A hundred years ago, the first filmmakers built their own movie cameras and recorded the world’s first motion picture images. These pioneers correctly predicted that their business would change the world. Making the ‘dancing shadows of light’ on the silver screen would soon be regarded as the highest art form, a powerful new communication tool called cinema. Storytellers from around the world experimented with length, dialogue and genres, and eventually a common narrative form appeared, and an entire new industry emerged to repackage man’s archetypal myths on silver nitrate. Human brains need emotional narratives the same way our human bodies need nutritious food. Today we live in another great age of change – web media is a powerful new tool that’s quickly transforming our lives and changing the way we do business, and the way we tell stories. But the more things change, the more they stay the same. All… Read more »
Posted in: article marketing, business storytelling, Future Technology, Interactive, Personal Blog, Photography, Social innovation, User Submitted Content, Web Marketing
Taged with: Battleship Potemkin, constructing meaning on the web, Rudolf Arnheim, Soviet Constructivism, storytelling
It’s October already. September was a blur, but there was one day I did manage to get out to my parent’s farm in time to help harvest honey. We brought in one hundred and forty honey supers in one day. Here I am helping my brothers harvest their honey crop. The harvest is late this year, and beeing out in a ‘yard-of-bees’ on a chilly September morning isn’t much fun – the bees were miserable! But the mist covered scenery is breathtaking. I love this particular beeyard because its centered in an old apple orchard. Its a trip back in time to when local farmers planted fruit trees and made their own home cooked pies and preserves. Now here in a very old field, far from any major highway there are a half dozen hundred year old trees and their children, and their forgotten fruit lies all around the perimeter… Read more »
Posted in: Actually sharing secrets, article marketing, business storytelling, Canada Blog Friends, Friends of Smojoe, Personal Blog, Smojoe Clients, User Submitted Content, Web Marketing
Taged with: brand story, business storyteller, design, Duo, marketing blog, Nora Camps, strategy
Earlier this summer, Smojoe whitened his smile with advanced cosmetic dental surgery. BEFORE & AFTER Dr. Natalie Archer DDS, the Toronto dentist that sponsored the Kids in Action photo contest on Lenzr generously offered to fix my yellow smile using all her wisdom and expensive machinery. It wasn’t entirely free, but I didn’t have to pay full freight either. Seven anterior all ceramic crowns for my teeth 1-4 (upper right first premolar) to 2-3 (upper left canine) across top front of mouth cost $6800, before taxes, but of course I didn’t pay that much… Complete with six YouTube videos and seventeen original pictures, Smojoe’s dental make-over is a detailed chronological account of what exactly happened inside Rob Campbell’s mouth at Rosedale Family Dental Care on June 12th to June 30th, 2010.
Posted in: article marketing, Friends of Smojoe, Personal Blog, Smojoe Clients, Social Media, Toronto, Web Marketing
Taged with: cosmetic dentist, dental surgery, Dr Natalie Archer, Sherbourne Medical Center, Toronto dentist
Back when I was living in Kenora, Ontario in the spring of 2007, I was looking for new ways to make money online, and I explored writing articles on spec. When I changed hats and became a ‘web writer’ that spring, I dumped a lot of old TV proposals and strange pieces of original content into different article directories on the web. The content was already created, it was what was left over from a career as a screenwriter, documentary TV researcher. Because I could see the potential online, I was incentivized by very small returns at first… So I repurposed word files on an old writing computer and dumped them on the net under the user name ‘Roberrific’. If you do a search on that name today, you can see a massive database of content, a legacy of Grandpa’s secrets, Dumpdiggers, and ethanol and foam footware articles. There are… Read more »
Posted in: Actually sharing secrets, article marketing, Interactive, Search Engine Marketing, Social Media, Web Marketing
Taged with: article directories, beekeeper, Campbell's Honey, creating social relevance, freelance writer, Is Honey Good For You?, marketing with original articles, roberrific, son of a beekeeper, Triond
Business people with bottom lines are tired of web marketing mantras, brand-building baloney, and self congratulatory praise for a fledgling industry by its most unqualified evangelists. Smojoe’s message to new clients is clean and simple; we use innovative social media marketing to improve search engine rankings for the keywords most commonly associated with your goods or services. Smojoe writes intelligent articles, blogs and discussion forum posts that get added to Facebook and tweeted to other humans who find compelling story hooks that lead to informative text. Its precisely because of its high usability among humans that my content gets promoted by search engine robots. On the internet today, there’s a return to family honour that lets small business compete with big brands. In community blog websites, mom bloggers write better copy than ad firms not due to spelling but because their stories and conversations are real. Are you for real?… Read more »
Posted in: article marketing, online business, Search Engine Marketing, Social Media, Toronto, Web Marketing
Taged with: being first in search engines, freelance web consultant, honeybee propolis, social media marketing, social relevance producer, web guru in Toronto
Lenzr is a social media marketing masterpiece that’s tragically flawed, and that’s what makes it so interesting. The serial photo contest website is basic and clunky, and the rules and voting mechanisms are easily bent by human avarice, but at the end of each session, it works. With very few exceptions, every business that sponsors an imaginative photo contest on Lenzr enjoys an inexpensive boost in their business URL’s search engine findability. The last session received over 4000 visitors, over half of them unique. The average visitor reviews seven pages and spends four minutes on the website. On July 1st 2010 the May June Lenzr photo contests came to an extraordinarily dramatic conclusion, resulting in scandal. In the Portable Luxury photo contest, the winning picture was removed by admin (because of ‘voting irregularities’) a mere 15 minutes before the contest was scheduled to end. Debbie Watson felt like she had… Read more »
Posted in: article marketing, corporate social responsibility, Interactive, Lenzr, Search Engine Marketing, Social innovation, Toronto, User Submitted Content, Web Marketing
Taged with: aerial photography, Bill Watson, Debbie watson, Lenzr, Mommakoala, photo contest, portable toilet rentals, Rockton Worlds Fair, Ve3bnw
Let’s start this journal update with good news… As an online storytelling service, Smojoe likes to hand craft happy endings, and we’re especially fond of documenting Lenzr photo contests, especially when prize winners send in proud photography of themselves with their winnings. Slimmswitch won the Neuton CE6 battery powered lawnmower courtesy of a Toronto area grass cutting service. That’s a happy ending. The sponsor was thrilled too; they used the Lenzr platform to promote their solar powered organic lawn care business and used contest messaging to get their name passed around in social networks. Slimmswitch reports that the high technology lawnmower is flawless. It’s good, fast and really quiet. He’s been tweeting about it @LOCOHIPPO. So have I, and in keeping with my tradition of packaging top shelf ideas as fragmented stories, I’ve been putting a lot more resources on Fotki, and webshots. You can find more details there and… Read more »
Posted in: Actually sharing secrets, article marketing, Friends of Smojoe, Lenzr, Photography, Toronto, Web Marketing, workshop
Taged with: battery powered, grass cutting, lawyers, Lenzr, Ontario private school, Order of Canada, PEZ, photo contest, prize, Wikipedia
Thank you Jane Reeves wherever you are… It’s an honour to know Jane. Not only did she write a very flattering feature article about Smojoe at IABC PIC presents on May 12th for the IABC website, but she also truncated the bytes and put more pictures and links on her own blog. She fragmented her message and put another relevant segment of the story about Smojoe on the Jane Reeves Writes blog. Now add some discussion forum posts and a bookmarking service or two, and she will have assembled a powerful Story Funnel (with this Smojoe blog as the buckstop). Judy Lewis is another IABC member that Smojoe follows Smojoe will be attending attending Judy Lewis’s panel on Tuesday June 8th in the morning, at the IABC 2010 World Conference between June 6th and 9th. The event showcases the best of the best business communicators from around the globe right… Read more »
Posted in: Actually sharing secrets, article marketing, Friends of Smojoe, Interactive, Lenzr, Search Engine Marketing, Smojoe Clients, Smojoe Events, Social innovation, Social Media, Toronto, User Submitted Content, Web Marketing, workshop
Taged with: article, IABC, Jane Reeves, Ontario, portable toilet rentals, pr agency, seminar, Toronto
Lots to talk about, here in January 2010. Three photo contests ended on Lenzr on January 1st, and are slowly being replaced. The matches were not as dramatic as previous finishes, as the winners established an early lead and maintained it over the entire course of the contest. You can read all the developments on the Lenzr blog including our endeavours to make a better scoring algorithm. In the next session, the voting results should more accurately reflect each photographer’s skill, as decided by the people, and be less about his or her ability to promote the page to friends. We are rewarding comments now, and reducing earlier metrics that were set too high. Congratulations to members seguini and ve3bnw Macro Photos of Life winner (right) was submitted by a prolific member named ve3bnw which sounds like a license plate # and I wouldn’t be surprised if it is, considering… Read more »
Posted in: Actually sharing secrets, article marketing, Canada Blog Friends, Interactive, Lenzr, Photography, Search Engine Marketing, Smojoe Events, Social innovation, Toronto, User Submitted Content, Web Marketing, workshop
Taged with: Abel DaSilva, antiques, business phone systems, Dumpdiggers, Lisa Charleyboy, Locaboire, Ruth Wilgress, Sunday Market
For three years, Rob Campbell the prime innovator at Smojoe has been experimenting with conversational marketing using the social web to affect Google search results for strategic keyword targets. And now I, Rob Campbell am the first Smojoe Centurion, because I can deliver one hundred stories with links. Smojoe Social Media Manual, version #3 outlines exactly how social marketers should engineering multi platform brand stories, and how they should measure results. It’s available right here for $19.00 CAN and is thirty seven pages of detailed information about how to market websites. Social Media Marketing is without a doubt the fastest growing new sector of advertising in the world. Each Smojoe Centurion is a one man marketing army and a respected contributor and member of one hundred different niche communities, and probably has one of the most findable avatars on the web. Grounded in their own expertise they are comfortable with,… Read more »
Posted in: Actually sharing secrets, article marketing, online business, Search Engine Marketing, Social innovation, Social Media, User Submitted Content, Web Marketing, Web Resource, workshop
Taged with: buck stops, conversion, Flickr, Google, online storytelling, Photobucket, search engine, Smojoe centurion, social web, Twitter