Smartcuts: The Breakthrough Power of Lateral Thinking

by Shane Snow

Instead of interrupting people with ads, Mint decided it was going to become a media company that taught people to better understand finances. It started a blog on which it posted helpful articles about money management and savings. The blog chugged along, slowly winning audience members to its free content, and then it found a way to tap into a large broadcast channel: social bookmarking. Social bookmarking sites were all the rage in the mid-2000s. Here people shared links to content they liked, while others “voted” on which links they liked best. The highest voted stories every day surfaced to the front pages of bookmarking giants like Digg.com and Reddit.com, where millions of people saw them. So Mint started making blog posts its editors thought were likely to be voted up by the bookmarking crowds. Its editors commissioned infographics* (illustrated stories that made sense of data) explaining economic trends in terms a normal person could understand. These were entertaining, informative, and visually striking stories, and they helped people grasp money management in a fun and noncondescending way. Some of the most influential Digg and Reddit users fell in love with the Mint blog, which gave them content that would make them look good to their own fans. Those influential users shared these stories, sending millions of visitors to Mint.com. Thus Mint built relationships with an enormous number of people—by helping them. Over the next two years, 1.5 million people who dis...