Mitch Joel's Blog: Six Pixels of Separation, page 231

The New Rules Of Sales And Service

Episode #437 of Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to.

How many writers do you know that have written books about space, the Grateful Dead, viral marketing, social media, public relations and more? This is the life of David Meerman Scott, who in marketing circles is probably best known for his bestselling business book, The New Rules of Marketing and PR (which, for many, is the bible for social media in the business world). While he recently issued his latest book, The New Rules of Sales and Service: How to Use Agile Selling, Real-Time Customer Engagement, Big Data, Content, and Storytelling to Grow Your Business, he found out that his previous book, Marketing The Moon, had been optioned by a documentary filmmaker. In this episode, we discuss David's desire to transition from a marketing author and speaker into the broader and larger space of sales and customer service (a trend that many marketing authors/speakers are following). We also look and how intrinsically connected sales, customer service and marketing have become. David is one of the most prolific writers and speakers out there. His new book challenges business to radically redefine how they connect with consumers (a topic that is near and to my heart as well). 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 Twist Image Podcast #437.

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Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #231

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:

A Free Dive In Japan - Roads & Kingdoms . "I was in Tokyo recently. Every time I visit the country I'm amazed. There really is no place like it on earth, combining formality and tradition with exuberance and a thirst for the new. In this great post by Roads & Kingdoms (who, it seems, can do no wrong in travel reporting) see where your Uni comes from. Spoiler alert: 60-year-old female divers." (Alistair for Hugh).
Homo Conexus - MIT Technology Review . "Back in 2006, James Fallows penned an ode to Web 2.0. I'd used the term recently, and was surprised to find this piece. It describes a week of trying to live entirely online. This is pre-iPhone, pre-app store. And as he says, ' .. the Dodgeball truth ... comes at the moment when you realize that one of life's possibilities - a product, an adventure, an offer, an idea - is really meant for people younger than you.' Of course, by 2014 most of us have outlived Dodgeball, which Google shuttered in 2009. But this reads like an Internet time capsule." (Alistair for Mitch).
House Republicans just passed a bill forbidding scientists from advising the EPA on their own research - Salon . "Sometimes I really don't know what to say. The good news is that this bill isn't likely to go anywhere with the current White House administration. The bad news? Yeah." (Hugh for Alistair).
26 Pictures Will Make You Re-Evaluate Your Entire Existence - BuzzFeed . "On the other hand, maybe our little quibbles about ' cience' don't matter so much, when you factor in the size of the universe." (Hugh for Mitch).
The Post-PC CEO: No Desk, No Desktop - The Wall Street Journal . "Way back during the dot com boom, I got sick and tired of my office. The stapler. The filing cabinets. Elastics. All of it. People protected their offices, desks and cubicles like they were their homes. I asked my boss if I could buy the cheapest and thinnest laptop. It was a Toshiba Portege. It was sleek. Not powerful, but sleek. My office became my laptop. Years later, my friend got a promotion at some big corporation. The benefit (beyond a slight bump in salary) was that they added an additional panel to his cubicle (making it a couple of feet longer). Within this organization, jealousy over cubicle size was a thing. Ick. I read this Wall Street Journal article and just nodded. This is the type of stuff I was waiting for since computers became portable. If I could write and create presentations on an iPad, I would probably drop my MacBook Air. The point is, that we live in the one screen world now. Most people don't need much more than a tablet to get by. It seems obvious to state that, but it actually means that we are changing the way we physically work... and that's pretty dramatic." (Mitch for Alistair).
Craft A Spiritual Practice With Dani Shapiro - Good Life Project . "Over the years, I have become lucky enough to call people I respect, read, admire and follow a true 'friend.' Jonathan  Fields is one of those people, and I am very lucky. I was a huge fan of his Good Life Project long before we met. I was honored to be asked to be a guest on his show when I launched CTRL ALT Delete. Since then, I do my best to not miss any episodes. I guess I did. Somehow, this week, I was trolling through YouTube and came across this episode with Dani Shapiro. Lately, I've been thinking a lot about the craft of writing, and what I can do to improve and grow. It's a journey. Listening to this conversation touched my heart. Shapiro has written many books, but Still Writing is her book all about the craft of writing. I don't know what happened here, but I fell madly, deeply in love with this conversation. Once it was done, I bought Still Writing, and I am loving it almost as much as Steven Pressfield's The War of Art. This conversation touched me deeply. If you write (or create any kind of content), you really do need to watch this." (Mitch for Hugh).

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

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steven pressfield

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the wall street journal

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year one labs

youtube

Become A Connector

Do you have one hour and forty-five minutes to spare?

I'll admit it, I have been sucked into the vortex that is Skillshare. For a very normal monthly fee (like, ten bucks), you can take a whole bunch of fascinating courses. Not the kind of courses that you probably see in catalogues or through the continuing education department of your local college. I'm talking about courses being offered by people like Simon Sinek, Susan Orlean, Seth Godin and courses with titles like The Possibilities of Instagram: Sharing Your Best Photos, Hyperthinking: improve your day to day learning & creativity, and Humor Writing: Write Funny for the Internet. 

This is my kind of school. Smart classes. Relevant Topics. Right to the point. 

This week, Seth Godin launched his latest course on Skillshare. It's called, Become a Connector: The Impresario Institute, and here's the course abstract: 

"Impresarios are the connectors. They are the reason we are able to attend concerts, meet like-minded people at events and get inspired at organized talks -- as talent and good ideas in the world need to be shared by someone. Author and entrepreneur Seth Godin walks through a workshop covering all the bases of being an impresario -- how to start, who to get on your team, and how to scale your connections. By the end of this class, you'll be inspired to recognize opportunity, assemble your own event, and to be a connector for the rest of your life."

I'm about halfway through this course... and thoroughly enjoying it.

If you're still not convinced that you could learn a thing or two (or twenty) about how to build relationships that matter, you can watch this teaser video:

Business Transformation. From Marketers To Makers.

Imagine. 

Imagine if someone pulled you aside, and asked you to change everything about yourself. They wanted you to change how you look, how you act, how you think, how you connect with others, and more. Worse (or more importantly), they wanted you to change who you are, and they needed you to do it right away. After all, it was for your own good. This was all being done, because the world around you was changing at a rapid place. Not easy. Most of us could not do it. I'd fail miserably at it, I'm sure. 

It's easier said than done. 

I've often lamented that the biggest struggle facing the vast majority of traditional media publishers isn't their ability or speed to adapt to the newly ensconced digital consumer, it's the Wall Street cycle of impossibility. How easy would it be for any of us, to be better looking, smarter, faster, thinner and richer than we were ninety days ago. What if we had to always improve on those five areas every ninety days, without fail? How would you do? How great have you been in keeping your New Years resolutions from last December? I consider myself a fairly productive individual, and I'm not overly impressed with myself, because I'm also acutely aware of the human condition. And yet, when it comes to businesses, we have that exact expectation of them, and we want them to improve and be better on a quarterly basis. It's insanity. Companies can earn millions of billions of dollars in the short span of four months, and the markets will pound them for not performing better. "You lost a lot of weight... Just. It's not enough. Sorry." 

I'm only human. Most businesses are made up of that same DNA.

Flesh and blood with a very hard head. We have the best of intentions. We read and believe everyone who is motivated and telling us how to do more. Still, when the clock strikes eight pm, you can find us on our couches watching Married At First Sight and building up a hearty Doritos stain on our pyjama tops, when we should be reading a business book or galloping on a treadmill.
I have the very difficult task of asking brands to transform the way that they connect with consumers. I (and the entire team at Twist Image) are asking brands to take a proven leap of faith.

We are asking brands to transform:

How the brand acts. This is not about what story the brand tells a consumer. It's about understanding that there are now a myriad of ways to tell a brand narrative, and it's not driven by "the big idea" of advertising or by simply pushing a unified brand message down the throats of consumers. If we all agree (and we should) that consumers have a digital-first posture (meaning, that most people's first and ongoing brand interactions don't happen at the physical business location - retail or office - but that they begin and end online), then our brand narratives, need to match their expectations and their paths to purchase. The business transformation here is that our brands need to be digitally-led and physically reinforced. And, not the other way around.
How the brand transacts. Does the brand make it easy to shop and buy online. This about much more than being e-commerce enabled. It's about being able to transact online. To be more than a digital billboard or brochure. To let the consumer make the final decision on their own, in a clean and frictionless experience that is easy and intuitive for them to navigate. This could be as minor as helping them pay their bills or as major as facilitating the final transaction. Can consumers not only shop your brand, but buy it on their own, in a simple way? The business transformation here is to embrace a twenty-four seven shopping and transaction cycle.
How the brand engages. Brands see social media with a primary lense of listening and responding, in a customer service type of engagement. When they're not doing that, these channels are typically leveraged by the marketing and communications departments, as a way to advertise some kind of promotion or product. The business transformation here is for the brand to truly become more human and connected to consumers, who are using these channels to connect in more personal, real and real-time ways. It's time to re-read The Cluetrain Manifesto.
How the brand speaks. What does the brand really say. Is a traditional white paper as valuable as telling a strong customer narrative on YouTube. Jay Baer often says that social media is the campfire, and that content marketing is the gasoline. There are so many choices to make here. Content marketing is no longer just about being relevant and consistent in how a brand publishes. The business transformation here is being contextually relevant with content, and creating content distribution strategies that enables the voice of the brand to extend beyond its own walled gardens. 
How the brand sells. It's easy to dismiss advertising as the tax that brands have to pay when their product or service isn't something worth talking about or sharing (I'm paraphrasing something Seth Godin often writes about). Digital advertising (when done well) can do a whole lot more than simply inform and entice a consumer. Digital advertising can now become the top of a strategic sales funnel that leads into a strong CRM-driven business model. The business transformation here is in leveraging analytics, multivariate testing and more to better move a consumer through a digital sales funnel.  
How the brand moves. The frustration of brands having to revisit their various platforms (Web, mobile, apps, etc...) can be costly, confusing and hard to embrace. We have entered the one screen world. The only screen that matters to the consumer is the one that is in from of them. Screen are ubiquitous, connected and (fairly) cheap. But, the underlying reality is that consumers are now mobile. The business transformation is in building a marketing infrastructure that understands that mobile is a strategy/way to move consumers, not a channel. Having a mobile strategy isolated from a social media, e-commerce, etc... is a bad strategy. The brand is now mobile with the consumer. Like it or not.
How the brand creates. Brands will think about how to sell their wares online. The real opportunity is for brands to augment their product and service lines by creating digital products and services that compliment the core business (or digital ones that could become a new core business). Apple is now considering embedding the Beats By Dre music service on to all of their devices. Beyond the attempt to diminish the power of streaming services like Spotify and Rdio, Beats (prior to their acquisition by Apple), built this adjunct - and fully digital - business, instead of simply trying to sell more headphones. The business transformation here is for brands to not just sell their stuff online, but to build digital and mobile products and services that can be sold. The types of products and services that become a business unto themselves. 

Don't blame Wall Street. 

Business transformation is hard work. It's heavy lifting that can't be left to the top consulting firms or the traditional advertising agencies. We can't just be looking at the business partners that have changed their marketing jargon to be reflective of this new environment. We must lead this from within the brands (from the top down), and push it through with partners who are living and breathing in these spaces. Mistakes will be made. Winners and losers will be established. But make no mistake about it, marketers are no longer just in the business of media and communications. 

Marketers should be helping to transform businesses. Marketers must become makers. 

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Comedians In Cars Getting Organic Reach

Jerry Seinfeld doesn't have a throttling problem.

Facebook is making more changes to the newsfeed that look to cripple the organic reach of brands (more on that here: New York Times - Facebook Will Curtail Unpaid Ads by Brands). The main message that they're sending to brands is this: if your posts even have a hint of shilling you're going to pay for it. Last Friday, the company began to further distance the content marketing from the advertising. Starting in January, the company would prefer if brands just took ads, and this includes pieces of content asking users to watch a particular show or download an app (more on that here: DigiDay - Facebook steps up its war on like-bait).

Is Facebook getting greedier or is it something else?

The general frustration of marketers is understandable (and, I'm not just writing this because I'm a marketer). Brands have spent a significant amount of time and money on Facebook acquiring fans and connecting with them. Some do this exceptionally well, while others have seen social media as a free ride to get the word out. Regardless, brands have acquired these likes and fans, and Facebook now makes it increasingly more difficult for the brands to get anything through to these people who have willingly agreed to connect (and who can willingly unlike these brands at any point). On the other hand, Facebook needs to keep its billion-plus audience engaged. So, if enough of the feed gets filled with brand messages in lieu of what our friends are up to, they risk having people become disengaged and disenfranchised with Facebook. Earlier this year, Facebook began the process of throttling the amount of content from brands to the newsfeed. It wasn't subtle. Many brands had such few pieces of content getting through, that they changed their integrated marketing mix by redefining Facebook as a paid media (more on that here: Organic Reach on Facebook: Your Questions Answered). Facebook didn't just push this throttling issue further this week. Last week, the massive online social network also told brands and agencies that they could no longer run promotions that forced users to like a brand to participate (see that DigiDay piece above).

What is Facebook really doing?

The capitalist in us all, will see these aggressive moves as Facebook's run to build a (bigger) war chest of money. Over the years, Facebook encouraged brands to connect with fans and share, but once those relationships were established, Facebook changed the rules and made it pay-to-play. the realist is us should see this as Facebook's desire to not pollute the user experience and - because they can - dictate a quality over quantity model to brands. For this, we should all be grateful. The truth of why Facebook has done this, is probably somewhere in the middle.

What about Seinfeld?

It felt like a joke, but at the same time that brands and agencies were scrambling to adjust strategies and balance between great content marketing and advertising, Jerry Seinfeld decided to take Facebook for a test drive instead of a 1960s Ferrari. The famed stand-up comedian, smash TV series star, and now online video sensation with, Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee, used Facebook to promote the latest season of his show. He was so impressed that he posted a note to Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, saying that he "might be on to something" with this Facebook thing. Seinfeld's post was seen by over twelve million people. The "boost post" tab was still there, so I'm not sure whether or not anyone in the Seinfeld camp boosted the post or not, but it "feels" like this was organic.

Seinfeld was organic. Can you get organic reach like that?

No, you're not Seineld. No, you're not asking people to check out one of the hottest online shows. Still, it would seem like Seinfeld is at the same level of mercy to Facebook's throttling algorithm as the rest of us. The reach, shares and likes pushed it through because... Wait for it... People care. You don't need to reach everyone on Facebook (don't fool yourself). You just need to create content that is compelling enough for your audience (compelling enough that they want to share it with their friends). Even if you can't reach your entire audience (and only a small fraction of it), the content should be compelling enough for them to take action. Forrester will think that I'm crazy (Brands Are Wasting Money on Facebook and Twitter, Forrester Says). Fine. I'm, typically, the eternal optimist when it comes to this sort of stuff.

What do you think? 

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All Filler. No Killer.

Everyone wants a hit. 

That was the general sentiment around the rehearsal spaces when I studied music in college. Some dreamed of that "hit" moment happening, once they received a letter accepting them into a symphony orchestra, others imagined that moment as being asked to join B.B. King's touring band, and most were like me: #1 single on the Billboard charts (when that sort of thing mattered more than how many streams a band had on Spotify or how many views on YouTube, combined). What we often never thought about, was the reality of what came next. In our minds, we envisioned the stereotypical things. Some kind of play on the whole "sex, drugs and rock and roll." the subtle variances being whichever of those proclivities your heart desired more. The life of an artist. Forever in blue (or black) jeans and Converse. 

The truth runs deeper. 

For every rock star inducted into the rock n' roll hall of fame that has had the privilege of turning their art into a life of success, there are countless others who reached some form of number one on the charts, and the disappeared into the ether. The world as their oyster soured into a VH1 "where are they now" segment. The classic one hit wonder. 

What kind of marketing do you really want?

While it's not a zero-sum game, there is a sentiment that brands are chasing the one hit wonder. They're pushing for the next subservient chicken, dunk in the dark, ice bucket challenge or whatever. Few brands are as focused on the craft, in the hopes of one day being inducted into the hall fame. Where is the incentive? This week, Forrester reported that the standard tenure of the Chief Marketing Officer is expected to reach five years. To put that into perspective, back in 2006 the CMO was lasting about two years. So, while the marketing community is applauding this news (especially, if you consider that the typical CEO is lasting about seven years), it doesn't speak to the broader issue and challenges that are facing the marketing industry: how do we truly develop brands that should be built to last, and not focus on trying to make something (anything) a viral success without any platform or sustenance behind it? Where is the incentive, if none of our marketing leaders plan to be around that long, anyway?

Even YouTube thinks that your brand should not focus on trying to go viral. 

If your brand is lucky, YouTube will invite you over to their creative space in their New York offices for full-day sessions and tutorials on how to make great videos that don't just sell to people who watch these videos (which, is basically, everyone), but how to become a part of the YouTube culture. In fact, one of the main reasons these quarterly retreats take place, is because YouTube is constantly trying to tell brands that shooting for a viral video is a huge (and costly) mistake. YouTube wants brands to build a steady video platform by creating content that informs, is consistent and that can capitalize on specific moments in time. In fact, this is more like "how to be a credible publisher" than how to score ten million viral views. Last week's CMO Today column in The Wall Street Journal was titled, YouTube's Advice for Brands: Don't Try To Go Viral. it doesn't get more blunt than that. 

Try to avoid filler. 

It's easy for a brand to get lazy. It's easy for the brand leaders to rush after whatever is the new and shiny object in the world. What we have is a world of possibilities. It's a world that enables and empowers brands to be more real, more consistent and more relevant to their consumers. To become a valuable part of their culture. YouTube is sending a valuable message: make yourself valuable. 

How many brands and Chief Marketing Officers are really doing that?

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What If Stuff All Had Different Prices, Depending On Who Was Buying it?

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:

Imagine a world where everyone pays a different price for things based on how you shop, where you shop, etc... If you thought High Frequency Trading was a thing, imagine High Frequency Pricing. In fact, it would be hard to know if Amazon (and others) aren't already doing this (hint: they are).
I never saw Google Glass as the future. I always referred to it as an intermediary technology. Something that will bridge the gap from what we have today (screens) to what we'll have in the future (a heads up display whenever we need it?). It turns out that Google Glass may, in fact, be struggling.
YouTube is about to launch a subscription service (with a fee) to take on the Spotify and Rdios of the world. This feels like a very smart play for them, as they already have deals with most of the major publishers.
Amazon is talking up a new product called, Echo. While it looks like a bluetooth-enabled speaker (which it is), apparently, it's much more. It can read you the news, help you find information and more... because it talks to you. And yes, you can buy Amazon stuff just by telling it to do so. Creepy or awesome?

Listen here...

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Meditations On Social Media Marketing

Episode #436 of Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to.

How well do marketers truly perform when it comes to social media? It's a question that Jason Keath not only speaks and consults about, but he also gathers very serious marketers to attend his well-known Social Fresh events. At last year's Inbound event in Boston (led by HubSpot), we both gave presentations and realized that we had been following one another for years, but had never really connected in our protein forms. With that, we also decided to do a show like this, where we could talk about the challenges that brands face when it comes to social media and how to best educate and arm them for success. 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 Twist Image Podcast #436.

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Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #230

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:

How to be literate in what's changing journalism - Press Think . "Jay Rosen's excellent list of things he expects his journalism students to have understood by the time they finish in his class. With plenty of links. If you're dealing with the media, this is table stakes." (Alistair for Hugh).
What Happens When a Disruptor Gets Disrupted - Slate . "There's a lot of talk about disruption, which in some cases sees an upstart taking a scorched-earth approach to the way things are done today. Uber's pretty voracious; even AirBnB tackles with regulators and cities. Maybe a bit less hubris is in order? That's what Truecar seems to have learned from its near-death experience, anyway." (Alistair for Mitch).
E-citizens unite: Estonia opens its digital borders - New Scientist . "Trying to wrap my brain around 'e-citizenship' isn't quite working, but I love the hint of the idea. Estonia has taken steps to allow anyone to become an e-citizen of the country, giving them privileges previously only afforded to, you know, citizens: the ability to open bank accounts or start a business there, for instance. I suppose this kind of thing already happens for the wealthy: Swiss bank accounts and off-shore tax shelters and Cayman Island company registrations and the like. So, maybe this just starts to extend the same to anyone with an Internet address? Still, the idea that our identity and legal status in the universe should be governed only by an accident of geography - where we were born - is surely going to come under increasing pressure as more of who we 'are' lives in the cloud somewhere. Estonia is taking some early and interesting steps to help us figure out what the future of citizenship might mean." (Hugh for Alistair).
What France has taught me: Americans are suckers who have themselves to blame for crappy broadband - Venture Beat. "Read it and weep." (Hugh for Mitch).
How You Shop Online Changes The Prices You See - Fast Company . "Back in 2012, I wrote a blog post titled, The Future Of Personalized Pricing. The spirit of the post was simple: if we don't have physical price tags on products, wouldn't it make sense that brands could start a process of pricing things in a hyper-personalized way, or that pricing could start looking a lot more like high frequency trading? Well, it looks like that is exactly what is happening, and it could become the norm. Everyone is worried about net neutrality... how about pricing neutrality? Something tells me, that this will get people all up in arms." (Mitch for Alistair).
What's the best launch strategy for a Book? (What are some of the best; & probably cost-effective; ways to promote/market a new/existing book of any genre now-a-days?) - Quora . "Is it just me, or is Quora suddenly becoming more useful than Wikipedia? Some of the questions being asked on the platform have been excellent, and the responses... even better! If you're thinking of writing a book or about to publish one, there is a plethora of good insights in this post. Love it." (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

amazon

bitcurrent

bitnorth

book a futurists manifesto

complete web monitoring

fast company

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human 20

iambik

jay rosen

lean analytics

librivox

link bait

link exchange

link sharing

managing bandwidth

new scientist

press think

pressbooks

quora

slate

social media

solve for interesting

venture beat

wikipedia

year one labs

Media Redefined

When you think of someone who understand the state of media, who do you think of?

One of the most interesting media characters I follow is Jason Hirschhorn. I've been subscribing to his e-newsletter (yes, I still enjoy getting these fascinating emails in my inbox that are filled with fascinating links and thoughts), MediaREDEF for a very long time. As you might imagine, I spend countless hours - every day - combing through the Internet looking for answers. Answers to client's challenges, answers to this itch of a next book that's about to be scratched, answers to help write the next blog post and more. You can't finish the Internet. My friend, Jay Baer, just launched a site this week called, Marketing Podcasts, that acts as a directory to find the best marketing-related podcasts in the world. He already has over four hundred shows in the directory. Four hundred. Four hundred podcasts about marketing. You could spend your entire life listening to only marketing podcasts, and not be able to get through all of that audio gold. Think about the amount of links that are shared daily on Facebook and Twitter. Think about how many pieces of content you have saved to an app like Pocket with every intention of getting to (but you never will). For the past few years, we have screamed for better curation. And, it has arrived. When it comes to media, technology and pop culture, Jason's Media REDEF knocks it out of the park. 

Is there a business in curation?

Jason thinks so. He's expanded MediaREDEF by adding additional verticals FashionREDEF, MusicREDEF, SportsREDEF, TechREDEF and he's even introduced Originals (which, as you can guess, is originally crafted pieces of content). He has plans for this to grow, to charge people for this and beyond. The big question is this: will people now pay not only for content but for the curation of that content? On November 11th, Jason Hirschhorn talked to CNN's Brian Stelter about REDEF's growth and the future of media and technology at a Paley Media Council meeting in New York. It's fascinating to watch this former MySpace, MTV and Sling Media executive discuss our fascinating new and digital world. I was captivated. I hope you will be too.

REDEF's Jason Hirschhorn Talks to CNN's Brian Stelter ...

 

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