Snoop Dogg Marketing (bonus content)
If you read that whole post thinking “but I just don’t get Snoop Dogg”, Rap Genius was made for you: it’s a crowdsourced platform for annotated song lyrics. Highlight any slang or pop culture reference that you don’t understand, and Rap Genius’ editors will provide you with much needed explication.
Tom, Ilan, and Mahbod created Rap Genius as a way to settle an argument about obscure Cam’ron lyrics; now their site provides annotations for all music lyrics, as well as screenplays, novels, poems, and the Constitution.
So, if you want to market your rap lyric website, who are you going to ask for help? Rappers, obviously. Rap Genius invites them to annotate their own lyrics, and in turn, rappers use the site to set the record straight on misinterpreted lines. Who knew exegesis could be so fun?
Product Hunt
For more than ten years, consumers have relied on tech blogs to snuff out the latest exciting products. However, since most of those tech blogs are based in Silicon Valley, a disproportionate amount of coverage goes to Silicon Valley companies. That’s bad news if you don’t have Valley connections, like most young companies from Canada and the rural United States.
That’s why it’s so fitting that Ryan Hoover, the founder of Product Hunt, comes from Eugene, Oregon, a tiny town pinched between the Pacific and the Cascades.
Instead of relying on journalists to surface new products, Product Hunt lets its community submit and vote on its favourite discoveries. Its community has become so good at unearthing interesting new products that most industry insiders no longer rely on blogs to find new gizmos and apps. How has Product Hunt managed to usurp the blog gods?
You should know the answer by now, dogg.
In addition to using interviews with influencers to gain exposure (like Reddit), the Product Hunt team invites well-known tech personalities to curate “collections” of their favourite products (like Unsplash does with its photographs).
Previous Product Hunt collaborators include Tim O’Reilly, Ryan Holmes, Jessica Levingston, B.J. Novak, Ryan Leslie, Ben Thompson, Dave McClure, Matt Mullenweg, Kara Swisher, Chris Sacca, and Ashton Kutcher.
Oh yeah. And this crafty canine,
