Who to see at Lollapalooza this weekend

I’m not going to make it to the festival, so please do me a favor – check out these bands and share your reviews and photos on BlueHaze…

Friday:
K’naan
The Black Keys
The Raconteurs
Cat Power
Bloc Party
Radiohead

Saturday:
MGMT
Broken Social Scene
Wilco
Rage Against the Machine

Sunday:
The Brazillian Girls
Chromeo
The National
Kanye West

It’s gonna be an all-star weekend. Enjoy.

The best Canadian bands that Americans don’t know yet

As a Canadian, it’s my job to support our country’s greatest export, music. So here’s a short list of my favourite (with a “u”) Candian artists that Americans should pay attention to…

1. Sam Roberts Band

2. Bedouin Soundclash

3. Metric

4. MSTRKRFT

5. City and Colour

The Yelp Blackmailers

My friend hired a cleaning crew that she found on Yelp. After describing her apartment and the job, they quoted her $200 for three hours. She hired them.

Fast forward to the morning of the cleaning. The crew shows up and raises the fee by $100 to $300 total. They argue for a while and the cleaning crew isn’t budging. They’ve raised the price and that’s final. My friend tells them “no deal” and is now without a cleaning crew. She’s wasted 2 hours of her morning, so she decides to tell them that she’s writing a horrible review of their company on Yelp. And then this amazing thing happened. They offered my friend $100 to NOT post a negative review on YELP about them. So although she didn’t get her place cleaned, they paid her $100 for her time (aka silence).

Aside from the clear moral bribery issue here, there’s a brilliant new business idea: The Yelp Blackmailers.

Approach 1,000 businesses on Yelp. Tell them to pay you $500 or your team of Yelp Commandos will destroy their Yelp profile with negative reviews. You don’t even need a team of Yelp Commandos – the threat alone will suffice. Collect the cash in a nondescript blue Chevy Caprice (or similar) in an underground parking garage. Repeat.

Good luck.

Are you reading these 3 blogs?

Before you go too far, the answer is probably “yes”. You’ve probably been reading them forever and ever. You’re likely cursing me for wasting your time with that enticing headline. But if you’re a nerd like me, and really dig the industry side of music, technology and marketing, then I just want to be safe and make sure that you’re not missing out on any of these amazing blogs.

If you’re into technology, your first stop is TechCrunch. They break most of the tech stories, so their readership is loyal and huge, which in turn encourages companies to give TechCrunch the exclusive on their story, and the cycle continues. Brilliant.

If you’re into marketing, you must read Seth Godin. He somehow manages to offer truly remarkable insights on a daily basis. If you’re a student of marketing, toss out your textbooks and read Seth (or check out one my favorite videos at TED).

And if you’re into the music industry, the best insider blog hands down is written by Bob Lefsetz. He’s quintessentially what blogging is all about. He’s on top of current news, he picks a point of view, and he articulates his argument. He’s polarizing in that he often takes a side and pisses off several people in the process. Half of the fun is reading the comments and responses.

Hopefully there’s a new nugget in there for my four or five readers. Peace.

Where to live

If tourists walk by your front door, then you’ve found a great place to live.

Seth Godin’s “Four Words”

I just read Seth’s Four Words blog. I read him religously.

Today, he defined great marketing in just four words- “Make big promises; overdeliver.” – and then (loosely) challenged his readers to do so in fewer words.

While I very much agree with Seth’s definition and approach, I think he omitted an integral part of what should define great marketing – the conversation with your customer.  Without that conversation, you’re marketing blind. So I’ll go ahead and try to define great marketing in less than four words:

“Ask. Overdeliver.”

Clearly, I stole the “Overdeliver” piece from Seth. I buy it. The more you can overdeliver, and do so regularly, the more evangelistic your audience will be about your brand.

The “Ask” part refers to the conversation with your audience. If you’re constantly talking to them, asking about their problems, discovering their challenges and learning about their desires, you’ll be in a fantastic place to create a product and message that will overdeliver on these needs and desires.

And if you have these conversations regularly and overdeliver with great products and services, you may not need to make big promises. Your audience should do that for you, and that word of mouth is the ultimate marketing success.

Blogging lessons

My wife and I were at brunch not too long ago with a couple of friends, one of whom is a teacher. She was telling us how her students are learning to type as early as Kindgergarden.  It makes sense – my father still types with one finger. I learned to type in seventh grade. Why shouldn’t they learn to type? It’s a hell of a lot more useful than learning cursive. Why the hell do we still teach our kids to write in cursive? It’s useless.

Which got me thinking… do you think blogging will become a part of the junior high or high school curriculum?  What University will be the first to shut down its newspaper in favor of an official blogging network?  Will English teachers now start developing lesson plans around good blogging etiquette? Will it replace a week or two of poetry?

I ask because I would love someone to teach me how to blog well. Where do I put the links? How do I cleverly insert images to further the story? If you’re one of the 4 people reading my blog (thanks Jesse), you’ll see what I mean. It’s painful. I need some blogging lessons.

Maybe I can hire a blogging tutor.

There’s a business idea in here somewhere. Not to become a blogging tutor, but replacing the existing school newspapers by powering sanctioned high school and university blog networks with a rev share against ads served.  I’m sure it exists. I’m just reading the wrong blogs.