Here’s a long overdue update on the continued success of Lenzr.com from me, Rob Campbell the Prime Innovator sharing his insights into the hopes and dreams of this start-up which was ranked at #365 in the Techvibes May 2011 Toronto Start-Ups List, and now in the June 2011 Techvibes Canada Start-Ups list Lenzr is ranked #303, up 62 points, (and ahead of BNOTIONS). The websites listed there on TechVibes are ranked by volume of traffic I imagine? and if that’s the case our enterprise should keep skyrocketing up the charts as our model improves and we host more and more interactive challenges. Lenzr is a serial photo contest website that aims to be the World’s number one choice for providing custom photo contest solutions. It’s a delivery system designed to make user generated photo challenges easy to create and implement on sponsor business websites. The storytelling can occur in the… Read more »
Posted in: business storytelling, Lenzr, Toronto, Web Marketing
Taged with: BNOTIONS, business storytelling, IT staff Toronto, Lenzr, Ottawa roofing, start-ups in Toronto, sunrooms, Techvibes, Toronto accountants
As an interactive story engineer, I’m always interested in learning new ways to communicate business messages in digital media; I like to see companies doing exceptional things that ‘hook me’ and make me want to know more, and thereby bring attention to their products and services through story. There are many examples of how the magic of a good story has moved consumers, most famously, Ted Williams, the homeless man-with-a-golden-voice in Atlanta Georgia, the Old Spice guy, and Susan Boyle surprising Simon Cowell and everyone in Britain’s Got Talent. Susan didn’t win the competition, but her first moments on stage were so special that her fame will forever eclipse the names of the winners. She went on to sell millions of recordings and is living proof of the power of story. Business management consulting uses visual storytelling to communicate complex ideas. Each Lenzr Photo Contest is a Ready Made Story… Read more »
Posted in: Actually sharing secrets, business storytelling, Interactive, Lenzr, online business, Photography, Search Engine Marketing, Smojoe Events, Social innovation, Social Media, Toronto, User Submitted Content, Web Marketing, Web Resource, workshop
Taged with: business storytelling, Click Clip Deals, free coupons, management consulting, printable coupons, social media marketing, Twitter and Facebook, video media
Lenzr is a serial photo contest website that lets business sponsor art. We started the website in August 2009, and have hosted over forty contests in two years. The average price of a photo contest is about five thousand dollars, with prizes and tax included. The companies that sponsor the photo contests get some buzz marketing, and notice some rise in traffic, but more importantly they get a shot-in-the-arm of social relevance that search engines can’t ignore. A photo contest is a catalyst to growing social capital. On February 1st 2011 nine different matches launched on Lenzr, with all manner of interesting and unusual theme challenges. For the first two days there were no photos entered into any of the categories… it was unnerving. But as of March 26th 2011, there were over 300 photos entered in all nine different challenges that compose the latest Lenzr offerings. In the ten… Read more »
Posted in: Analytics Software, Interactive, Lenzr, online business, Photography, Search Engine Marketing, Social Media, User Submitted Content, Web Marketing, Web Resource
Taged with: creating social relevance, evolution of enterprise, Judges, Lenzr, photo contest, Web Marketing, winners
JWT stands for J. Walter Thompson and they bill themselves as the world’s most famous communications agency. It’s probably true, but I had never heard of them before Laurie Dillon Shaulk accepted a position there last fall. She invited me to attend #JWTslam last night, Feb 9th 2011. The swank event was held in the historic St. Paul’s Church venue at Bloor St E. This is the big leagues, home of the Big Ideas. JWT Canada’s Retail Slam – Showcasing the Major 2011 Trends Shaping Retail was set in the heart of social media week in Toronto or #smwTO on Twitter. And so I’ve been out every night because I feel obliged to attend these events despite the fact that I loath the cliché that social media is becoming, (has become) and I resent the dominance of Facebook and Twitter and the inevitability of the garden web becoming the most… Read more »
Posted in: Actually sharing secrets, Friends of Smojoe, Future Technology, Interactive, online business, Social innovation, Social Media, Toronto, Web Marketing
Taged with: Ann Mack, Bee Media, Benjamin De Castro, Crucial Interactive, Davi Bosch, David Peres, F-Commerce, Guy Gal, Horizon Studios, Janice Diner, JWT, Laurie Dillon-Schalk, Mark Campbell, Peter Bozinovski, QR codes, thebizmedia, VMG Cinematics
To say I’m disappointed would be an understatement. I love MyBlogLog, and I use it everyday. I will miss it dearly. Kudos to Kole McCrae the Toronto writer who was the first one to rather cheerfully inform me that MyBloglog was ‘slated for Sunset’ as per Yahoo slide leaked from the Yahoo insider’s meeting on Dec 12th 2010. In case this is a surprise to you, ReadWriteWeb reports from “sources close to the project” that Yahoo will shut down MyBloglog next month. Kole was pretty chipper about it, but the news found me very sad. Smojoe uses MyBlogLog to, Fragment media in the ‘What’s New With Me?’ blog sidebar widget Collect stats and learn which keywords are driving traffic Find and monitor ‘blog friends’ Spread the relevance – don’t give away the whole story in one place, Rob Campbell is Roberrific on MyBlogLog. And Roberrific on Delicious. And I’m Roberrific… Read more »
I’ve been real busy laying down the bricks and mortar part of Smojoe’s unique social media marketing business – I’ve set up shop inside another, larger and more established web marketing company located in building 58 of the historic distillery complex south of Eastern Ave and Parliament. Last month I bought two new computers for a new office space inside Jib.ca. I hired two new staff members, and have launched eight photo contests on Lenzr.com in less than sixty days. Smojoe recently merged minds with Jib.ca to offer a much wider spectrum of web marketing services. Now we have the capacity for more advanced strategy and execution. The planning is the fun part for me. I love dreaming up the story funnels that are relevance volcanoes from which the multimedia lava rock of photos, videos and hot script will spew forth as memes that compel social interaction. This is the… Read more »
Posted in: Friends of Smojoe, Lenzr, Personal Blog, Social innovation, Social Media, Web Marketing
Taged with: Age of Earned Media, business to business, buzz marketing, David Shephard, Deb Lewis, Innate Media Group, Jib, Lenzr, Will Webb
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
On July 1st 2010 the Lenzr serial photo contest website was officially one year old. Today it’s stronger and more popular than ever before as each session helps mature the site into a more effective web marketing tool. In the last year there were seventeen successful contests that collected just over five hundred pictures with headlines, tags and comments from about three hundred and seventy registered members. You can see all seventeen challenges in the Lenzr category on Toronto-Forums. Each sixty day contest period attracts about 4000 visits to Lenzr, with just over half of them unique. The average visit to Lenzr spans seven pages, and lasts over three minutes. Usability of Lenzr is continuously being improved On August 1st 2010 four new photography challenges were launched inside newly fashioned countdown-mechanism-equipped contest pages . Four Lenzr photo contests end Oct1st, 2010 and there’s more good information about all four August… Read more »
Posted in: Actually sharing secrets, Analytics Software, Friends of Smojoe, Lenzr, Search Engine Marketing, Social Media, Toronto, Web Marketing
Taged with: conflict photo contest, Lenzr, Rob Campbell, social media marketing Toronto, social relevance producer, upgrade