us are going to share one link for one another (for a total of six links) that each individual feels the other person "must see".

Check out these six links that we're recommending to one another: 

Reflections on Our World - Bill Raduchel - Medium . "In the past year many of the political conversations I've had suffer from a lack of first principles. We can debate whether Bernie is a populist cry, or Boris a wounded pomposity -- but we seldom discuss the real knobs that adjust society. Instead, we should be asking questions like, 'is GDP the right measure of wealth?' and 'is unemployment a bad word?' Sadly, those are pretty nuanced, first-principle discussions. I'm not sure I agree with Bill Raduchel's priorities, but I like that he's asking. He proposes that 'all Presidential candidates should be required to answer one fundamental question: At the end of your tenure as President, what will be the ratio of U.S. per capita income to global average per capita income, and why?'" (Alistair for Hugh).
I Dared My Best Friend To Ruin My Life - He's Succeeding - Reddit . "There are two amazing places for creativity on Reddit. One is called Writingprompts, where someone suggests the basis for a story and people upvote the best responses; and the other is Nosleep, which is horror stories that sound plausible, and often mix in elements of reality. This episodic one is fantastic, and will undoubtedly be a movie soon if anyone's paying attention. Start at the top and see where it goes." (Alistair for Mitch).
Modern China Is So Crazy It Needs A New Literary Guide - Literary Hub. "If you think Toronto has changed in the past 10, or 20 years, go visit China. This author claims that China is so crazy right now, is changing so quickly, that we need a new literary genre, the 'ultra-unreal'..." (Hugh for Alistair).
Welcome to the new Toronto: the most fascinatingly boring city in the world - The Guardian . "The world seems to be coming unstuck... a few months ago, Greece was in crisis and we wondered whether the Euro could withstand Grexit. Instead we're getting Brexit, driven in large part by English anxieties about immigration. The political elite in the UK, rather than having sensible ansers, seems to be collapsing in on itself. The war in Syria rages on (and don't forget Iraq), with millions of refugees fleeing the bloodshed, seeking asylum in Turkey, Europe, Canada and elsewhere. Every week there seems to be another horrific terrorist attack. And then of course there is Donald Trump, who plans to build a wall to keep the Mexicans out, and implement an all-out ban on 'people from countries where terrorism is happening.' We watch all this, agog in Canada, where even an armed ISIS-inspired attack in our House of Parliament barely seems to have moved the needle on our opinions of immigrants. Canada's approach to multiculturalism seems to be working - for now anyway. Toronto is the epicentre of Canadian diversity. The scale and... hue... of the city's growth is quite amazing. As a Montrealer, I am legally obliged to consider Toronto 'boring.' But, as this article suggests, Toronto is boring in the most fascinating ways possible." (Hugh for Mitch).
Why We Need to Pick Up Alvin Toffler's Torch - The New York Times. "There are many people who call themselves a 'Futurist'. We recently lost the original thinker: Alvin Toffler. A Futurist is not someone who writes about what's next... it's actually, the work that Toffler did. He truly imagined the future. Deep thinking. A depth of philosophy. Let's not just toss this title around. Let's make sure to find our true futurists, and have them spend their time thinking deeply as we hold them to the highest of standards." (Mitch for Alistair). 
Gay Talese Isn't Alone: Why Aren't More Books Fact-checked? - The Daily Beast . "My friend, Ryan Holiday, wrote this amazing piece on book publishing. It's not just about spelling and grammar, but the hardcore facts and guts of a book. Whether it's a book or even a blog post, the vast majority of us share content not knowing if the work is true. Has it been fact-checked? Imagine this: books. Non-fiction books. They're not being fact-checked. At all. What should we do about it? We can't just delete it like a Facebook post, or can we?" (Mitch for Hugh).

Feel free to share these links and add your picks on Twitter, Facebook, in the comments below or wherever you play.

Tags:

alistair croll

alvin toffler

amazon

bill raduchel

bit current

bit north

book a futurists manifesto

complete web monitoring

facebook

gay talese

gigot

hugh mcguire

human 20

iambic

j walter thompson

jwt

lean analytics

librivox

link bait

link exchange

link sharing

literary hub

managing bandwidth

medium

mirum

mirum agency

nosleep reddit

press books

reddit

ryan holiday

social media

solve for interesting

the daily beast

the guardian

the new york times

wpp

writing prompts reddit

year one labs

Does Advertising Even Work Any More? Of Course It Does!

Today, one of my favorite online publications, Digiday, published the article, Does advertising even work any more?

Read the article. Consumers may not like crappy ads (of which, there are plenty). Consumers may not like it when their content is interrupted by ads (nobody likes being interrupted). Advertisers may not like that consumers don't "engage" with their ads. None of that really matters. For all of the problems that advertising - as an industry - faces, make no mistake about it... it works. First, here's what the editorial angle of the Digiday article states: "Is it all just a big waste of space, time and money? I'm talking about all types of advertising here: internet, native, TV, video, mobile, print, branded content, matchbooks, stunts, product placement, sandwich boards. All of it. I think it just might be." 

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, so here's mine: Advertising is alive and well... and, it's not even close to being on life support.

Let's look at these two significant facts:

One. Advertising spend has increased over time. It's slowing down, but it's still growing and the number is significant. From the eMarketer article titled, Worldwide Ad Spending Growth Revised Downward (published in April of this year): "Spending on paid media worldwide will climb 5.7% in 2016 to $542.55 billion, propelled by increased investments in digital advertising. This is lower than eMarketer's previous forecast, but still represents accelerated growth when compared with 2015 (5.0%). This year, ad expenditures will be boosted by incremental spending generated around quadrennial events, most notably the US presidential election and Rio Summer Olympics." Businesses are not dumb. They're not tossing half a trillion dollars into an engine that doesn't turn on. Speak to any significant advertiser, and the story is the same: when they have tried to stop spending on advertising, they watched their sales drop. There is a direct correlation. Yes, there will be some (maybe many) anomalies to this. Yes, there are tons of other marketing initiatives that can be used, in a world where marketers have many more tools than simply advertising to reach an audience. That doesn't diminish the power of advertising. Plus, it's easy to toss off a phrase like "advertising doesn't work," but take that $500+ billion dollars, and look at how it correlates to the global marketplace, health of business, and the overall GDP of nations. Advertising (and the entire marketing industry) has a massive impact on what keeps our economy moving.

Two. Advertising isn't engagement. This is a myth that has been sold for decades as a way to push brands to spend more. It has no basis in reality. An ad has one, truly unique, job: to create an impression. The concept of advertising is basic: pay for the ability to get a consumer's attention. You can promise engagement, clicks and conversions as much as you like, but this is a by-product of what great advertising can do. It's not the main thing that it does. Ads, by their very nature, are a paid form of distraction. The question is this: can you make an ad a pleasant, memorable and/or a powerful distraction? One that the consumer doesn't mind. One that creates a positive distraction. To say that advertising doesn't work because the data is clear that nobody knows if online advertising works or only five percent of people say that social media has a great deal of influence on their purchasing decisions, is not fact based. First, we don't know how well these ads operate in the environment. Meaning, it could well be the ads don't fit the media, and not that advertising doesn't work there. Secondly, if you're trying to do more than create an impression, you may be measuring the wrong thing to begin with.

So, what works if advertising doesn't? More ads, of course! 

The Digiday article suggests that the opportunity for advertisers is to create "un-ads" (aka an ad that doesn't sell, but uses mystery, comedy and/or cynicism to say something). So... an ad, with a different creative bent is the future of advertising? The author also suggests storytelling or "causevertising." The truth is, that all three of those areas still require advertising to work. Why? Well, let's say you make an "undo," it's still placed and paid for like an ad. Let's say you lean more towards telling a story or getting behind a cause, how do you promote this to the general public and let them know that you're doing it? (you will need ads to amp up the awareness... it's a fact. PR alone won't do it).

Advertising is not bad advertising. Advertising is information.

Think about concert announcements, movie trailers or that billboard that tells you that your favourite breakfast cereal now comes in cinnamon flavour (hmmm..... cinnamon). Without advertising how would you know? The dissidents think that you would find out from friends. But, who is patient zero? How do they find out this information? Why would they share this information? How often would they be willing to share this information? Advertising doesn't just have a financial attachment to our economy, it has an informational aspect to it as well. This "information" won't always get picked up by the media, so these products and services have to pay for that information to be distributed. Yes, we need better ways to tell better stories in advertising, especially when you consider the channels that marketers now have at our fingerprints, but to question whether or not ads work because millennials have developed an immunity to getting their attention away from Snapchat, is also diminishing a very healthy industry.

Here's a real fact: if I don't put some advertising dollars behind promoting this article, the odds of it being seen by a larger audience are minimal. No matter how great of story or cause it may be.

Tags:

ad

ad spend

ad spending

advertiser

advertising

advertising creative

advertising industry

advertising spend

article

billboard

brand

brand impression

branded content

business blog

causevertising

consumer

content

content marketing

conversion

digiday

digital advertising

digital marketing

digital marketing agency

digital marketing blog

distraction

economics

economy

editorial

emarketer

engagement

gdp

global economy

information

internet

j walter thompson

jwt

marketing

marketing blog

marketing industry

media

millennial

mirum

mirum agency

mirum agency blog

mirum blog

mitch joel

mitchjoel

mobile advertising

movie trailer

native advertising

online advertising

online publication

paid media

product placement

purchasing decision

rio summer olympics

snapchat

social media

storytelling

tv advertising

unads

wpp

Netflix And The Download Button

Every Monday morning at 7:10 am, I am a guest contributor on CHOM 97.7 FM radio broadcasting out of Montreal (home base). It's not a long segment - about 5 to 10 minutes every week - about everything that is happening in the world of technology and digital media. The good folks at CHOM 97.7 FM are posting these segments weekly to SoundCloud, if you're interested in hearing more of me blathering away. I'm really excited about this opportunity, because this is the radio station that I grew up on listening to, and it really is a fun treat to be invited to the Mornings Rock with Terry and Heather B. morning show. The segment is called, CTRL ALT Delete with Mitch Joel.

This week we discussed: 

Heather B. was off today.
Is Facebook suppressing conservative news? Can Facebook help put a stop to Donald Trump's campaign to be President, if they so desire? Facebook could well be the biggest media company in the world, and because of that, can they control all of our media?
This is a tragedy, and it was bound to happen. A man was killed driving his Tesla while in Autopilot mode. "According to Tesla, the Model S was traveling on a divided highway when a tractor trailer crossed in front of the car. The side of the truck apparently lined up perfectly with the skyline in both position and color, and because of that neither Autopilot nor the driver saw it. Autopilot missed it because the car was lined up with the middle of the truck, where there are no wheels, and the Tesla's low-mounted sensors only look downward toward the road, not above it. That allowed the car to drive underneath the trailer, killing the driver." Now, everybody is questioning the reliability of driverless cars, in a world where 1.3 million people die daily (almost 3500 a day). This is very sad, but we have to understand the different between autonomous vehicles and driver assisted technology.
We've talked about messenger apps the growth of bots in the past. Well, why not have Bots that can defend you in court. How about this DoNotPay. It's a bot that helps you fight tickets and flight delays. Only in the UK and NYC, but check it out, so far it has gotten 160,000 tickets dismissed in the U.K. and New York in just 21 months.
There is one missing and key feature that Netflix does not offer. Let's hope these rumours are true. Netflix should be offering a download button by the end of the year. Sure, Amazon and Spotify already have this feature, but this could be a game-changer for Netflix.
App of the week: Color Switch.

Listen here...

Tags:

amazon

amazon prime video

app of the week

bots

chom 977 fm

chom fm

color switch

ctrl alt delete

ctrl alt delete with mitch joel

digital media

donotpay

facebook

guest contributor

heather beckman

j walter thompson

jwt

messenger

messenger apps

mirum

mirum agency

model s

montreal radio

morning show

mornings rock with terry and heather b

netflix

radio segment

radio station

social media

soundcloud

spotify

technology

terry dimonte

tesla

tesla model s

twitter

wpp

Jack Myers On The Future Of Men - This Week's Six Pixels Podcast

Episode #521 of Six Pixels of Separation - The Mirum Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to.

I won't lie to you, this one of the toughest conversations for this podcast that I have ever had. I'm a middle-aged, white male who lives in North America, and have been fortunate enough to do quite well in the industry that I love. I'm not apologetic about my efforts, but I am well-aware that I hit the genetic lottery. Jack Myers is in a similar boat. He's the founder of Media Village and has written many books (including Virtual Worlds, Reconnecting With Customers, Adbashing and Hooked Up). Now, he's back with The Future of Men - Masculinity in the Twentieth Century. It's an important read, and an important conversation to have (no matter how uncomfortable the topic is in a world where women's equality, racial equality and more are still - sadly - issues that need to be resolved). Bring an open mind, as Jack and I discuss the need to ensure that men (especially young men) feel empowered, happy and healthy at work and in life. Enjoy the conversation...

You can grab the latest episode of Six Pixels of Separation here (or feel free to subscribe via iTunes): Six Pixels of Separation - The Mirum Podcast #521.

Tags:

adbashing

advertising podcast

audio

blog

blogging

brand

business blog

business book

business podcast

david usher

digital marketing

digital marketing agency

digital marketing blog

facebook

google

hooked up

itunes

j walter thompson

jack myers

jwt

leadership podcast

management podcast

marketing

marketing blog

marketing podcast

media village

mirum

mirum agency

mirum agency blog

mirum blog

reconnecting with customers

social media

the future of men

twitter

virtual worlds

wpp

103 Genuine Marketing Thought Leaders To Follow

Confession time.

When I see a post with a title like, 103 Genuine Marketing Thought Leaders To Follow, my heart sinks. A part of me really wants to be on the list. A part of me is already a bit bitter, because I'm worried that I may have been left out. A part of me could care less about lists like this, because I know that I'm really doing the work (as Seth Godin and Steven Pressfield call it). A part of me wants others to appreciate the work that I do. A part of me knows that I don't put in the self-promotion time that many of my peers do to get attention. A part of me wonders what I have to do, if the work that I've done to date didn't get me on a list over one hundred other folks. It's a mixed bag a personal emotions. Still, my heart does skip a beat, as I click through these types of articles.

From panic to warmth.

So, here I go clicking through this well-designed and well-written SlideShare. I see a lot of familiar faces. Friends. Peers. People whose work I deeply respect. Then, on slide 23, my heart really does skip a beat and sink all at once. There's my picture. It's a whole page. The headline: "The Mastermind... A Thought Leader to Thought Leaders." I could have never have expected this. So, a super huge thanks to Matthew Sweezey for pulling this together (and being so kind to me). Matthew is the Principal of Marketing Insights for Salesforce, and widely regarded as one of the top minds on the future of marketing. It's one thing to make this list... it's another to be on Matthew's radar.

You should check this out.

Don't worry, you can skip over slide 23, I won't be offended. Still, this deck is chock full of super-interesting people that you really should follow. Many of them have been featured on Six Pixels of Separation - The Mirum Podcast. Many of them are about to be invited either back on, or for the first time. This is a great checklist of who's doing stuff in marketing today.

Thanks, Matthew. Check it out here: 103 Genuine Marketing Thought Leaders.

103 Genuine Marketing Thought Leaders from Mathew Sweezey

Tags:

103 genuine marketing thought leaders to follow

brand

business blog

digital marketing

digital marketing agency

digital marketing blog

future of marketing

j walter thompson

jwt

linkedin

marketing

marketing blog

marketing thought leader

marketing thought leadership

mastermind

matthew sweezey

mirum

mirum agency

mirum agency blog

mirum blog

mitch joel

mitchjoel

podcast

salesforce

self promotion

seth godin

slideshare

steven pressfield

thought leader

thought leadership

 

 wpp

Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #315

Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?

My friends: Alistair Croll (BitCurrent, Year One Labs, GigaOM, Human 2.0, Solve For Interesting, the author of Complete Web Monitoring, Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Networks and Lean Analytics), Hugh McGuire (PressBooks, LibriVox, iambik and co-author of Book: A Futurist's Manifesto) and I decided that every week the three of us are going to share one link for one another (for a total of six links) that each individual feels the other person "must see".

Check out these six links that we're recommending to one another: 

My four months as a private prison guard - Mother Jones . "It's been a depressing week. But none of the news shook me as much as reading this. It took me hours. I kept forcing myself to re-read paragraphs, to really understand them. For four months, a reporter worked as a guard in a private prison. Then he spent eighteen months working on the story. It's a complete indictment of what we call justice. At times, I found myself physically hurt by reading parts of it, thinking of the lives lost and wasted. It's not an easy read, but you should find two hours to go through it anyway. This is the kind of story that can, and should, change nations." (Alistair for Hugh).
AI, Deep Learning, and Machine Learning: A Primer - Andreessen Horowitz . "Google's shifting its entire business model to embrace machine learning. Andreessen Horowitz's Frank Chen put together a great 45-minute primer that explains the history and possible futures of AI, starting with three of the 'AI winters' when the peaks of expectations led to massive disillusionment. A must for anyone who needs to be conversant in the topic -- and good content to send to friends who ask." (Alistair for Mitch). 
Reaping the Whirlwind - Crooked Timber . "Making sense of #brexit (and Trump for that matter), from a lefty viewpoint, this seems to do a good job." (Hugh for Alistair).
Teaching Robots to Feel: Emoji & Deep Learning - Dango . "Title says it all." (Hugh for Mitch). 
Smart Dust Is Coming: New Camera Is the Size of a Grain of Salt - Singularity HUB . "I love science and technology. It's hard to not read a story like this and wonder if you're reading science fiction. Well, it turns out that this is non-fiction. Wow. It's hard not to read this and wonder just how long it will be until this type of technology is everywhere? I'm guessing it won't be soon. I'm guessing it will also become ubiquitous, at some point, and it will feel like everything changed within the blink of an eye. Lots of bad news in the media, this past week. Here's something that gives us hope. Innovation. It's a pretty amazing thing." (Mitch for Alistair). 
Alvin Toffler, author of Future Shock, dies aged 87 - The Guardian . "If you ever want to see me squirm, watch my reaction when someone calls me a 'Futurist'. I always, jokingly, correct them, as I call myself a 'Presentist'. I do this, because I have been historically not so great at having a vision of which technology would do best. I do this, mostly because I've spent a lot of time reading and studying the work of Alvin Toffler, who sadly passed away this week. Have you read Future Shock? What about The Third Wave? What about Powershift? Talk about vision. Talk about someone who understood society, our culture, technology and the media. He will be missed." (Mitch for Hugh). 

Feel free to share these links and add your picks on Twitter, Facebook, in the comments below or wherever you play.

Tags:

ai

alistair croll

alvin toffler

amazon

andreessen horowitz

bit current

bit north

book a futurists manifesto

complete web monitoring

crooked timber

dango

deep learning

facebook

frank chen

future shock

gigot

google

hugh mcguire

human 20

iambic

j walter thompson

jwt

lean analytics

librivox

link bait

link exchange

link sharing

machine learning

managing bandwidth

mirum

mirum agency

mother jones

power shift

press books

singularity hub

smart dust

social media

solve for interesting

the guardian

the third wave

wpp

year one labs

Force Feed

I miss real editors making choices for me.

That's how I roll. I like editors. I like publishers. I like publications. These are a group of people who spend their days curating and creating stories that should be brought to my attention. It could be the local newspaper (yes, I still subscribe). It could be something quirky, like Lost At E Minor. It could be the latest issue of Fast Company magazine. I like them all. I trust their editorial direction and decisions. They're doing the heavy lifting, in a world where most people can't be bothered with 140 characters on Twitter, so they've started snapping each other on Snapchat. Pictures good. Writing bad.

Ultimately, we will get the Facebook that we deserve. 

...And, that bothers me. How many friends do you have? Not on Facebook, but in the physical form? Think about those friends. Now, try this as an experiment: imagine asking them for a restaurant recommendation in New York City. How did that go? I'm willing to bet, that you could be the bestest of friends with someone, and you would never take a restaurant recommendation from them for a bunch of reasons (refined pallet, they've never eaten fancy, they have poor diet habits, etc...). Now, think about how these people have a direct correlation to their own circle of friends, how they see the world, and how adept they are at using digital technology? It turns out that our real "friends" can be quite different, when it comes to their digital representations. Meaning: super fun and smart in person, but when it comes to Facebook, there's a real underbelly to them. These "friends" erode your social media experience. It's the kind of stuff that lets the ugly side of opinions (which they see as news) seep into the feed and, to a certain degree, you see sides of people that you had never known (no matter how long you have known them). It's not all bad. It's just the many dimensions that shape your Facebook experience when your friends like, follow and regurgitate (or copy) the content that's in their feeds.

Facebook is making Facebook more personal.

The other day, Facebook announced changes to the news feed. They also launched a News Feed Values to better explain their positioning. In short, we're going to see more stuff from friends and family, less from publishers. Maybe you're good with that. I'm not. I like seeing my feed interspersed with all kinds of interesting things. Frankly, I don't trust my friends and family with the important task of informing the greater good about what's newsworthy. This is why I "like" a lot of publications and this is why I want them in my feed.

Force feed me.

The "trending" feed doesn't cut it, either. Still, I'm left wondering, if Facebook created some kind of opt-in or alternate feed that was a kind of commercialized feed, what could be? Imagine a "clean" feed for friends and family and a "clean" feed of publications, news outlets and brands that interest you? Look, we've already gone out and "liked" a bunch of these pages, why throttle that content? Why not make it easily accessible for those - like me - who actually enjoy the work that these editors, brands and content creators are doing? It makes sense... and it would probably make cents too, if you catch my drift?

The feed will never be perfect.

Whether it's an algorithm, the full fire hydrant, friendly curation or what have you, there is no right answer here for Facebook. Still, Facebook is a business. The more brands and news that consumers want (and enable them to control the velocity) may be something coming in the future (who knows?). Until then, if Facebook throttles back on the real publishers, and hopes that our friends can do a good enough job of keeping us all in the loop... that's cause for concern. Everyone loves the news feed (I sure do). So, what we should be asking for is more of it (and, maybe, more control over how much of what makes it through). I'm up for a force feed from Facebook, where I am seeing the publishers and brands that I have either liked, or may be relevant based on the algorithms.

How about you? 

Tags:

algorithm

brand

business

business blog

content

content creator

content marketing

curation

digital marketing

digital marketing agency

digital marketing blog

digital representation

digital technology

editing

editor

editorial

facebook

fast company

images

j walter thompson

jwt

lost at e minor

magazine

marketing

marketing blog

mirum

mirum agency

mirum agency blog

mirum blog

mitch joel

mitchjoel

new editor

news

news feed

news feed values

news outlet

newspaper

newsworthy

publication

publisher

publishing

recommendation

snap

snapchat

social media

tweet

twitter

wiring

 

 wpp

Are Podcasts Worth More Than An MBA?

How you learn may not be as important as where you learn.

There's this meme-like image that resurfaces every now and again online that features a quote from me. The truth is, that I don't think it came from my mind (I may have stolen it), but I truly can't remember where I first heard it. I never graduated university. I started it. I did about a year. I dropped out. I was publishing music magazines, and had to make the tough choice of dropping out and moving forward as an entrepreneur. Candidly, I was never very good at school. Candidly, I was struggling along with my studies while my business began to blossom. I thought to myself that I may never get another chance to see if the business would be a success, but that I could always go back to school if it didn't work out. I also didn't love to read the books and assignments from teachers in school (this dates back to high school as well). Still, I love to read. I love books. Oh yeah, that quote...

"I won't let school get in the way of my education."

As with everything that technology has brought, it has never been easier to get an education (even a formal one). If you have access, you have the tools to be educated. Yes, I am still - primarily - learning the most from non-fiction books and longform content online. Still, the power of podcasting has opened up an entirely new (and amazing) way to learn. Earlier this week, Inc. Magazine named my podcast, Six Pixels of Separation - The Mirum Podcast, in an article titled, 19 Podcasts Worth More Than an MBA. Very flattering... and, of course, it's good for the ego, but I started thinking about why this established publication was making such a brash statement like that. Podcasts are worth more than an MBA? It's hard for me to defend the merits of an MBA (never got one), but I have a deep respect, admiration and - if I'm being honest - slight jealously for those that have one. They have put in the time. They have worked with peers, been exposed to case studies and worked on the process of learning about business... for a long and extended time under the highest of scrutiny. Respect. Still, I do think that podcasts have a tremendous level of value that most business professionals have yet to latch on to. I've been podcasting for over a decade (not a typo). With Six Pixels, I have produced over 500 weekly episodes since 2006 (also, not a typo). Why? I love radio (I appear on CHOM FM every Monday am at 7:10, if you ever watch to check in), but I love what podcasting has done, in terms of allowing media creators to experiment with audio. My podcasts are long, deep conversations with people who are thinking differently about business. I learn so much from those conversations. With that, I learn so much from listening to other shows that take the time to deep dive into topics, with guests who inspire.

The 19 are strong, but what else?

With that, I thought that the Inc. Magazine article listed a bunch of shows that I know and love (so, I won't repeat them here), but it also didn't get a few that have really helped me push my own education forward. Again, these are not for the faint of heart. They require dedication: time, effort and thinking to get the true value out of them. Plus, they're not short (in terms of length and value).

Want a real education? Check out these podcasts too... 

The Accidental Creative - Todd Henry.
The BeanCast - Bob Knorpp.
The Bill Simmons Podcast - Bill Simmons.
The James Altucher Show - James Altucher.
Good Life Project - Jonathan Fields.
The Moment - Brian Koppelman.
Revisionist History - Malcolm Gladwell.
Steal The Show - Michael Port.
The Tim Ferriss Show - Tim Ferriss.
Unmistakable Creative - Srini Rao.
WTF - Marc Maron.

Also, feel free to check out my other shows, Groove - The No Treble Podcast and Metal Wraps. What listening are you learning from?

Tags:

audio

bill simmons

bob knorpp

book

brand

brian koppelman

business

business blog

business book

chom fm

content

conversation

digital marketing

digital marketing agency

digital marketing blog

education

entrepreneur

good life project

groove the no treble podcast

inc magazine

j walter thompson

james altucher

jonathan fields

jwt

learn

learning

longform content

magazine

malcolm gladwell

marc maron

mark strigl

marketing

marketing blog

mba

media

metal wraps

michael port

mirum

mirum agency

mirum agency blog

mirum blog

mitch joel

mitch lafon

mitchjoel

no treble

non fiction book

podcast

podcaster

podcasting

publisher

publishing

radio

revisionist history

srini rao

steal the show

technology

the accidental creative

the beancast

the bill simmons podcast

the james altucher show

the moment

the tim ferriss show

tim ferriss

todd henry

unmistakable creative

wpp

wtf

 

The Anemic State Of Content And News

You're probably not reading this.

Still, there is a very strong likelihood that you have already shared this article. Even if you haven't read anything but the headline. Sure, we all know the countless times that people share things like celebrity death hoaxes or an article of an event that took place years ago, but somehow made its way back into a Facebook newsfeed. Let's not even begin to discuss how often "news" items are shared that are, in fact, articles from the parody site The Onion. It's not that you can't trust anybody, it's that the vast majority of people that you follow - and that they're connected to - have no kind of media training/knowledge, so they're quick to hit the share button in an effort to be first, to look smart or... to simply share something/anything in a world where if you're not sharing, you don't exist.

Everything is moving faster and there's much more of everything. 

Content marketing professionals would lead you to believe that the "cream always rises to the top," and that the truly great brands who are leading the charge in content as media, are the ones who are creating the best, most valuable and utilitarian content (and, that you should do the same). When, if you really dig deep into the research, you will be faced with the sad reality that:

It's not always the best content that rises to the top, but rather the content that is boosted and supported with both paid media and hours upon hours of promotional push behind it. This doesn't make it the best content, it makes it the content that the best efforts were laid against to push it.
60% of content that is shared is done by people who have not actually read the piece. So, always judge a book by it's cover... or the headline, because that's what gets the share, not the guts of the content.

6 in 10 of you will share this link without reading it, a new depressing study says.

That was the headline of a piece in the Chicago Tribune about ten days ago. Did you read the article? Did you share the article without reading it? Have you stopped to think about it? Did you speak to your marketing team about it? You should. It's troubling. It speaks to a much bigger problem. From the article: "According to a new study by computer scientists at Columbia University and the French National Institute, 59 percent of links shared on social media have never actually been clicked: In other words, most people appear to retweet news without ever reading it. Worse, the study finds that these sort of blind peer-to-peer shares are really important in determining what news gets circulated and what just fades off the public radar. So your thoughtless retweets, and those of your friends, are actually shaping our shared political and cultural agendas." You really need to read the article to understand just how bad this is. These researchers wrote super-compelling headlines and filled articles with "lore ipsum" text (i.e.: nothing), and it got more shares and clicks than most of the stuff that you actually found interesting and worthy of a share. And yes, it makes everything you read in an algorithm-based world skewed, blurred and less... real. 

You can control your content. You can't control who does what with it. 

There are so many new (and frustrating) barriers to getting content to work (throttling of pages on Facebook, driving traffic to a corporate blog versus posting directly on LinkedIn, and much more). With that, it's hard to make any content work in a world where people share (and don't read) so blindly. It's one thing to live in a world where twenty percent of your clicks are coming from those who don't take the time to read the article, but sixty percent? Wow. That's a hard number to swallow. What's most interesting is that the news item above hit the feeds, and was nowhere to be found/discussed a few hours later. So, put that in your pipe and smoke it as well: even if you made it to the other forty percent, the half-life of your effort is also super slim. Don't get me wrong, I'm more bullish than ever on brands that create content over screaming in a traditional advertising mindset. Brands are allocating more and more effort and budgets to this medium as well.

I'm just left wondering if they know, exactly, what they're getting themselves into?

Tags:

article

blog

blogging

brand

business blog

chicago tribune

columbia university

content

content marketing

digital marketing

digital marketing agency

digital marketing blog

facebook

french national institute

headline

j walter thompson

jwt

linkedin

marketing

marketing blog

media

media literacy

media training

mirum

mirum agency

mirum agency blog

mirum blog

mitch joel

mitchjoel

news

news distribution

paid media

publish

publishing

retweet

share button

social media

the onion

 wpp