MackCollier.com

by

The Creator Economy Will Not Make You Rich

You will hear the term Creator Economy a lot over the coming years. It’s closely attached to the web3 or Web 3.0 movement, and promises that content creators will have never before seen ways to monetize their content. The story goes that you will see content creators be able to tokenize their content, turn it into NFTs, and create vibrant communities of fans who will happily support creators and even give them the chance to become rich. All off creating content regularly.

But the reality is, it’s not gonna happen.

And I say that as a person who has been getting paid to create content since 2006. I was the first person to successfully monetize a Twitter chat, I believe I was also the first person to get sponsors for a live version of a Twitter chat, when Dell sponsored a Live version of #Blogchat at South By Southwest in 2011. There were some years when content creation was my main source of income, yet there’s also been a year or two where it barely made me a penny.

It’s very difficult to make a good living just from content creation.  A new survey from influencer marketing platform Aspire backs this up:

And let’s be honest: In some areas of the country, $100,000 a year is not much.

I’m not trying to discourage anyone from being a content creator. I just want you to go into your efforts with both eyes open. View your entry into the creator economy as one where you have multiple revenue streams. Content creation could be one stream. Another could be selling courses or consulting services based around the type of content you create. But unless you are the next Mr Beast or NICKMERCS, content creation alone will not make you rich.

Sidenote:  If you’ve read this blog or followed me on Twitter for any amount of time, you know I’m a huge fanboy for the #MFAM community that NICKMERCS has created. I love this tweet Nick reshared a couple of years ago from his excitement in 2014 for hitting 170 viewers of his Twitch stream:

Today, it’s not uncommon for Nick’s streams to have 500k up to a million or more views. Today, Nick is one of the most successful content creators on the planet. Which ties into another point: Even if you do make big money from content creation, it will take time and consistency. Learn to #RespectTheGrind.

 

The Creator Economy Won’t Make You Rich, But It Might Make You Enemies

The creator economy will get more people in the coming years. Since 2020, we have seen a shift to working from home. The creator economy has been an offshoot of this, and will continue to progress.

As it does, many content creators WILL figure out ways to monetize their efforts. As this happens, we will see some silliness and jealousy enter the conversation.

I’ve never told this story before. I started taking on social media content and consulting clients in 2006. In 2011, I started talking to publishers about writing a book that would later become Think Like a Rock Star. In early 2012, I got a deal signed with McGraw-Hill to publish TLAR.  At the time, I was coming off 2011, which had been my best year so far working for myself. I didn’t make a ton of money, but I felt like I had turned a corner, plus I saw the book deal as being my way to take my career to the next level. So when I signed the book deal in early 2012, I decided not to take on ANY new client work for 6 months, so I could focus all my attention on writing TLAR.

In hindsight, this might not have been the best choice, but at the time it made sense to me, so I stand by the decision. I got to work on writing TLAR, and a few weeks later, I announced here, and on social media that the book would be out early the following year.

The reaction was overwhelmingly positive and supportive. However, there was some criticism. A few people left snarky comments here and elsewhere saying I wasn’t qualified to write a book. Or that my book was unnecessary. One person even seemed to imply I had stolen the idea for my book from another author’s book (which I had never read).

I’ll never forget, there was one guy who worked for a major brand who occasionally left snarky comments towards me and other social media consultants. When I announced my book, he went to Twitter and told his followers NOT to buy my book, that I wasn’t qualified cause I didn’t work for a company like he did. I had to laugh cause I’m thinking ‘Dude you are likely making double if not triple what I am right now, and you’re jealous of my book deal’.

So as some content creators find new ways to monetize their efforts, look for the same controversy to follow.  I’m already seeing this happening in some circles where you have a group of content creators who are covering breaking news stories, but suddenly one girl has found a way to successfully monetize her efforts. Now the community she was a part of is calling her a ‘shill’ or that she shouldn’t be monetizing her efforts, she’s a ‘sellout’ etc. I saw the same things when Web 2.0 got off the ground, the same silliness will repeat during Web 3.0.

The Creator Economy Is a Piece of the Pie, it Ain’t the Whole Pie

The odds are, you won’t make a lot of money from creating content. You may not directly make a single dime off it. So manage your expectations when it comes to monetizing the content you create. Don’t think of it as a way to pay the bills, but maybe as a way to HELP you pay the bills. You can have other revenue streams, and many of those can develop as an offshoot of your content creation efforts.

Employers, you have to understand that your employees will be drawn to the freedom that the creator economy offers. It’s enticing to think about working from home, for yourself, doing much of the same work that they are currently doing in a cubicle for you. If you want to keep your best employees, you have to think about how to more creatively compensate and reward them for their efforts. Maybe you give them a bigger salary, or maybe more flexibility in work requirements. Appreciating your employees helps build trust and loyalty.

 

The creator economy will be a driving force in the coming years. It may not mint a million new millionaires, but it will give a lot of people the ability and freedom to pursue a new career path working for themselves. I’m excited to see where it takes us all!

by

Monday’s Marketing Minute: Elon’s Twitter Purchase Back On (For Now), Paypal Backlash, Facebook Dumping Newsletters

Happy Monday, y’all! Hope you had a wonderful weekend, and are tanned, rested and ready to have an amazing week!  Here’s three marketing/business/web3 stories that caught my eye:

 

It looks like Elon’s on-again/off-again purchase of Twitter is back ON. The case that Twitter filed against Elon to force the sale has been put on hold by judge’s order till October 28th so the sides can close the deal. Initial media reports when this story broke said that the deal could be closed as early as today, so we will see what happens.

This deal has always gotten a lot of attention due to Elon’s constant complaints about Twitter’s ham-fisted content moderation efforts, and how things would change if he took control. While changes in this area are needed, it’s worth remembering that Elon has long maintained that Twitter has many untapped revenue streams available. So an Elon acquisition of Twitter should bring a LOT of changes across the board for users. Hopefully we will have some finality soon on if this deal actually happens.

 

 

So PayPal recently updated its user agreement, and very quietly slipped in a clause that said, more or less, if you post something online that PayPal doesn’t like, it can pull up to $2,500 from your account. As expected, once this clause was found, it created a massive uproar on social media, and many users began cancelling their PayPal accounts.  PayPal quickly reversed course, claiming the policy addition was an error. Social media, for all its faults, does still give us a way to hold companies accountable for bad decisions in near real-time.

 

Facebook is abandoning its move into integrated newsletters.  Last year, Twitter acquired Revue, and Facebook launched Bulletin as newsletter sites like SubStack were taking off. Well Facebook has now tapped out and will be pulling the plug on Bulletin in early 2023. The lesson, once again, is to think carefully before you plant deep roots on social media sites that you don’t own.

 

So that’s it for this week, I am now going back on Elon-watch to see when the Twitter deal completes. Feel free to join me, or check out my post on why A Community Cannot Go Mainstream from last week. It’s on pace to be my most popular post in 2022.

by

A Community Cannot Go Mainstream

For the last couple of weeks, I have been beta-testing the Farcaster mobile app on my iPhone. Farcaster describes itself as ‘a sufficiently decentralized social network’.  I call it a sort of web3 hybrid of Twitter and Facebook.  Right now the app is in closed invite-only beta, and founder Dan Romero claims it has about a thousand active users.

So far, I absolutely love it.  The userbase is very techy and some of the stuff (ok a LOT of the stuff) is over my head, but I am loving the vibe of Farcaster.  Here’s what I am seeing there from the users:

  • Almost no self-promotion
  • No politics
  • No arguing
  • A lot of questions being asked that lead to organic conversations

What I am seeing on Farcaster right now reminds me a lot of how Twitter was in 2008/2009.

And that’s the problem.

Two of the overarching themes on Farcaster are:

1 – Wow I love the experience here versus Twitter!

2 – What are the plans to ensure that we keep this same experience as the userbase grows?

 

To his credit, Dan has thought about this a lot, and has a plan in place to protect the community on Farcaster, while growing.

But history has shown us that it won’t work. A community cannot go mainstream. A community can only scale so far before it snaps. And that breaking point typically arrives long before it achieves mainstream appeal.

What is a Community?

For the purposes of this post, let’s define a community.  A community is a group of like-minded individuals who have a shared sense of ownership in something larger than themselves.

Let’s go back to my early Twitter experience. It greatly mirrored what I am seeing now on Farcaster.  A lot of organic conversations.  It was quite easy to ask a simple question on Twitter in those early days and get sucked into an hour-long discussion. And make 10 new connections in the process.

There was no politics, no fighting, no broadcasting, no self-promotion.

Ironically, we all looked forward to the day when Twitter would go mainstream. Our reasoning was when EVERYONE knew what Twitter was, it would be even better!

Then it happened…

A Community Cannot Go Mainstream

I was driving down the highway in rural Alabama, I believe in 2009, when I saw this billboard.  I had to pull over and take a picture (and immediately post to Twitter). I immediately knew that Twitter was about to go mainstream.

And I was right.  Ashton Kutcher’s campaign to get Twitter followers opened the floodgates for other celebrities like Oprah, Britney Spears and the Kardashians to join Twitter. When celebs started flocking to the bird app, journalists were right behind them.

Overnight, Twitter went from our cozy bird app with around a million users in March of 2008, to having over 100 Million users in 2011.

And almost just as quickly, the experience on Twitter completely changed.  It seems celebs like to talk about themselves.  And it seems the media that followed them to Twitter wanted to talk about them.

Meanwhile, those of us who were enjoying our organic conversations and lack of self-promotion or fighting, suddenly felt like some fat, smelly guy had just cannonballed, uninvited, into our quiet and peaceful pool.  Now we were all soaked, and ready to leave.

Be Careful What You Wish For…

But the thing is, we had wanted this.  At least we thought we did. We wanted Twitter to go mainstream.  We wanted to see everyone enjoying the bird app and its community as we did.

Yet we didn’t think about how new people joining Twitter would fundamentally change the experience on Twitter.

And it totally did. Organic conversations gave way to ‘broadcasting’ from ‘thought leaders’. Or if an organic conversation did get off the ground, it was quickly sabotaged by a troll, who had likely joined Twitter sometime after Oprah did.

Why did this happen? Because the new users that Twitter rapidly picked up hadn’t help build the community that had been there since 2006/2007. They didn’t have that vested interest in growing and sustaining something that they hadn’t help build. They came to Twitter completely detached from the current users, so they wanted to use the bird app in their own way.

So Twitter went mainstream, but that small community of a million or so users from 2008 did not.  If Farcaster goes mainstream in a few years, the small community of users it has now will not.  It’s just the nature of how communities evolve and grow.

Why Can’t a Community Go Mainstream?

Let’s go back to the above definition of what a community is: A group of like-minded individuals who have a shared sense of ownership in something larger than themselves.

Those two bolded qualifiers are important.  A community is a group of people who are both like-minded AND who have a shared sense of OWNERSHIP in the community itself. By its very nature, these two qualifiers restrict the size of a community and prevent it from going mainstream.

Think about the size of a community.  As the community grows, it becomes more difficult to find new members who are of like mind as the current community AND who want to join the community as someone who will build and sustain the properties that make that community unique.

Every time a community welcomes a member who is NOT like-minded and/or who doesn’t have a desire to build or sustain the current community, the overall experience and value of that community degrades. If it happens often enough, the community itself can fracture and come undone.

Think of every community, online or offline, that you’ve ever joined and participated in.  The odds are the reason why you left that community came down to one of two reasons:

1 – It was too small

2 – It added people and you felt the values and spirit of the community was no longer appealing to you

When a community is pursuing growth, it should focus first on adding members who are like-minded with the existing community and who have a desire to work with the community to help it grow and create more value for all.

Community Growth is About Growing Value, Not Size

For years, I’ve been writing about how the social web needs to move back to a decentralized model vs a centralized one. I’ve been on the internet since the late 1980s. Over that time, I’ve been a member of countless communities covering countless topics, beliefs and ideas.

These communities have always, without fail, followed the same pattern.

1 – Start small, usually just a handful of passionate people.  Sometimes the community never grows past this point.

2 – If the community continues to grow, then its growth will either be fueled by simple word of mouth, or by the community itself personally vetting and bringing in new members. Word of mouth leads to faster growth, but the overall experience typically degrades faster.  If the community itself drives growth, the community typically stays smaller, but the experience can actually improve even more.

3 – At some point, the community either stops growing (often on purpose), or the community continues to grow and the overall experience of the community is altered to a point where the community itself becomes too detached from its original experience, and the community itself fractures.

 

Let me give you a simple example:  I joined CompuServe in the early 1990s. CompuServe had a number of chat rooms and I loved these.  One chat it had, every Sunday night, was called College Chat.  As I was still early on in my college journey at the time, having a weekly chat where I could talk to students around the country going through the same period of life I was, well it was really cool.  At first, the community was really small, about 20 or so regular members.  You had a few who would be moderators, who would drive the conversation.  After a few weeks you would start to get to know members and you’d make friends.  And all this did was deepen my connection to this group, since I would only see them once a week, for an hour every Sunday night.

After a year or so, CompuServe’s growth really started taking off.  A flood of new members to the platform meant a lot of new people participating in College Chat. Unfortunately, this degraded the experience.  The moderators found it too much to deal with, and moved on.  When they left, other regular members followed.  The new members that joined hadn’t been here and built this community up and hadn’t seen what made it special.  So they didn’t have the vested interest in building and growing the community. The community grew too big and fractured, but for that one year or so I really enjoyed College Chat.

Why Decentralized Will Win Over Centralized

When it comes to communities, in most cases, smaller is better. A small community can create deeper connections between its members, and those connections are pivotal to having a community that creates maximum value for all.

Think of it this way:  Centralization would be all of the United States. Decentralization would be the individual cities that make up the United States.  Each city has its own vibe, its own culture.  And typically, the culture and vibe of a city becomes more distinct the smaller it is.

Think of that in terms of the internet.  Twitter would be the United States, a centralized body where everyone is.  The individual cities would be decentralized online communities that you could easily visit and participate in as you wished.  A smaller community typically means a more in depth experience with like-minded people who have a much sharper focus and aim for participating in said community.

This is a big reason why I am excited about web3.  Because the promise of decentralization is so immense. I just hope as these brilliant builders are growing in a decentralized web3 world, that they will forego the desire to grow too big, too fast. Let growth flow slowly, and from the community itself.  This is how you increase your chances of growing in a way that adds to the value of the community, rather than detracting from it.

by

Monday’s Marketing Minute: Elon’s Texts to Twitter, Instagram’s NFT Integration, Podcast Listening Dips in 2022

Happy Monday, y’all! Hope you are having a great fall as we are now in October!  This is my favorite month of the year!  I love the weather, I love the colors, the falling leaves, and Halloween!  The best time of the year, in my opinion!  Here’s 3 marketing/business/web3 stories I read over the last week that caught my eye:

 

The Twitter account @techemails is absolutely fascinating.  They release text messages that have been made public via the proper filings.  Recently, they shared some text messages that Elon had with both Twitter’s current CEO as well as one an exchange with one of its co-founders, Jack Dorsey.  Dorsey’s comments about regretting that Twitter became a company were very telling. Dorsey said that Twitter should have stayed a protocol. One of the issues that has dogged Twitter throughout its history is its rocky relationship with developers. Often, Twitter would encourage developers to build apps and functionality on top of its platform, then either cut off API access with no warning, or buy an app, then cut off API access to any apps with competing functionality.  For instance, years ago Twitter bought livestreaming app Periscope, integrated it into the platform, then cut off competitor Meerkat (which was arguably more popular at the time) from having API access.  Twitter bought Tweetdeck, cutting off competitors like Twirl, and bought Summize, hurting competitors as well.

Elon seemed very intrigued by Dorsey’s vision of having Twitter as a protocol and wants to pursue moving the platform more toward decentralization. In my opinion that could only happen if Twitter went private. Even then, it would be messy.

 

Meta recently announced that it will allow Instagram and Facebook users to integrate their existing NFTs with the platform.  Why is this important? My guess is Meta would like to eventually develop an NFT marketplace.  Adding a shopping functionality to the sharing of NFTs would give creators another revenue stream, but it would also do the same for Meta, as it would likely want a cut of sales.

 

Podcasting listening is projected by Edison Research to dip slightly in 2022.  This is a bit surprising, but as Edison points out in its findings, the dip for 2022 still puts listening levels at marginally higher than 2020 levels.

 

So that’s it for this week’s edition of Monday’s Marketing Minute.  Apologies for the late arrival of this post, seems there were some issues with my hosting service.  Will have a pretty interesting post up on Weds (again assuming no more site issues), so try to check it out in 2 days.

Hope you have a wonderful week, you deserve it!

by

Atari Launches 50th Anniversary NFT Collection Featuring 2600 Game Ads

I’ve talked about how NFTs can be used to deliver real-world utility, access and benefits to holders. But sometimes, you want to appreciate an NFT simply for what it is.

With that in mind, I love what Atari did with its latest NFT collection. This NFT collection focuses on vintage Atari 2600 games, and includes artwork by Billy Butcher.  The artwork is very reminiscent of the types of vintage ads you would see in magazines or comic books in the early 80s.

As someone who grew up in the 80s, I remember how great the artwork always was for video games as the artwork had to sell the games as the graphics were so bad!  But those ads were so cool and I love the artwork.

What I love about this NFT collection from Atari is that it taps into the nostalgia that so many people have for the Atari 2600. You could easily see Nintendo doing a similar NFT collection for the NES, or a movie studio doing an NFT collection with new poster artwork for popular movies. Really any iconic brand that has strong branding could launch a nostalgia-based collection like this.  These offerings could also be used as a brand-building tool to tell the history of the brand, which would also strengthen its prestige with customers.

This collection also proved to be quite popular, as you might expect.

A market cap of over a million on launch day is not bad at all!  To learn more about this collection from Atari, click here.

And to clarify, I am not being paid by Atari for this post and I do not own any pieces from this collection.  I will always let you know if I am writing about companies or projects that I have a stake in.  I just think this collection is insanely cool and hope it will get your creative branding juices flowing about the potential of creating a nostalgia-focused NFT collection for YOUR brand!

by

Monday’s Marketing Minute: We’re ‘Meh’ on Metaverse, AppStore Allows NFT Sales in Apps, Which Social Sites We Are Visiting

Happy Monday, y’all! Hope you’re ready for another productive week, it’s our first full week of Fall!  Here’s three business/marketing/web3 stories I’ve read over the last week that I wanted to share with you:

 

I’ve been working in social media long enough to remember around 2006 or so when everyone got excited about Second Life. For about a 6 month period, the site was all marketers could talk about.  It offered a way for you to meet virtually online, you could have meetings, attend events together, there were meetups, concerts, etc. But the hype couldn’t sustain the site, and although it is experiencing a bit of a comeback now, it’s just never met its promise.

The Metaverse now offers a super enhanced version of what the promise of Second Life was.  You can engage and interact online in virtual worlds, buy stuff in the Metaverse, then get it in the real world, etc.  And people still aren’t buying into the hype, it seems.  Marketing Charts posted a poll that found that only 17% of Americans are excited about the Metaverse. To be fair, I think the idea of virtual worlds has merit and appeal, but the technology still isn’t available to provide a truly immersive experience to all.

But it’s getting closer. High speed internet being available to a greater portion of internet users will have a huge impact on the experience delivered.

 

What can we learn about content consumption habits from looking at this study of where users are spending their time on social media? We want content in short bursts ,whether it is video, visual, or text.  You could also follow that logic and say this creates an opportunity for a site that caters to short audio clips, but not sure what that would look like.

 

Apple has reversed course, and will now let developers sell NFTs within their apps and games.  The catch, of course, is that Apple will take its standard AppStore 30% cut. This move could open the door for larger games like Fortnite to offer NFT sales on the mobile version of its game.

 

So that’s it for this week’s Monday’s Marketing Minute. Hope you have a wonderful and productive week, see you next Monday!

by

Monday’s Marketing Minute:Ethereum’s Merge Completes, Twitter Shareholders Approve Musk Purchase Bid, Fashion Eyes the Metaverse

Happy Monday,y’all!  Welcome to this week’s edition of the Monday Marketing Minute.  Here’s 3 business and Web3 stories I’ve read over the last week that caught my eye:

 

Ethereum’s merge from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake is finalized. If you are like me and scrambling to figure out why the merge matters, Ali has a great thread on why it’s important, and there’s a good podcast that delves into what the transition from PoW to PoS means, and why it’s so important to the development of Ethereum and the entire web3 space.  Yes, all this gets in the weeds a bit and will no doubt be a bit confusing to many, but I think it’s worth investing some time in learning why this move matters.

 

So the on-again, off-again Twitter bid by Elon Musk is…..still off?  Twitter shareholders voted to accept Musk’s purchase bid, but that likely won’t matter. At the heart of Musk’s backpeddling from the Twitter deal is Twitter’s inability to clarify exactly how many of its claimed users, are actually bots.  It has long been contended that Twitter’s bot problem is far worse than it lets on, and Musk backed off the deal when the company could not give him hard numbers on exactly what percentage of its claimed users are actually bots.  At this point it seems the purchase won’t go through, but who knows for sure.

 

Of the many industries that are eyeing a jump into the metaverse, the fashion industry seems to be making the biggest splash so far. Given that some experts are predicting the market cap of the metaverse to top $50B over the next 5 years, this shouldn’t surprise.

 

So that’s it for this week’s Monday Marketing Minute! We’ll return next Monday, and in the meantime if you see a story that I should be covering or that you want to share with everyone, feel free to email me!

by

Monday’s Marketing Minute: a16z’s Can’t Be Evil NFT License, NCAA Prez Embraces Brand Ambassadors, Starbucks Adds Web3 to Loyalty Program

Happy Fall, y’all! Temps are still a bit warm but calendar says September so I’m calling it Fall.  Hope everyone has an amazing week, here’s a few marketing and business stories I read over the last week that caught my eye:

 

Investment firm a16z is pushing it’s Can’t Be Evil license as a way for NFT holders to allow others to use its token and build upon it’s image and properties.  The license is free to use and apply to NFTs, and the hope is that it will become a standard license for NFTs to help holders protect their IP rights, as well as more easily allow others to build upon and remix and share that IP within the confines of the license.

 

Kristi Dosh had an interesting sit-down recently with NCAA President Mark Emmert on a variety of topics. Obviously, NIL was a big focus of the conversation. Emmert lamented the fact that paying student athletes could change their role in the eyes of the law to being employees of a university.  Which opens up the SA and university to a lot of legal issues that neither side may want to entangle themselves in.

Emmert suggested that a better alternative may be to explore the idea of universities employing more Brand Ambassadors.  Emmert suggested that universities focus on quantifying the amount of brand value that its SAs are creating, and then compensate SAs from that ‘fund’ based on each SAs contributions, which could be measured using some formula or criteria.  Colleges have used ambassadors for years, but the idea of treating student athletes as ambassadors is a new untouched, so it will be interesting to see how this idea could play out as the NIL era emerges.

 

Starbucks is looking to incorporate NFT technology into its existing loyalty program.  This idea of brands incorporating NFTs into loyalty or ambassador programs is something I’ve talked about here before. In general, the Starbucks Odessey program will leverage the additional functionality that NFTs can provide into the structure of the loyalty programs it has used in the past.

This is a good start, but as more brands begin to incorporate NFTs and blockchain technologies into ambassador and loyalty programs, members will begin to want more.  As more web3 savvy customers become involved in these programs, they will expect their NFTs to grant more than digital perks and discounts.  They will expect their tokens to grant ownership and even governance over the programs.  Watch for this to become more common in the coming years.

 

So that’s it for this edition of Monday’s Marketing Minute, I hope everyone has a fantabulous week!

by

Monday’s Marketing Minute: Reddit’s NFT Marketplace, Creator Economy Research, NIL Marketplaces

Happy Monday, y’all!  Welcome to Monday’s Marketing Minute for this week! Each Monday I share three marketing/business/web3 news items I found over the last week that caught my interest.  Let’s dive in!

 

Reddit has launched a marketplace that allows users to buy a blockchain-based profile picture as an NFT. The NFTs will come with a licensing agreement that allows the users to use the avatars on other sites. However it appears the user will not be able to use it to create merchandise based off the avatar design as you can with some NFT collections like BAYC.

This is an interesting monetization move by Reddit.  I think you will see more of web 2..0 social platforms introducing new purchase options such as this. However, this will also create an opportunity for web3 competitors to offer similar offerings for free or tie the offering to activity on the site. For instance, lets say such avatar marketplaces become the norm over the last couple of years.  If a web3 version of say Twitter launches in 2024, it could offer the avatars that users are accustomed to paying for, for free.  Or offer them for free if a certain level of activity is achieved.  It feels like this is a story worth watching and see how other social platforms respond with similar moves.

 

Very interesting research into the Creator Economy by The Tilt, which is a great site and newsletter, BTW.  A key takeaway for me: It takes 6 months for the average content creator to earn their first dollar, 17 months to become self-suficient, and 25 months to reach a point where they need to start hiring outside help.  The rise of web3 technologies will greatly enhance the ability of content creators to make a living off their work, so this research is very important to give us an understanding of what’s coming for content creation and the creator economy.

 

Love how simple and clean this NIL marketplace is that the Miami Hurricanes have for their student athletes. It let’s you see who the athletes are, their sports, interests, social media accounts, everything. You will start to see most colleges having a marketplace such as this to highlight their student athletes and connect them with potential sponsors and brands to execute NIL deals.

 

So that’s it for this week’s edition of Monday’s Marketing Minute! I hope you have a lovely week, try to stay cool and remember to drink LOTS of water!

by

Friday’s Flea Market Finds – Space Tourism, Need For Speed, The Internet Archive

I want to start this post off with an apology.  Since May, my posting here has been very sporadic.  I’ve been dealing with an issue with this site, the site itself would load fine, but for whatever reason, I couldn’t access the backend and the admin panel.  Which meant I couldn’t publish new posts. It’s now reached a point where I can at least access it intermittently, so I will go back to posting as much as I can.

Today I wanted to start a new series called Friday’s Flea Market Finds. I live in the rural South, and flea markets have always had a special place in this area of the country. Some of my favorite memories of childhood are making the trek to Ripley, Mississippi with my family for First Mondays.  Once a month, on the First Monday (and weekend preceding it) there would be a massive flea market in Ripley, MIssissippi.  Miles and miles of complete crap, with the occasional treasure mixed in that made the entire trip worthwhile.

If you think about it, the internet is kinda like one big flea market.  There’s a ton of crap that you don’t care about, but occasionally you will come across an absolute treasure.  Friday’s Flea Market Finds will be about sharing some of the treasure that I’ve come across. Let’s dig in:

 

NASA’s Space Tourism Approach to Exoplanets

I love this idea. The concept and execution is great, and this is a wonderful way to get kids excited about NASA and space. If you are a 10 year-old seeing these posters, it’s entirely possible that within your lifetime, you may actually travel to another planet.  So this idea of space tourism is far-fetched, but not so far-fetched that it’s unbelievable.  But more than anything, it’s smart marketing and positioning by NASA to build interest and education in its space exploration efforts.

 

The Need for Speed

I love this article by Nat Eliason. There are two components of creating and sustaining momentum; Mass and velocity.  When it comes to social media, it’s far too easy to focus on velocity.  Everything needs to be fast.  Get the content out, consume the content fast.  Lather, rinse, repeat.

But it’s just as important to focus on mass.  In terms of content, mass comes from creating a body of work that has weight, that has value.  That creates it’s own contribution to momentum, and its own sense of gravity. People are drawn to good content, and a body of work is even more attractive.  Check out Nat’s article and blog.  Good stuff here.

 

The Internet Archive

The Internet Archive and The Wayback Machine have been OG favorites of mine.  But I don’t think a lot of people realize what an insane amount of FREE content is available on the site.

Movies.  Live music.  Vintage video games. If you get on Internet Archive and can’t find some form of content that’s interesting to you, then I don’t know what to tell you.  It’s literally a flea market of content. Sure, there will be a lot of content you have no interest in, but there will also likely be a ton of stuff that you do, and most of it will be stuff you haven’t been able to find anywhere else.

 

So that’s it for this week’s Flea Market Finds. I hope to be back on Monday with the Marketing Minute, hope everyone has a wonderful weekend, try to stay cool out there, y’all!