FaceBook, Mashable and a good headline

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I just did a quick check on my TweetDeck and what do I see….5 tweets within seconds of each other with links to the same article. It must be good right? So, I click to see what all the fuss it about. The headline:


“Facebook Now Consumes 5 Percent of Our Collective Internet Time”


“Nice,” I think to myself with my marketing hat on. What have FaceBook and Mashable done in this singular headline? They got our attention. Apparently they got lots of people’s attention. So far this single article has had over 488 Retweets, 32 Shares and 503 reactions. Wow…all in the space of a few seconds.


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What can we learn from this? Here are a few of my take aways.

  • Regardless of the type of media (New or Traditional) headlines still matter. Alot.
  • The length of an article or post doesn’t matter as much as quality.
  • People share things they think are important



In the time it has taken me to write this post (about 10 minutes), the article was retweeted 148 more times.

Seth’s at it again (thank goodness)

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I admit it. I’m a Seth Godin fan. He’s a really smart guy, who doesn’t take himself too seriously, who is willing to take chances and take credit whether it works or not. He’s the kind of person I’d like to chat with at a cocktail party – although I hate cocktail parties.


Seth’s latest endeavor is a creative little e-book called “What Matters Now“. He is giving it away; asking people to email it to friends, post it on their blogs and tweet about it. I’m doing all three.


The idea is to ask yourself what matters to you, and then make plans to think about and do things that matter throughout the year. Seth asked a group of well-known individuals, big thinkers and generally cool people to tell him “what matters now” to them. The e-book is a collection of their thoughts. PLUS, it is a brilliant marketing device, of course. Many of the contributors have books coming out in 2010. This gives them an opportunity to promote their new works in an unassuming way. PLUS, there are well placed statements, I hesitate to call them ads, for a very worthy group called “Room to Read”.


So in a nutshell, Seth has given us a tons of great ideas to think about, allowed people to promote themselves and their works, and given visibility to a worthy cause. We should all aim so high.