Buzz

10 Better Ideas Than Looking at a Top 10 List For Advice

top ten list advice

Top 10 lists are like new year’s resolutions. They seem great at first, but they quickly make you feel bored, hopeless, and like you’ve wasted your time. And that’s usually because they are filled with things you know you should do but can’t commit to doing. They’re too aspirational. Too shoot-for-the-moon-y. Which is why I’ve [...]

How Crowdsourcing Can Revolutionize Your Approach to Content

Should This Post Be Crowdsourced?

A few months ago an international team of gamers solved a complex problem that had scientists baffled for years. For a decade industry experts from around the globe had been unable to figure out how a protein-cutting enzyme from an AIDS-like virus found in rhesus monkeys folds. In a final attempt to solve the riddle, [...]

A Magazine is Not a Broken iPad (No Matter What Your Baby Says)

broken ipad, not a magazine

Homer Simpson understands children. Well, his children. All right, maybe just Maggie because she rarely speaks. But he knows enough about the relative predictability of kids to have once uttered, “You couldn’t fool your mother on the foolingest day of your life if you had an electrified fooling machine.” Bravo, Homer. This is why you [...]

5 Things I Learned at the FOLIO Show

folio show

Earlier this month a group of us traveled from TMG in D.C. to the Marriot Marquis in New York to “join the media revolution” at the FOLIO: Show. The event had tracks on monetization, content, management, and marketing—and great key notes from the likes of Mashable’s Pete Cashmore and Time Inc.’s Fran Hauser. Here are [...]

Is Your Twitter Account a Ghost, a Witch, a Pirate or a Vampire?

twitter ghost

Halloween is the one day every year people can dress up as anything they want and not be stared at strangely in the grocery store. So we put a lot of thought into what we might wear to capitalize on the opportunity. But we don’t always think about what kind of costume our Twitter account [...]

Give Me One Reason to Share It and I’ll Spread Your Post Around

reasons to share content

There are a lot of blips on our daily radars. We check our Twitter stream. We drop in on Google+. We comb through our RSS feeds. And for the most part, we ignore most of the content we see. Why? Because we’ve read it before. Because it sounds too familiar. Because it’s obvious. Because it’s [...]

Magazine ‘App’-titude

Magazine ‘App’-titude

When CNN announced plans earlier last week to acquire Zite, an upstart creator of magazine apps for Apple’s iPad, it wasn’t exactly Earth-shattering news. The East Coast was still sweeping up after Irene. In the wake of a disaster that almost was, the acquisition caused nary a ripple in the blogosphere. Understandable. The announcement didn’t [...]

3 Things the Top 10 Viral Videos of All Time Have in Common

Old Spice Guy

Want to watch a baby do flips on rollerblades? How about people playing the piano with their feet? Maybe you’d rather see a biker riding on the tops of stores and jumping off bridges? Well I’m sure I have your attention now…or maybe you’ve already seen the videos I’m talking about on YouTube or some [...]

Kenny Powers, K-Swiss, and the Ramifications of Viral Success

kenny powers viral video

By now, you’ve probably seen the radical campaign from K-Swiss where Kenny Powers (a fictional character played by Danny McBride) takes over as CEO (ahem, mother***king CEO) of the company and reinvents their image via profanity-laced one-liners and no shortage of comic gold. (If you haven’t, scroll down for the video. Make sure you’re wearing [...]

Fighting Words: Marketing Lessons From the UFC

marketing lessons from the ufc

Your organization can learn a lot from the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). Yes, I’m serious. No, I don’t mean you can learn flying knees or triangle chokes, although those might come in handy when meetings get heated.

Want Your Message to Resonate? Say it Again. Want Your Message to Resonate? Say it Again.

repetitive marketing messages

Growing up, my mom had to constantly remind me to do the things she needed me to do. After the fifth or so reminder, I’d reluctantly get up and put my clothes in the hamper (or complete whichever menial task she’d requested of me). On my way back to couch potato land, I’d let her [...]

The Difference Between a Crowd and an Audience

difference between crowds and audiences

In a former life, I was the lead singer of a band. Believe it or not, I used to get on stage, play guitar and sing, and not everyone booed. We had a demo CD, T-shirts, and a handful of people who would show up to our gigs who weren’t blood-related.

Rebecca Black and the Art of Being Bad

rebecca black bad is the new good

It’s official: Bad is the new good. For the moment, anyway. While music tastes and styles have always been subjective, there’s no disputing that the buzz that built overnight around “Friday,” fledgling teen “singer” Rebecca Black’s ode to the weekend, is a sign that you don’t necessarily need to be good at what you do [...]

A Magazine Column as a TV Show? Bravo Premieres The Approval Matrix

New York magazine has always been one of my favorite reads. But I think I truly fell in love with it when, in the big redesign of 2004, Adam Moss created The Approval Matrix—that ultimate back-page department that pinpointed the week’s comings, goings, and gossip on a snark-filled grid of “Despicable,” “Brilliant,” “Highbrow,” and “Lowbrow.” [...]

Launch: Uptown Professional

uptown professional magazine

Luxury magazine Uptown is getting a sister: Uptown Professional, which is a quarterly spin-off targeted to the urban professional, according to a recent article in Folio.

Launch: Fifth Wheel Magazine

fifth wheel magazine thumbnail

Fifth Wheel Magazine isn’t a magazine about awkward dates. The new online-only “magazine” will focus on RV trends and new products for a vacationer’s favorite “home away from home,” according to RV.net, which blogs regularly about the RV industry.

An Illustrated History of Content (and a Smooth Move in Content Marketing)

smooth move in content marketing

You know you’ve done your job as a marketer when people do your advertising for you. By creating something memorable, entertaining, and worth talking about, you get more mileage out of your initial investment. This is what brands hope for when they make decisions like investing $100,000 per second in the Super Bowl commercials we [...]

Launch: Trunk Magazine

trunk magazine

Wish you could while away your days, jet-setting and checking out in-depth stories from around the world? Look no further than the new Trunk magazine,

Launch: Your Guide to Better Living

your guide to better living

New York Times Company will soon launch a version of all the news that’s fit to print specifically for baby boomers.

Launch: Exhibition Magazine

exhibition magazine thumbnail

Talk about targeted content: Newly launched luxury magazine, Exhibition, produces one issue annually and focuses all editorial around one subject.

Want a Viral Video? Just Add Humanity

ted williams

Despite the Internet’s reputation for being mean-spirited, cruel and heartless, it turns out that most people who surf the web love a fairytale happy ending. How else can you explain the “viral video” phenomenon that was formerly-homeless Ted Williams’ rise to superstardom?

101 Social Media Stats

social media stats

Finding the right needle in the haystack that is the Internet is often times an exercise in futility and frustration. Sure, you can find “quick tips” for just about anything, a “how-to” guide for maximizing anything you’d like to maximize, and “case studies” that illustrate someone else’s success story which you believe – for a [...]

Content, In Style

burberry and branding

When you think of Burberry, what comes to mind? Stodgy British trench coats? Hardly. In the last four years, the 150-year-old brand has transformed itself into a digital fashion empire, with CEO Angela Ahrendts as the driving force behind the evolution. The result is a record year for the brand, with total revenue up 21% [...]

Launch: Where Women Cook

where women cook magazine

Adding to the mix of cooking magazine is Where Women Cook, which will—as the name implies—give in depth looks into the kitchens of budding Martha Stewarts.

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