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
Dumpdiggers is something I used to write every week, but now I only update it once a season. I’ve stopped digging up old dumps in Toronto, and I don’t buy glass bottles or Canadian pottery anymore. I do however still collect knowledge. As Smojoe, I make my passion pay dividends by writing rich media articles that are ‘hero driven’ whenever I can get behind the subject. I make stories more compelling for humans by personalizing the text. Dumpdiggers is really an act of charity, and a character building exercise. That’s because collecting antiques is a niche that’s almost entirely without sponsors, and so my text adventures here are purely personal. I love the idea of using a life’s passion to accrue knowledge and grow wealthy in wisdom. Like the wise old man whom I admire, i too will someday be able to spot the rare and precious opportunities, and one-of-kind… Read more »
Posted in: Actually sharing secrets, Interactive, Lenzr, Smojoe Clients, Smojoe Events, Web Marketing, workshop
Taged with: IABC, iPhone application, Lenzr photo contest winners, May 10, May 12, Oakham House, PIC, search engine marketing strategies, Stabathon, storytelling
That we live in the ‘age of earned media’ is not my idea, but something I heard once and have come to understand as the truth. Today, like never before, business has to earn impressions by being newsworthy and relevant. Sticking to a subject and becoming an expert is how individuals can dominate search engine result pages (SERPs) ahead of corporations, and marketing new products and ideas online now requires originality, and good old fashioned storytelling. The search for experts drives the internet, and trustworthy data seems to be the most important currency of the web. When I check my traffic stats I can see that 99% of my readers find me in Google search, because of the things I’ve written and the pictures I’ve taken, and the keywords that I own in SERPs. Before 2006 the word went out at blog conventions and in SEO workshops that “Search Engine… Read more »