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

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 srory.

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 concience at Anthill HQ.

While LeadBolt is the clear Readers’ Choice winner in terms of ‘votes’, should we not acknolwedge 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.

As mentioned, this video really got my head spinning. It begins with one logical and familiar example of outsourcing (creating content for a website) and then takes the process to the… wait for it… EXTREME!

(Because Pete’s an outsourcing ‘extremist’, see?)

It references a Market Samurai product called Article Samurai. While I’m personally not familiar with the tool, I do appreciate the importance of content creation — if you have a desire to build an online community, improve your website’s visibility in search engines or simply want to position yourself as an authority.

Content Leverage System

I’m an early riser and enjoy these moments alone, before the hustle and bustle of the day sets in.

But, sometimes, just sometimes (read ‘often’), this small job can require the patience of a saint.

Remembering the arduous steps required to complete yesterday morning’s meal (and the day before that), and contemplating how bizarre it is that I must work so hard to provide him something that will make him stronger and healthier and happier, I began to think about online marketing.

Yes, the brain works in mysterious ways.

(And I am kind of sleep deprived.)

I began to see synergies between the process of caring for my son and the process of attracting and retaining new prospects and customers. Hence, this video.

Sure, I do feel a bit guilty about exploiting the fickle taste of my son for the purpose of marketing my personal consulting brand. *cough* I mean for the purpose of ‘reader education’.

But, heck. The following six-minutes will surely contain nuggets of embarrassment to roll out at his 21st. And, more importantly, I had fun making it. And I hope you have fun watching.

ENDLESS MARKETING 101: BREAKFAST

The Nine Lessons

1. Your prospect’s default state = distrust
2. Build trust by solving needs
3. Solutions needn’t be expensive
4. You are always competing for attention
5. First sale = Product-for-Prospects
6. Continually foster engagement
7. Provide more free solutions (content) to encourage word-of-mouth
8. Then, and only then, should you offer your core product
9. Follow us at facebook.com/TheEndlessLoopExperiment

If the names BlueChilli and FCDF sound familiar it’s because BlueChilli is the venture of serial entrepreneur (and 30under30 veteran) Sebastien Eckersley-Maslin. FCDF is the product of another well-heeled player in the Australian startup scene, Domenic Carosa.

According to a media statement, “BlueChilli is currently launching a new online business every two months and has projections to increase this to one new start-up every month in 2012.”

It doesn’t require the prescience of, say, a Silicon Valley VC to second-guess why Carosa would be interested in this type of business, despite being quite vocal about his fund’s preference for revenue positive startups (or “upstarts” as he calls them).

The model is attractive to organisations at the earliest stages of development — nascent companies with ideas but without technology expertise. This model provides an obvious first rung to the FCDF ladder.

When asked yesterday about how much capital BlueChilli had acquired and the terms of the investment, Sebastien Eckersley-Maslisn elusively told Anthill, “Enough to invest in six new startups and launch two incubators.”

For most Australian business builders, this second purpose is the more exciting — the addition of two new physical locations for innovators to set-up shop, within a collegial environment, with the support of advisers (i.e. the incubator model).

The incubators will be located in Melbourne (or more likely in Richmond) and Sydney (most likely in the CBD).

Eckersley-Maslin says collaboration will be key, and a strong differentiator. And, unlike, most other incubators, participating startups will be able to work alongside and be able to “tap into the knowledge” of larger “upstarts” that have raised capital through FCDF.

“Every week, the CEOs will give their elevator pitch and state what they did the week before, what they plan to do this week and what they need a hand on. So, other CEOs will be able to offer support, contacts and assistance … and hold each other accountable for progress.”

“Every friday afternoon, BlueChilli will bring in influential speakers and provide beers. This will be open to everyone in the Aust startup scene.”

BlueChilli will be the only Australian private incubator with physical space in two states.

However, in terms of lasting impressions, it wasn’t the view, the beef wellington or the chocolate fondant lamingtons that are likely to stay with me for years to come.

Okay, I might be telling my grandkids about the chocolate fondant lamingtons but, for the purpose of this post today, it was a remark made by our host, the CEO of NetSuite since 2002, Zach Nelson, that really got my entrepreneurial brain ticking.

Here’s what he said (paraphrased):

“Every business is now a cloud business. And, if you’re not thinking this way, another business, that is thinking this way, will certainly kill you.”

Nelson has worked for companies such as Oracle Corporation, Sun Microsystems, and McAfee/Network Associates. He was named one of the 10 Visionary CEOs of 2008 by InternetNews.com, after guiding NetSuite through its 2007 IPO. He helmed the company through its rise from startup to one of the world’s leading cloud computing companies.

So, it’s not surprisingly that he should hold this view.

Yes, he is biased. But is he wrong?

But, sometimes, the feedback contradicts what we know to be true, based on the cumulative behaviours of hundreds of thousands of site visitors.

Rather than provide a polite but meaningless response (like, “Thank you for your feedback. We welcome and respect the views of all our readers”), I often try to explain why it is that we do things the way we do.

Today, we received the following piece of feedback, prompted by an auto-responder email that is triggered when a new email subscriber signs up.

Feedback Form [#399]

General feedback and not specific to you as I’m a new subscriber.

We are all running our own businesses. All very busy, and no one has enough time in the week!

* Keep to the point.
* Facts, facts facts.
* I don’t want to have to read a half page of creative writing before I get to the point and facts of the story.
* No time…. I want to know what’s going on and fast.

And here was my reply:

Welcome to Anthill and thanks for your feedback. Before I respond to your suggestions I want you to stop for a moment and indulge me:

Imagine that you are in bed.

It’s very early in the morning and suddenly you wake up.

You don’t know why you woke up.

But here’s one thing you do know…

It’s quiet.

It’s eerily quiet.

You are alone.

You push aside your bedclothes and gently lower your feet to the carpeted floor.

Ever so cautiously, you walk to the door and listen.

Silence.

You push the door open, and it barely releases a squeak.

At this slightest of noises tension grows in your chest and you suddenly notice your heartbeat.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

Once outside your bedroom door, you see a staircase. It leads down to a lower floor.

At the foot of the staircase you see a note — an ordinary piece of A4 paper folder in half.

Suddenly… buoyed by unexpected energy and unbound tension, you spring to life!

Grabbing a banister, you bolt down the stairs, three at a time, shattering the silence with each step.

Thud! Thud! Thud!

You grab the note with one hand, before you can even catch your breath.

You pull it open, in one rapid movement, revealing the message inside.

It reads:

“There was nothing remarkable about this story. It contained no facts. Rather, every thing in it has happened to many people before.

However, you would have never discovered the lesson I’m about to reveal, if my anecdote hadn’t exploited your own human desire for anecdotes.”

Facts are very important. And, after nine years of watching competitors launch and fail, building a media business on a budget without the aid of large multinationals or a big fat development budget, there is one thing that I know for sure.

Education requires engagement.

Here’s our modus operandi. Engage… then educate.

It might not be to everyone’s taste, but here’s the other thing that I know for sure (thanks to Google Analytics and split-testing).

Often what our readers think they want doesn’t play out in their behaviours.

And here’s one final fact.

You are still reading.

So, you might now hate me. But you will always remember me…

And the lesson of the factless anecdote.

Yours faithfully,
James Tuckerman

Did I miss the mark?

The feedback was clearly meant to be constructive and the person had, most likely, not yet been exposed to our ‘in ya face’ editorial style.

Okay, I was cocky.

But the message of the note is something that I do, indeed, feel passionate about. I wish that more people would attempt to engage before rushing to ‘educate’ or simply present the facts.

Or, perhaps, in a digital age there is no room for the creative introduction.

What’s more important to education; storytelling or facts?

What do you think?

Image source: Izismile

So, why do we still feel embarrassed when we’re caught doodling in a meeting?

In this fun TED talk, professional doodler Sunni Brown makes the case for unlocking your brain via pad and pen.

Doodlers, unite!

Doodling: TED talk with Sunni Brown

Several weeks ago, I was sent the Australian edition of ‘Become a Key Person of Influence’ by Daniel Priestly. I read it in an afternoon. And, several weeks on, my imagination is still buzzing.

Below you will find an excerpt from this book (published with the author’s permission). And, as of tomorrow, Antmart will be selling this book for $1, delivered in hard-copy form to your door (following some smooth negotiation by our friends at Antmart).

To ignite your imagination, let me ask you, “Are you a vital person? Or a functional person?”

Vitality is more valuable than functionality (By Daniel Priestley)

What’s the difference between a ‘functional’ person and a ‘vital’ person?

Most Key Persons of Influence fall into the ‘vital’ category.

Let me explain.

Functional people might be great at what they do. They might talk the talk and walk the walk but, at the end of the day, the sad fact is that they are replaceable.

If you can find a cheaper option you will take it and a functional person is usually just one solution to a problem.

Functional people see themselves as executing a set of processes. They try to get better at those processes and they make marginal improvements. Functional people worry about being downsized or overlooked. They are fearful that someone might come along who can ‘do it’ better.

A vital person doesn’t have these fears. Vital people align themselves to the result rather than the process. No matter what, they will always be okay to adapt and change dynamically if it gets them towards a better result, or a faster result.

This is because they feel like they own a specific piece of turf and no one could replace them.

They see themselves as redefining the game in some way. They have their own unique take on things that makes them almost impossible to replace or overlook.

Functional people are scared to take a holiday. They worry what will happen while they are gone. Will they have a job to come back to? Will their clients find someone else?

Will they lose opportunities they really need? A holiday is a scary thing to take when you are functional.

Vital people love taking holidays. They know that part of what makes them vital is that they have a certain spark that few people have and they have fresh ideas that people want to tap into. For a vital person a holiday is a place to get re-energised and to stimulate ideas. It’s also a great reminder to everyone just how vital they are.

A vital person knows that while they are gone, people are worried that they won’t come back!

Functional people like to associate with people who reaffirm that life is tough. They like to be reassured that the economy is affecting others too and that times aren’t what they used to be. A functional person loves the comfort of their friends who don’t push them or inspire them to step up to a whole new level.

A vital person likes to be seen and challenged by their contemporaries.

They welcome debate and stimulating ideas. They want people to push them, to bring the best out of them and to stay true to the idea that there’s always a new level to play at. A vital person will leave a group of people who slow them down for a group that stirs them up.

A Functional Person wants to get more
… A Vital Person wants to produce more.

A Functional Person wants to learn more
… A Vital Person wants to share more.

A Functional Person wants to be shown a path
… A Vital Person wants to create one.

A Functional Person is worn out by their functionality
… A Vital Person is re-energised by their vitality.

Want to see what a person of vitality will do (even after they have the money and the fame) in order to keep pushing the boundaries? Check out this video of David Blaine telling you what he’s willing to do in order to make “magic”.

David Blaine at TED

So, are you a vital person or a functional person?

There is really only one way to answer this question. If you had all the riches in the world, would you still be doing what you’re doing now? Think about it. Are you making magic?

To get the full 188-page hard-copy book for $1, visit Antmart.com.au.

So far, we’ve looked at the Success Page, Google Analytics and Calling Cards. You might have noticed that when talking about these three tools I emphasised one thing above all else — their role in the collection of prospective customer details.

That is the focus of this fourth installment and the underlying purpose of our fourth essential tool:

An Eyeball Collection Strategy

No, I’m not talking about some gruesome or macabre practice more likely associated with the works of Edgar Allan Poe than a commercial series on marketing.

I’m talking about decreasing your reliance on traditional media, or at least maximising traditional marketing outcomes.

Why rent the eyeballs when you can own?

It was the irrepressibly astute Seth Godin who first introduced me to this concept. It’s simple. It’s radical. And it just keeps proving itself right, as the interwebs become a more and more influential marketing channel.

In one of his many, many blogs (from several years ago), Godin posed the prescient idea that the monopoly of traditional media over the attention of consumers is likely to be whittled away by the democratising forces of the Internet. (Although he didn’t sound like such a wanker when he said it.)

He posed that, while the only model available to marketers for most of the 20th century was to ‘rent’ the attention of prospective customers (via the purchase of advertising, on radio, television, in newspapers, magazines etc), these same marketers would soon become increasingly able to cut out the middle-man, and ‘own’ the attention of their audiences.

For example, a website is often used (and treated) as little more than a digital brochure designed to promote a business. More sophisticated organisations now also frequently use their websites as a lead generation tool or as a storefront.

And then there are a very small few that have also begun to usurp the monopoly of large media companies and use their websites as a source of news or industry information — and, in doing so, they have made the transition from ‘renter’ of attention to attention ‘owner’.

“But I don’t have the resources to become a content creator?”

Of course, as implied in the last installment, ‘eyeball ownership’ requires content.

This is the first objection that most people (business owners, in particular) come up with when presented with the suggestion that they could (dare I say ‘should‘?) consider the extension of their website’s purpose to become a ‘news channel’ or ‘information resource’:

“I don’t have the resources to become a content creator?”

However, while uttering this justification (i.e cop out), it’s surprisingly often the case that these same people already have a company Twitter account or a company Facebook fanpage (or a personal Twitter or Facebook account).

And what are these?

Well, a Twitter account is often referred to as a ‘micro blog’. It can also be used as an industry aggregator. Facebook is already the world’s largest news organisation — it provides user generated and highly localised ‘news’.

Sure, while most of the time Facebook and Twitter might only provide ‘news’ of relevance to very small groups, like family or friendship groups, they are both news channels, nonetheless — often providing content far more compelling (to their target market) than what is produced by ‘official’ news outlets.

In other words, both of these — Facebook and Twitter — are existing and commonly used examples of ‘eyeball’ ownership. If you have one of these you are already in the ‘news’ business.

Think about it.

Essential Tool #4: An Eyeball Collection Strategy

If you’ve been paying attention over the past three installments, the beginnings of an ‘eyeball acquisition’ strategy should already be starting to emerge in your mind.

Hopefully, you have begun to start dreaming up potential ‘calling cards’, you might be contemplating where to promote these offers and you might also be devising ways to measure their success (in relation to the commercial goals of your business).

But remember, this is only the fourth installment! And there are still six to go.

So, if you are still having trouble seeing the trees for the wood, don’t dismay. The role of each piece in this digital puzzle will be revealed in time.

Rather than delve into social media — Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc — there are far more simple ‘baby-steps’ that can be taken to get started. For example, let’s briefly return to the the three forms of Calling Card mentioned in the third installment:

a) The Checklist;
b) The eBook; and,
c) The eSeries.

In direct relation to these three forms of Calling Card, here are three online products that can be used to help you own the eyeballs.

The Checklist = Wufoo

Just to remind you, a Checklist can often be a Quiz or a Survey. It’s hopefully offers a headache-cure to your target audience, such as:

• Are you venture capital ready? Complete this checklist!
• Are you properly safeguarding your baby against birth defects?
• Does your boyfriend really love you? Take our two minute quiz!

As explained previously, this option is particularly helpful as a lead-generation tool — simply because the survey can be seeded with questions that can be used to inform a follow-up email, phone call or meeting.

Our favourite online product for creating Checklists is Wufoo.

It’s our favourite because it’s so incredibly easy to use, the form can be embedded within almost any web-page and it just keeps getting better and better.

It can be used to manage your ‘Contact us’ form. (But it’s sooooo much more effective than a ‘Contact Us’ form.) It can be used as an ‘Event Registration’ tool. (It even has a ‘Promotion Code’ function.) It can even be used as an online store! (If you just link it with PayPal.) And, of course, it can be used as a dynamic checklist.

Here is a sample, that I created for this post in less than half an hour.

The eBook = eCover Creator

As explained in the previous installment, an eBook is simply a fancy name for a PDF file. It can also be described as a White Paper or Fact Sheet.

The main goal when developing any eBook is to make it as appealing as possible to the target audience. Remember, even if it’s a digital product that cost nothing (other than your knowledge and time) to create, it still needs to be of ‘high perceived value’ to your prospective customer.

There are two ‘must dos’ that will go a long way to helping you achieve this purpose:

1. Give it a very descriptive name.

The title of your eBook should clearly articles what it’s about. If your eBook is about, say, online marketing, there’s no point calling it…

“The OM Revolution!”

Call it…

“The 10 Essential Tools to Online Marketing”.

This will help it tweet better too. (More on that later.)

2. Give it the appearance of something of value.

This means, make it look like something that could be bought from a store. Compare the two images below. Which one is more desirable?

OR…

We all know what an eBook is. We don’t expect to receive a hardcover book (or DVD) sent to us via snail-mail. However, the appearance of a hard-cover, physical item is of ‘higher perceived value’ than something that isn’t.

To create 3D looking covers, we use eCover Creator. It’s very, very simple to use. It’s simple and as elegant as the promotional video, you can see here.

The eSeries = Aweber

The eSeries is one of our favourite tactics at Anthill, simply because you only need to create the content once (like an eBook) but you can use that content to: a) Acquire eyeballs; b) prompt multiple visits to your website; and c) present sales messages as part of the email.

The easiest way to explain an eSeries is to simply point out that you are participating in one now. (This is the fourth installment.) If you have stumbled across this article and are not a participant in the eSeries, click here and follow the prompts.

The online product that we use for managing an eSeries is Aweber. This is for two reasons. Firstly, it has an incredibly easy to set up pop-up tool. (“Pop-ups! I hate pop-ups!” Yeah. We hear you. But I’ll be revealing some pretty interesting statistics about pop-ups later in the series, that might just change the way you think.) Secondly, it has an autoresponder function. This is what allows you to set up a series of emails to be sent in a sequence. (Once a week, for example.)

There’s a pretty good video on autoresponders here. But it’s probably faster to simply set up an Aweber account and start testing. (It’s free for the first month.) Here’s a link to Aweber.

Let’s bring this back to basics

In this past, you may have spent your marketing dollars inviting people to visit your physical store. You may have invited people to call you for a free quote and consultation. More recently, you may have used the same budget to prompt a prospective customer to visit your website.

Whatever your goal, you would have traditionally spent your money renting the attention of another organisation’s audience.

The purpose of this installment is to point out that perhaps your marketing budget would be better spent acquiring that audience — inviting them to follow you on Twitter, become a Facebook fan, or sign up for something that prompts them to provide you with their email address.

This way, over time, you will no longer need to rent those eyeballs… simply because those eyeballs will be yours. Yes, you will have graduated from an eyeball renter to an eyeball owner.

TOOL #4: An Eyeball Acquisition Strategy

Don’t just pay someone to ‘rent’ the attention of their audience.

Pay to acquire that audience by creating reasons for future customers to provide contact details.

This will allow you to speak to your prospective audience again and again and again.

In time, you won’t need to rent at all.

This was the third article in the 10-part eSeries. Check your inbox for future installments.

Not signed-up to the eSeries? Use the form below.

More recently, Brett, Germaine and the lads from Flight of the Concords had us rhyming like hip-hop-opotamuses.

In other words, Kiwi humour makes us giggle (like an Auklander providing the answer to two plus four).

It was, therefore, with great pleasure that the Anthill ‘massive’ alerted us to this clip ‘en masse’. (If you’re not already reading this with a New Zeland accent, we’re not doing our job right, bro.)

The advertisement comes from the New Zealand transport authority and shares an important message, and shares it well.

So, this Friday, enjoy beer o’clock. But not too much. (And never-mind what Monique thinks.)

New Zealand Legend Drink Driving Ad

And just in case the above references confused you…

Beached as — Want a ‘chup’? (Salty language warning: Low)

Flight of the Concords — Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenoceros