As part of the upcoming XML Global Media Ideas conference on 8 – 10 June in Sydney, we’ve wrangled an opportunity for our readers to

Have you ever wanted to try your hand at radio journalism? Do you have hidden aspirations to hob-nob with the world’s business elite?

Well, we’re about to make your dreams come true. With the help of XML, we’ve lined up an amazing posse of creative commercial thinkers.

Now, all we need is YOU to conduct the interviews.

Would you like to interview one of these amazing people?

• Ian Charles Stewart (Co-founder of WiReD Magazine)
• Warren Coleman (Co-writer and Co-director of Happy Feet)
• Michael Naimark (Founding Member of the Atari Research Lab, the Apple Multimedia Lab and Lucasfilm Interactive)
• Shinta W. Dhanuwardoyo (Recognised by Globe Asia as one of the 99 Most Powerful Women in Jakarta)
• Gerry Gouy (Senior Director, Global Business Development, MTV Networks International)
• Corvida Raven (One of Time Magazine’s 25 Facebook Profiles You Should Subscribe to)

What’s a podcast? How will this work?

A podcast is just like a radio interview. Here’s a sample. Your job would be to follow our instructions, be available when required and have a gripping 10 minute conversation with an international business leader. (We’ll prep you in advance.)

If it all goes well, we’ll publish the final result. You’ll have gained a new experience, possibly a new contact and, should we publish the podcast, greater fame and social capital throughout the interwebs (or on Anthill, at least). Use the form below to register your interest.

To get started, register here.

What are the deadlines?

Act quickly because the deadline for expressions of interest is this Thursday 24 May 2012, at 5pm. The interview would need to be conducted during the week Monday 28 May to Friday 1 June 2012. Deadline: Thursday 24 May 2012, at 5pm.

Terms and conditions apply (obviously).

We can’t guarantee that we’ll be able to coordinate every interview, even if you are lucky (i.e. persuasive) enough to be selected. The speakers at this year’s XML Global Media Ideas conference are busy people. We’ll be working damn hard to secure the interview but we can’t promise it. Interviews with high profile people have a habit of falling through. (Unfortunately, it’s just part of the game.)

We also require that you be able to get your hands on some basic interview recording software or hardware. For example, should your interview be scheduled to take place via Skype (as is the most likely option), you may need to invest in some cheap and simple software such as CallGrabber. As above, we will provide some basic assistance to get you prepared.

Even if you do conduct an interview, we reserve the right not to publish it, subject to quality and other editorial considerations. In that instance, the worst that will have happened is that you will have had a conversation with an interesting person. We take no responsibility if this conversation, promotion or activity causes you any harm – to your financial position, reputation, whatever.

We also reserve the right to do whatever we want with the recording. We won’t make you sound like a goose. But we may use your recording for promotional purposes and may even sell it. Through your participation, you’ll be waiving any right to copyright, fees or royalties for your involvement. You waive any right to losses or costs incurred from your participation.

That’s right. When it comes to this thing called capitalism, we can be kind of mercenary. In short, we can’t make you rich. We can only help make you famous.

Here’s how you can register

This is your opportunity to reach out and speak with a remarkable person (and maybe make an impression), record your conversation (we’ll teach you how), raise your profile through Anthill (we’ll publish your interview as a podcast) and have a whole lot of fun!

To get started, register here.

Some pitches are sophisticated and require 20 minutes in a boardroom. Others are casually thrust his way during social gatherings, like so many under-cooked snags on a backyard weber.

In this three minute video, Richardson reveals three don’ts (and one do) when speaking with an investor.

1. Don’t ask for ‘just a little bit of money’: Rookie business builders under-estimate the amount of capital required to succeed on a large scale. A sophisticated investor does not want to back your pipe-dream or hobby. As the name suggests, they seek sophisticated investments.

2. Don’t ask your prospective investor to sign an NDA: It’s almost impossible for a professional investor to agree to a confidentially contract. Jordan Green talks about this Catch 22 at length here. (Why won’t prospective investors sign my confidentiality agreement?)

3. Don’t arrive without help: Form an advisory panel in advance or gather partners in the industry. It will show that you are serious. It’s rare for a newbie in any industry to succeed where experienced professionals have failed.

Venture capital advice for Australian entrepreneurs

WHAT IS A HUMP DAY? According to Anthill’s founder and editor-at-large, it’s the logical name for a Wednesday (also known as ‘hump day’) brain dump. Once a week (or when he can be bothered), James Tuckerman records (often poorly) an unusual insight gathered from the many interesting people he meets during his travels. It’s a Hump Dump!

Last week, I was surprised to receive this linked email from Barkles, an online debating platform.

The startup, barely a year old, was calling it quits. I suppose that’s not so unusual. The mortality rate for start ups in Australia has always been high. What was unusual, however, was the candid nature that the Barkles founders, Diesel Laws and Jay Whiting, approached their sad news.

Given what little I know of human nature and our incredible reluctance to turn our back on any sunk costs (indeed, it’s called ‘Sunk Cost’ theory and it’s what keeps casinos buzzing with habitual cost sinkers), I can imagine that the decision to close any venture must be extremely painful.

Hence, most startup entrepreneurs take what I call The Hollow Men approach. (Their worlds end not with a bang but a whimper.)

However, if you are going to close your business, I can hardly think of a more mature and responsible way than like this.

Coincidentally, I ran into Barkles co-founder Diesel earlier today and I couldn’t help but ask for an interview. His philosophical and practical outlook simply has to be admired. If you have ever had to mercy-kill an ailing venture, share your wisdom below (for the mutual benefit of all Australian business builders).

HUMP DUMP: When to call it quits

This video, on the other hand, took three minutes and 12 seconds to film and maybe a little less to edit. (Maybe.)  It’s a very ‘lean’ debut for a much needed addition to the Queensland startup ecosystem. And that’s exactly how it should be.

River City Labs is a shared startup space in Fortitude Valley, one train-stop from the Brisbane CBD. Funded serial-entrepreneur Steve Baxter and, powered by the enthusiasm of River City Labs ‘evangelist’ and former DevNet CEO Craig Deveson, it’s living the Lean Startup ethos made famous by Eric Ries.

For example, this might well be the first time that you’ve heard of the ‘Lab’.

However, in less than two weeks, it has attracted 20 tenants and more applications than could possibly fill its 76 seats. How did it do this? Billboards and print ads? Of course not! It infiltrated influencers in the Brisbane digital media and technology scene, such as the connected people behind Interactive Minds.

Like York Butter Factory in Melbourne and Fishburners in Sydney, tenants are provided with access to a desk, wi-fi and very little else… except the intangible and highly addictive ‘vibe’ that comes from working alongside other startups.

With much uncertainty surrounding the future of iLabs (What is going on there, anyway? Anyone?) and some other rough starts (which I won’t name), River City Labs seems to have picked its timing well. It’s lean (like a startup), mean (in a good way) and, with the help of its tech-savvy mentors, it has the potential to become a ‘new biz’ machine.

The Best (or Worst) Startup Promo Video Ever.

WHAT IS A HUMP DAY? According to Anthill’s founder and editor-at-large, it’s the logical name for a Wednesday (also known as ‘hump day’) brain dump. Once a week (or when he can be bothered), James Tuckerman records (often poorly) an unusual insight gathered from the many interesting people he meets during his travels. It’s a Hump Dump!

This week’s Hump Dump was prompted by a carefree remark made over beers and nachos at an Irish Bar in Brisbane.

An old buddy of mine mentioned, unprompted, that his business had no place on Facebook.

What my unsuspecting friend didn’t realise was that, on the following day, I was scheduled to make a presentation on “How to create a self-building, largely self-managing Facebook prospect base” on behalf of Interactive Minds.

While that exchange lasted, maybe, 45 minutes, I have distilled my main arguments into this two-minute hump dump. The statistics referred to were heavily influenced by this amazing infographic created by Socialite Media (below).

Can Facebook be used for B2B marketing?

Facebook in Australia Statistics Infographic

WHAT IS A HUMP DAY? According to Anthill’s founder and editor-at-large, it’s the logical name for a Wednesday (also known as ‘hump day’) brain dump. Once a week (or when he can be bothered), James Tuckerman records (often poorly) an unusual insight gathered from the many interesting people he meets during his travels. It’s a Hump Dump!

To prepare you for this week’s Hump Dump, I apologise  if I don’t seem like my usual up-beat and optimistic self. But, sometimes, I too get frustrated.

In this clip, my stress is the result of a surprisingly common question: How do I monetise my web business? Firstly, let me just say, if you aren’t monetising it, it ain’t a business. It’s a community. And, most likely, it’s an unsustainable community.

Because, for any community to last, at some point someone needs to get paid.

So, this week, I loosely outline the commercial structures available to any blog, forum or people gathering website. If I have overlooked a revenue option, please leave a comment below. (It’s a Hump Dump and, therefore, not as comprehensive as my more traditional posts, unfortunately.)

HUMP DUMP: How to monetise a blog

WHAT IS A HUMP DAY? According to Anthill’s founder and editor-at-large, it’s the logical name for a Wednesday (also known as ‘hump day’) brain dump. Once a week (or when he can be bothered), James Tuckerman records (often poorly) an unusual insight gathered from the many interesting people he meets during his travels. It’s a Hump Dump!

In this clip, filmed at Fishburners in Ultimo Sydney, I look kind of crazy.

I’d just disembarked from a super-early flight and the iPhone strangely reversed everything, including my facial expessions. (Weird.) But there’s nothing crazy, strange or weird about the pitching technique that is the focus of this week’s Hump Dump. (See what I did there?)

It’s called the Gaddie Pitch, after Australian marketing coach Antony Gaddie. To master the Gaddie Pitch, all you need to do is complete the three sentences below.

You know how…
What we do…
In fact…

It is the only pitching structure I know of that is entirely client focused, responding to the needs of the client rather than answering the logical way by saying what you actually do.

What next? Watch the video and then use the comment box below to share your own Gaddie Pitch. Give it a go: “You know how…, What we do…, In fact…” Voila!

HUMP DUMP: The Gaddie Pitch

WHAT IS A HUMP DAY? According to Anthill’s founder and editor-at-large, it’s the logical name for a Wednesday (also known as ‘hump day’) brain dump. Once a week (or when he can be bothered), James Tuckerman records (often poorly) an unusual insight gathered from the many interesting people he meets during his travels. It’s a Hump Dump!

A casual breakfast conversation with MCR‘s Peter Christo about kids, family and friendship prompted this week’s Hump Dump. Why do so many of us fail to follow the same principles we apply to our personal relationships when conducting business?

Perhaps we could all learn something from Peter’s conversation with a five year old.

HUMP DUMP: Commercial relationships

More importantly (and rather unexpectedly), we found ourselves being treated to a candid discussion about News Ltd’s plans for monetising this site, the new digital home of Australia’s highest circulating daily newspaper.

The plan, of course, is to add a paywall. (It wouldn’t take a Finkelstein to see that coming.) It was formally announced on 23 February, prompting much opposing commentary.

But, strangely, based on last night’s discussion, it didn’t actually sound like such a bad idea.

Herald Sun goes ‘freemium’

It’s first worth reminding readers that, aside from my other duties at Anthill (editor, figurehead, dishwasher), I’m a commercial publisher.

While many people continue to find fault with paywalls (I’ve voiced my own concerns elsewhere), it seems that most people would now like to see our news organisations find a way to sustainably produce news.

This latest tilt at monetising the inevitable slide from print to digital is unlikely to provide the oft-debated financial panacea. But I am not convinced that this is News Ltd’s expectation. The Herald Sun’s foray into premium content, judging by last night’s presentation, seems to be coming from a mindset of experimentation (to the limited extent that a large organisation can experiment).

Unlike just about every other major newspaper announcing its plans to charge for content over the past decade, this presentation was not coupled by the obligatory, almost defensive assertions of ‘confidence’ in this model. The underlying theme was that no-one yet knows which model or what balance of free and paid content is likely to work best.

So, here’s what the digital strategy and editorial team at the Herald Sun have come up with.

A balance of free and paid content

The freemium model places some stories behind the paywall and others in front. Premium content is marked by a small ticket icon (a “Digital Pass”) and is only available to paying subscribers.

The assumption with any application of the freemium model is that casual users, once introduced to the value of the free offer, get hooked and ‘upgrade’ themselves to a paid offer.

The model had been outrageously successful for many online service companies. It has been successful for a limited number of news organisations too, generally when there is a scarcity of competition or a commercial imperative for getting a certain type of news (such as finance coverage).

Whether it will work for the Herald Sun or not will depend on how successfully it is able to convert its three initial target audiences.

Digital Pass to attract the ‘migrators’

According to last night’s discussion, the first target market of the Herald Sun’s paywall play is to target readers who have taken their own good time to embrace the digital news revolution. If you are reading this post, I doubt that you are a member of this set.

The rationale is that this group is already accustomed to paying for news. This group needs help making the transition. This group is also brand loyal. It is a logical market to offer what it is calling its “Digital Pass”.

And, unlike other times when big publishers have thrown up the paywall, a lot has changed over the past two years.

Perhaps these ‘migrators’ are indeed now ready to migrate.

Games to attract the ‘sports nuts’

News Ltd seems to be investing a substantial amount of money and attention into building and promoting its SuperCoach offering, as a way to target sport enthusiasts.

Aside from representing a shift from pure news to a gaming offer, this move seems smart in its capacity to target people who love AFL but not necessarily the Herald Sun. (There are far more sports nuts nationally than Herald Sun readers.)

Furthermore, it allows the brand to take its strength in sports coverage across state borders.

Rewards and ‘premium content’ for existing subscribers

Existing subscribers will, naturally, get the Digital Pass as part of their existing package.

The editorial team is placing high hopes on an enhanced ‘True Crime’ area, fronted by Charlie Bezzina. According to the conversation last night, this is the first time that a major news brand in Australia has directly recruited a homicide detective.

It’s an interesting proposition because new media will allow Bezzina to share what the police will be doing (and thinking), sometimes from location, as news breaks. From the discussion, crime is a strong traffic magnate for the Herald Sun, particularly among female readers.

Herald Sun pricing (Napkin analysis)

To be honest, my digital note-taking device (i.e. my phone) ran at of juice just before the nitty gritty of bundles was discussed.

What I do remember, however, is that the Digital Pass will be free to anyone and everyone for two months (to get people interested and trialling the product). After that, a weekend paper-based newspaper subscription coupled with a full Digital Pass will cost $4.95 per week.

There were other more expensive bundle options discussed. But, for the purpose of this napkin analysis, I’ll be using this base package, which represents about $257 a year per subscriber, to make some not-so-scientific assumptions.

Assuming that the organisation can convert 50% of its circulation of 515,500, the organisation would stand to generate approximately $64 million per annum.

This conversion rate might seem high to most people. But, to me, it seems strangely doable, if not inevitable. (When my Luddite mother embraces the Kindle and iPad after a lifetime lovingly consuming The Age everyday, change is definitely afoot.)

Of course, subscriptions are only part of a news organisation’s revenue model. When Anthill was a print magazine, advertising represented approximately 80% of revenues. I wouldn’t be surprised if this valuation proxy is consistent with the big brands.

While I don’t have News Ltd figures available, a recent report by Macquarie suggested that revenue from The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, including their Sunday editions, in 2010 was around $600 million, with earnings before interest tax deprecation and amortisation at $50 million.

The same report also suggested that should Fairfax decide to close its print product and give away 100,000 e-readers, costs could be reduced to $275 million, and should 40 per cent of advertising revenue be retained under the new model, full-year EBITDA would be $55 million.

However you want to stitch it, the numbers are compelling.

Herald Sun as a gaming company

Furthermore, the Herald Sun’s successful experimentation with SuperCoach has provided another, interesting revenue stream.

At a cost of $2.95 a week to play (priced at less than a cup of beer at the game), SuperCoach generates around $150 per player per year. Fifty thousand players would nett the Herald Sun around $7.5 million per year, which is chump change to an organisation like News Ltd, but it does demonstrate a prescient shift in its thinking.

Game-layer theory is already invading all levels of commerce (customer facing and staff management). Gaming, as an Australian industry, produces more export dollars and GDP than our beloved film industry. Plus, as said earlier, more people love the AFL than love the Herald Sun.

SuperCoach takes the brand across state borders and beyond newspaper loyalties. It’s an interesting move. (And I can’t wait to see how they might attempt to gamify coverage of the next election. Can you image sledging your mates for their woeful cabinet picks?)

Making content ‘findable’ and ‘sharable’

One main problem with paywalls is that they sometimes restrict indexing by search engines.

This means that the content does not appear in Google searches and the news site suffers as a result.

The other option is to allow search engines to find the content and provide a limited amount of content for free to potential new customers that stumble on premium content by way of a search query.

The Herald Sun is taking a slightly different approach, allowing search visitors (visitors who arrive on the site from search engines) to see up to 10 items of premium content for free… wait for it… per day.

This seems outrageously generous. (A gasp of surprise erupted across the room when this figure was announced.) However, the wonderful thing about digital news is the measurable nature of the medium.

Conventional wisdom might suggest that less free content is likely to prompt more premium sign-ups. But human nature might deliver a different outcome. In six months time, News Ltd may have discovered that 30 free items of content per day actually triggers the highest conversion to a premium subscription. Or, perhaps, the optimal number will prove to be only three.

Only time will tell.

Users will also be able to share articles via social media and recipients of these will be able to see that single article, even if it is otherwise behind the paywall. In this way, the Herald Sun has kept its content ‘findable’ and ‘sharable’, perhaps the two most important tenets of online marketing.

How to get Herald Sun news for free

The downside of this generous structure is that it also creates a loop-hole should site visitors want to see premium content for free.

Put it this way; If I want to read an article marked by the Digital Pass icon, I need only copy and paste that headline into the Google search field in my browser and hit ‘enter’. I will then be able to enter that article from the search engine and read it for free.

Under the proposed structure, I could do this 10 times in a day.

After the formalities of the event were over, I quietly introduced this three step ‘cheat’ to one of the News Ltd executives. He candidly pointed out that some people (namely tech-heads and students) will always be able to find a way to ‘game the system’. But these were not necessarily the Herald Sun’s target market.

And he’s right.

What cheats might seem simple to me (and you, dear readers) might not seem so simple to the wider population. For example, there are people who install ad blockers on their browsers and rob Anthill of advertising revenue for their own convenience. But these people are few, despite how easy it is to add a ‘blocker’ to just about any browser.

A short note for the UI freaks

As above, the Herald Sun’s new site will be available for all to see next Monday. While we were not permitted to take photos, here are some interesting developments for the developers.

1. The site is spacey (plenty of white space)
2. The site is image rich (a strong selling point for a sports medium)
3. It uses mega-menus (and they look great)
4. It’s super light (caches cleverly)
5. It has 12 interchangeable homepage treatments

This last point is likely to put many bloggers in a fluster of anxious excitement. Sure, we give posts different treatments. But the Herald Sun is taking this to its homepage. (Ooher!)

Finally, visitors might note next Monday how the new site is reminiscent of a blog. It seems that finally the powers-that-be have come to realise that attempting to simply recreate a newspaper in a digital environment provides a poor user experience.

Whether or not the paywall brings back the ‘rivers of gold’, the Herald Sun team should be proud of its new look. Naturally, it will receive a bucketload of flack (because people don’t like change). But, for what it’s worth, the new site structure gets my thumbs up.

Is any of this a big deal?

Just about every item of coverage relating to the rise of paywalls over the past decade has focused on polarising readers.

This is because readers seem to love or hate the concept and early adopters of digital media (those most likely to pick fault) also have a disproportionately loud voice.

Surprisingly, aside from a few barbed comments or snarky tweets, the overriding reaction to last night’s presentation was open-minded curiosity.

It seems that even Melbourne’s digital mafia — an otherwise cynical, albeit charming set — are now beginning to accept that more models exist than even they, in their profound digital wisdom, can comprehend.

And, besides, has this loud group ever been a member of the Herald Sun’s target market?

Not surprisingly, much has been written about the proposal because, at first glance, it stands to mostly effect the people who write. I’m talking about the usual suspects — newspapers, magazines and commercial news websites — and their broadcast counterparts.

While the mainstream media rage about independance (as they should), no-one has yet addressed how these changes are likely to affect a far larger and arguably more influential interest group.

Naturally, I’m talking about the hundreds of thousands of businesses that engage in content marketing.

What if you blog for business?

In addition to concerns relating to freedom of the media, coverage has focussed on two glaring faults with the proposed reform.

Firstly, it proposes to regulate bloggers and other online authors that generate more than 15,000 “hits” a year. Secondly, it uses the word “hits”, which is disturbing due to the obsolescence of the term. Most sites are now measured by Visitors and Views. A website attracting over 40 Visitors a day could, therefore, fall under the scope of the proposed media authority.

Furthermore, it neglects the most significant shift in media ownership since the arrival of the Internet — the rapidly growing adoption of content marketing.

While the mainstream media rage and the government continues its efforts to regulate journalism, an overlooked shift is occuring.

Media ownership is decreasingly the domain of a select few. It is shifting to just about anyone with an opinion or even just a desire to share the opinions of others. (For example, if you own a Twitter account chances are you are now a media aggregator.)

The means of production is no longer a barrier to entry, which means that the only thing left of any consequence is the content.

What is content marketing, anyway?

Over the past three years, I’ve been privileged to teach, coach and consult to over 150 businesses. It’s what  I do when I’m not running Anthill.

And while my lessons and advice have come in a variety of forms, using whatever language seems most appropriate to the client, these classes and coaching sessions largely preach one message above all else: The power of content marketing.

In fact, in my experience (and for most of my clients), there is no method more reliable for generating site traffic, leads and online sales than through the creation of search engine optimised, social media friendly content.

(Actually, I tell a lie. If you have a massive advertising budget, advertising is perhaps equally reliable. But it requires… yup… a massive advertising budget. Enough said.)

Boring definition alert! According to Wikipedia, the term ‘content marketing’ is:

“…an umbrella term encompassing all marketing formats that involve the creation and sharing of content in order to engage current and potential consumer bases. Content marketing subscribes to the notion that delivering high-quality, relevant and valuable information to prospects and customers drives profitable consumer action.”

But, to put this in the perspective of business owners and bring the concept of ‘content marketing’ back to the proposed media regulation reforms, please allow me to present Exhibit A.

Exhibit A: Bloggers get more leads

I have to thank one of my online marketing workshop buddies, Biagio LaRossa, CEO of communication technology outfit generation-e, for bringing this amazing piece of… you guessed it… content marketing to my attention.

Created by Hubspot, for the purpose of lead collection and sharing, this slide deck demonstrates — over 24 slides — how companies that blog not only generate more traffic but also generate more leads (and, by extension, sales).

Hubspot content marketing analysis

“How do I get you to write about my business in Anthill?”

Of course, the question is never asked quite so bluntly.

Rather, it usually begins with a polite enquiry about where we find the organisations we write about or how we choose which people to write about.

This is followed by the seemingly casual remark:

“Well, we’ve been doing some interesting things lately.”

And, because I’m seemingly a nice guy, I listen and nod and smile and accept a business card. If you’ve ever cornered a journalist or editor at a networking function, you know the drill.

Sometimes, the person’s organisation has actually been involved in ‘some interesting things lately’. But, by and large, most of the ‘things’ are self-referential — of interest to their organisation, its employees and perhaps a handful of customers and competitors. (For example, why do I get media releases daily informing me that Company X has a new CIO?)

And, like many members of my profession, I grow cynical and closed-minded.

Today, I hope to end this scenario. I can’t make you rich but, hopefully, I can help make you famous. (I mean ‘more famous’.)

TACTIC #1: Do something remarkable

This tactic is hard. It’s so hard to do well that I never recommend it. Never.

Unless you are simply the most outrageously outgoing, energetic and commercially creative of business builders and have a budget the size of your ego, skip to TACTIC #2.

When I use the word ‘remarkable’, I don’t mean ‘exceptional’. And I don’t  mean ‘exciting’, ‘intriguing’ or even ‘unique’. I’m applying the word’s most literal definition; things that are worth making ‘remarks’ about. Fans of Seth Godin will get my drift.

So, how do you know whether what you are doing is ‘remarkable’ enough for mainstream media? (I’m including Anthill in ‘mainstream’. However, if you’re a manufacturer of spanners, Spanner Monthly Magazine is likely to set a lower benchmark than mine below.)

Here’s the test: If you explain your ‘news’ to your teenage kids or semi-retired parents or the guy at the post office — in two sentences or less — how are they likely to react?

Are they likely to enthusiastically exclaim, “Really!” then rush off to tell their school mates and golf buddies? Or are they more likely to smile, nod and say, “That’s nice. I hope it works well for you”? (Or, worse, might they distractedly reply, “Sorry, I don’t understand”?)

If what you do is not truly remarkable, don’t dismay. Keep reading.

TACTIC #2: Create information that’s remarkable

This second tactic is easier to engineer because it does not rely on your organisation being in any way remarkable. It involves identifying a trend or insight of likely interest to your target audience and the media at large.

For example, my friend Lloyd runs a condom business called BigRichard.

At face value, this enterprise might seem remarkable. It’s a risqué brand and, in some circles, it’s product is literally sinful. But, you know what? Is it remarkable? The name’s cool but, at the end of the day, it’s just another condom brand — competing against hundreds (perhaps thousands) of condom brands in a cluttered global marketplace.

Lloyd knows this. That’s why he recently conducted a survey involving over 4,000 of his customers from 35 countries. The survey involved 20 questions, carefully assembled to acquire one answer.

Lloyd wanted to know how far people of different nationalities are likely to ‘go’ on the first date. And, from this information, he plans to create a clever and cheeky infographic revealing… wait for it… the most promiscuous nationality on earth.

Lloyd’s brand is not remarkable. But this information is.

Sure, he’s at an advantage. (Sex sells.) But this tactic can be used by just about any marketing manager with two brain cells and access to a customer database. Yet, I still personally receive around 60 media releases from PR professionals every day inviting me to interview a CEO that I have never heard of or write about a business that our readers don’t care about.

What remarkable trends are hidden in your customer data?

TACTIC #3: Share knowledge that’s remarkable

This tactic is so easy to apply that it surprises me how rarely business owners and marketing professionals actually exploit it. In fact, follow the steps below and, chances are, you’ll have your name in Anthill (at least) within a matter of weeks.

Quite simply, stop trying to sell editors, journalists and the world at large on how great you are.

Just show us instead.

Stop preaching and start teaching — by submitting articles that will allow you to demonstrate your knowledge and expertise. No-one likes a braggart but everyone loves a thought leader — particularly if that person is generous with their knowledge.

What remarkable information is hidden in your brain?

Do you have a lesson to share? The answer is, ‘Yes’.

Some of the most popular stories published by Anthill, over eight years, have been written by unsolicited contributors. They have largely followed a common format.

The writer outlines five to 10 things ‘learnt’ while doing something interesting (or even mundane). While the headlines, topics and industries have varied considerably, they each could be bundled into the following headline format:

• What I learnt [selling my business / opening a store / launching an iPhone app]
• [Three/Five/Ten] things I learnt at [The Unconvention / The Masterclass]
• How to [write an article / buy a website / get on Facebook] in [x] steps

Can you see a trend?

The beauty of this format is that the author does not need a degree in 16th century literature to pen an item that is compelling. The author simply needs to share a genuine insight. What is a ‘genuine insight’? Well, if a lesson learnt was interesting or eye-opening from your perspective, it is likely to be interesting and eye-opening from the perspective of others.

Here’s the best bit. In most cases, the author spent less than 40 minutes penning his or her ‘masterpiece’. In fact, some of Anthill’s most eye-opening and engaging pieces have been submitted in email form. (A Word doc was nary opened.) And our most successful authors didn’t even ask for permission to contribute. They just hit us with an article.

How to become an Anthill thought leader in 3 steps

In summary, stop pitching and start doing. We’ve made it super simple.

Here are your three steps.

Step #1: Ask yourself, what have I done lately that was ‘remarkable’?

Did you attend an event that you can’t stop talking about? Did you take notes and now want to share these gems of wisdom? Did you pull off a deal despite the odds? Did you achieve an outcome by following a conventional or unconventional path? Did you have to do something unpleasant, like make redundancies, and have wanted to talk about the process ever since? Let Anthill be your therapist!

Stop and think. I bet you just came up with at least three.

Step #2: Write down five things you learnt from doing that thing?

Remember in school how you were taught to plan an essay? It sounded so arduous. For this assignment, it’s easy. Simply make a list of the things that you learnt doing your remarkable thing. You may have heard a quote (“Involvement begets commitment”) or made an observation (“Involve people in your projects and they will develop a sense of ownership”).

Write a small list of things you learnt. Do it! We’ve even create a form below.

Step #3: Complete this form (below) and send YOURSELF an email.

If you have followed Step #1 and Step #2, you will already have an article half written. All you need to do now is add a paragraph or two beneath each lesson you have outlined. Surprisingly, you’ll find that this is the easiest part of the process. Now that you’ve written down your insights, you’ll be itching to flesh them out.

So, are you a ‘doer’ or a ‘gonna’?

Want to write for Anthill? Here’s a template to help out.

I’m talking about Jim Stewart of Stewart Media.

His SEO expertise and early adoption of video marketing make a fierce combo.

Shortly, we’ll be publishing the recorded version of the webinar on the Anthill website and, if you weren’t able to join us today, you’ll be able to see first hand the knowledge and passion that Jim brings to this rapidly growing area of content marketing.

One aspect of the webinar that stood out for me was the high number of questions Jim received relating to video capture and editing tools. Intrigued by the potential of YouTube marketing, I personally had already begun my own experimental forays into video production.

(My first attempt — a lesson on content marketing, featuring my son and a big, juicy slice of watermelon — can be found here.)

I’m no expert on video production. Or the intricacies of video search engine optimisation. But, inspired by Jim, I took it upon myself, in the closing minutes of my lunch break, to practice what he preached and create a video… on how to create a video.

It was recorded in one take. It is filled with stammering and stuttering. (So, please be kind.) But, if you can endure the first two minutes, it shows — step-by-step — how to create a tutorial video in under six minutes. Ready, fire… aim.

Video tutorial of how to create a video tutorial

Put simply, our Readers’ Choice winner is traditionally selected from Finalists based on the number of social media reactions and comments generated by the Finalist’s profile page, which is a page on our website that summarises the qualities of the Finalist.

This year, LeadBolt totally annihilated the competition – because its business model is based on triggering online actions, such as Facebook Likes. Starlettos, the first runner-up, had courted reader praise and social media reactions the old fashioned way – by rallying their mates.

I posed the question, “Who is the more deserving” by way of a crude reader-poll widget.

Sound simple enough?

Well, I was flamed like an Australia Day snag in the post comments for “stoking controversy” and running a “trial-by-media” campaign, for “losing objectivity” in reporting and one item of commentary described my actions as “positively Orwellian.”

Well, was I guilty of stoking controversy? Ummm… check. Running a “trial-by-media” campaign.  That’s an affirmative. (It’s a Readers’ Choice Award!) Losing objectivity? When has any private media company ever not been biased? We’re biased. And proudly open about it. Because the alternative would be dishonest. (We’re an organisation made up of people.)

“Positively Orwellian”? Sheesh! My answer to that might require some doublethink.

To be absolutely and positively sincere for a moment, I run a private media company.

And we too have our agendas.

For example, have you ever noticed that we don’t write about mining companies or farming innovations? A conspiracy at play? No, we just prefer to write about innovations that don’t reinforce Australia’s economic role in the world as a mine and a farm.

But I digress.

I was chastised and my motivations were questioned.

For me, that’s just another day at the office.

I was, however, thoroughly disappointed that none of the opposition to my poll focussed on the true heart and purpose of the post.

Should LeadBolt’s shortcut technique be punished or rewarded?

Think about it this way: All great entrepreneurs are cheats.

That doesn’t mean that they are unethical. It means that they are generally extremely talented at finding the quickest, most efficient and presumably cheapest path to their desired outcome.

And, so long as they take their shortcuts ethically, they should be praised.

At the same time, an ability to work hard should also be recognised.

Entrepreneurs require both.

So, who should get the award? Short-cutting LeadBolt or hard-working Starlettos?

Faced with this dilemma, I thought I would turn precedent – old precedent.

What would King Solomon do? (Skip to 3.22)

To avoid my blather, skip to 3.22 (Three minutes and 22 seconds.)

Special thanks to Scott Handsaker of Eventarc. You are a titan of Australian entrepreneurship (and trophy smashing). To read the initial post, click here.

Was it Barack Obama? Oprah Winfrey? The Dalai Lama?

No, it was Moot, the pseudonym of 21-year-old Christopher Poole, a college student and founder of online community 4chan.org.

Not only was the “most influential person in the world”, according to TIME, largely unheard of (and still is) but so were many of the remainder of the top 21, whose first initials not-so-coincidentally spelled the words ‘MARBLE CAKE ALSO THE GAME‘.

4chan.org, if you’ve never heard of it, is a bare-bones, reliably profane image board whose users have hatched everything from Rickrolling to LOLcats. It’s perhaps influential among college students but was its founder worthy of this TIME accolade?

This is a question that even TIME seemed uncomfortable answering in 2009.

TIME.com managing editor Josh Tyrangiel said that moot is no less deserving than previous title holders. “I would remind anyone who doubts the results that this is an Internet poll,” he says. “Doubting the results is kind of the point.”

So, how did Moot win?

The simple answer is that 4chan.org used its far reaching network to manipulate the voting process. The technicalities of this precision hack can be found elsewhere.

So, why the long winded introduction to this year’s Cool Company Awards Readers’ Choice Award?

Did we get gamed?

Let’s be frank. Readers’ Choice Awards are usually conducted for two reasons.

The first is to provide readers with a voice. This is obviously a good thing. It takes the decision making process away from a few and gives it to many.

The second is to raise awareness. In our world, that could also be interpreted to mean ‘get more traffic’.

As such, we acknowledge that many award programs often end up becoming (for want of a better description) media sanctioned popularity contests. And with acknowledgement comes acceptance.

So, rather than rail against this hard fact (Oh, the inequity!), many years ago we decided to ignore our internal cynics (the ones in our brains, not just the ones in our office) and reward voters according to the effort they put in to reach their own networks.

That’s right, we empowered our entrants to promote the awards for us.

How did the voting work?

The Cool Company Awards Readers’ Choice gave Anthill readers the opportunity to vote on Cool Company Award finalists in one of several ways:

1. Tweet this post:

Use the Tweet button at the top of this page. Your tweet will say:
Congratulations [Name], Anthill 2010 Cool Company finalist!

2. Trigger a spcial media reaction: Hit “Like” or “Google+”, Disqus “Like”.
3. Leave a comment: Show your support! Share the love!

This seemed fare. And, to state the obvious, if success is built on marketing flair (even partially), ranking highly in the Readers’ Choice should bode well for the ‘cool’ company.

So, how did participants rank?

Below is a summary of our performers.

Notice anything weird?

It’s pretty common for the top two to generate more social media interactions than the remainders combined.

At least, that is what has happened in previous years.

One or two companies will usually have strong and established networks. They will have created a remarkable product (hence their slot in the ‘Cools’) and their customers, clients, family, friends and fans are more than happy to show their love.

But this year’s leadership ladder tells a slightly different story.

Our leader generated an outcome roughly five times the social media interactions generated by the entire list.

For those of us able to monitor the process, the astonishing outcome appeared to happen in a matter of days, skyrocketing this one organisation’s Like count seemingly at the push of a button.

Of course, we suspect, that is exactly what happened.

What is LeadBolt?

In less than two years, LeadBolt has become a world leader in website monetisation services via a method called content unlocking.

In essence, site users encounter a screen that makes an enticing offer; the user must engage and react to the offer in order to continue seeing the site content.

LeadBolt says ads powered by its network are generating click-through rates more than 60 times above industry benchmarks and that, on mobile, its engagement layers are pushing publishers’ earnings 100 times higher than industry benchmarks.

The company, founded in mid-2010 by president and CEO Dale Carr and headquartered in Sydney, deployed its export arms early, moving into the U.S. and Asia in July 2010, Latin America in September 2010 and Europe and the UK in January.

Today, it serves hundreds of millions of ad in nearly 200 countries.

Advertisers include Burger King, Pepsi, Walmart, Coca-Cola and Groupon.

It’s a powerful business model and an Australian digital success story.

But, to summarise and to (perhaps unfairly) simplify the model for today’s purposes, LeadBolt’s business is built to help monetise blogs… by selling Likes.

And what about Starlettos?

It’s part of the Anthill culture to root for the underdog.

In fact, the Cool Company Awards were, in part, developed to identify up-and-comers — businesses with unique business models, powered by innovation. All our contenders for the Cools fit this mould. (It’s the Cool Company Awards, after all — not the richest-business-in-Austraila-deadly-serious-and-humourless awards.)

And, as a fly on the wall, it was plain to see how much effort Starlettos — namely its founders, Mark Naismith-Beeley and Ilde Naismith-Beeley — put into mobilising their masses to achieve an outcome almost five times their nearest competitor (a digital marketing agency too, I might add).

Who would have thought that a small piece of plastic that could prevent high heels from sinking into grass could be so popular? (But I concede that I’m probably not the target market.)

This created a crisis of conscience at Anthill HQ.

While LeadBolt is the clear Readers’ Choice winner in terms of ‘votes’, should we not acknowledge the efforts of others who actively mobilised ‘fans’ and new Anthill readers?

Who do you think should win?

In the spirit of typical Anthillian rule-breaking behaviour, we have decided to ask you, dear readers, for one final vote. Who should win? LeadBolt or Starlettos?

And if you think this turn of events is unfair (or if you ardently support it), leave your rant as a comment below. Now vote. Use the widget below. Click and you’re done.

THIS POLL (INC. COMMENTS) IS NOW CLOSED: To watch the ‘smashing’ finale to this debate, click here and watch the video.