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Forbes’ Releases Hip Hop’s Top Earners List

Last week Jay-Z and Kanye West unveiled their long-awaited collaboration, Watch the Throne. Forbes also released their annual Cash Kings: Hip Hop’s Top Earners List. And who is #1 for the fourth year in a row, none other than Jove himself topping the list earning $37 million in the past 12 months. West came in third. Zack O’Malley Greenburg, creator of the Cash Kings List and author of Empire State of Mind, points that Jay-Z just edged out Diddy for the crown. The success of hip hop’s top earners shows just how powerful the genre has become as a commercial force, according to O’Malley Greenburg. Hip hop is major business. It’s television shows, recorded music, clothing lines,  endorsements and a wide range of other entrepreneurial ventures. O’Malley Greenburg has been compiling the Cash Kings list since 2007. The first Cash Kings package inspired the only song ever to feature Jay-Z, Diddy and 50 Cent together, “I Get Money (Forbes 1-2-3 Billion Dollar Remix)”.

Jay-Z in concert 2006.

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Doodling Your Way Through A Dilemma

In case you missed it in this months Wired Clive Thompson solves a seemingly simple problem, which laptop to buy, through the power of the doodle. Thompson explains that his “crayon experiment was inspired by Dan Roam, a visual-thinking guru and author of The Back of the Napkin.” Thompson also points out that “if we really want to unlock visual thinking our digital tools have to evolve; they’re still too dominated by the keyboard.”

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The Recipe for Success

Why is Apple so innovative? Why did the Wright Brother achieve flight? Why was Martin Luther King, Jr. the leader of the Civil Rights movement? There are other computer companies. There were others trying to develop flying machines. And there were many other Civil Rights activists. Simon Sinek knows the answer and oddly enough it’s that they all started with WHY. Check out this great video of Simon sharing his discovery and insights at TED. The recipe for success is not money or the perfect marketing conditions. If you start with WHY it seems you can conquer any obstacle and achieve anything.

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What Happened to My Twitter?

This morning, when I signed on to Twitter, I couldn’t help but feel that something was different. I couldn’t put my finger on it. It wasn’t until I opened today’s issue of the Financial Timesthat I saw Twitter has asked advertisers to pay to tweet. This is Twitter’s first step towards commercialization and they have done it pretty much in Google fashion. They have their faithful fan base and now it is time to roll out the revenue making advertising plan, in a gentle manner. Twitter is calling the advertisers’ tweets ”promoted tweets.” Brands can place short messages at the top of the list of search results when users look for information. The messages stay where posted as to not get lost in the wave of tweets that the rest of us create.

Will this change the way you use twitter?  As the FT article points advertisers want to be relevant to the conversation, “I don’t want to be the advertiser that’s unwelcome,” Scott Kelly, digital marketing manager at Ford, told the FT at the AdAge Digital conference, where Twitter launched the service. As long as I still don’t have to pay to tweet, I am happy.

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Yelping for Joy, or Extreme Disappointment

In this month’s issue of Inc. there is a fabulous article that not only details the controversal rise of Yelp.com, but also covers how business owners feel about the site.  “A bad Yelp review can damage more than an entrepreneur’s ego,” Inc. points out. One business said ” anybody can ruin your business” while another told Inc. reading reviews on yelp was like “panning for gold in sh*t”.

Some owners in the article make nice with a bad reviewer having a two-star review become a four-star review. Other business owners go to extremes and engage in online battels with reviewers. One review war ends with a trip to the hospital and a not so lovely chat with the police. Jeanne Bliss of “I Love You More Than My Dog: Five Decisions that Drive Extreme Customer Loyalty in Good Times and Bad” would definitely suggest reaching out to an unsatisfied customer and turning that two-star review into a five-star. Decision #6 is afterall Decide to Say Sorry, “repairing the emotional connection well is a hallmark of companies we love. It makes us love them even more.” A Yelp.com reviewer has become the ultimate cheerleader for a business it seems. So much so that the endpapers of “I Love You More Than My Dog” shows some comments from the site. If you are a business owner you need to read this article.

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