After reading about Dell generating $6.5 million in sales off of Twitter, I started to ask the genius that is my brother (Jason Kapler) how one can leverage social media channels.

Jason went on to tell me that it was not just about these social media channels (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc.) but it is about the content one creates and how you feed it to an online audience via emerging media channels.  Jason kept telling me – “it’s the content stupid” and started to refer me to some amazing resources online.

First of all, what is content marketing?

Per Wikipedia content marketing is: an umbrella term encompassing all marketing formats that involve the creation or sharing of content for the purpose of engaging current and potential consumer bases. In contrast to traditional marketing methods that aim to increase sales or awareness through interruption techniques, content marketing subscribes to the notion that delivering high-quality, relevant and valuable information to prospects and customers drives profitable consumer action. Content marketing has benefits in terms of retaining reader attention and improving brand loyalty better than traditional marketing techniques.^[1]

Huh?

Well if you are behind the eight ball a terrific place to get started is  Hubspot. These guys are good.  Again, big ups to my big bro JK for the look.

Click here to view a great deck that Hubspot’s Mike Volpe created eight months ago that is a great 101 start to understanding what inbound-content marketing is all about.

Second of all, why is content marketing important?

Brian Solis wrote a great piece on Mashable: Why Brands Are Becoming Media.

As media, brands earn prominence and hopefully influence as rewards for contributing meaningful content. On Twitter, brands can earn legions of loyal and responsive followers, who in turn become brand advocates and ambassadors, extending the messages, mission and purpose of the brand to their followers as well. On Facebook, brands can cultivate vibrant and dedicated communities where interaction inspires increased responses — each reverberating across new social graphs. On Ustream (ustream) and YouTube, we can earn global audiences of viewers who tune in to watch our programming and interact with brand representatives in a live community that spills over other social networks.

Brian is one of premier experts in the space that has written some interesting postings recently and has a new book out right now.

Brian’s piece captures the revolution that is taking place due to the proliferation new digital devices and distribution points through emerging communication devices and platforms.

The ability for brands to access media distribution points at lower cost offers a company an opportunity to leverage communications at a more peer-to-peer level which can lead to earning life-long customers who will likely participate with your message at high level.

In conclusion your most loyal customers will be your most influential mavens – marketing your companies products and/or services because you foster a relationship and deliver results.

Great now what do we do?

Get started!  If you are a major brand that is looking to leverage these various channels to pull a Dell or a Kogi BBQ then maybe reach out to one of the various mavens I referred to in this posting.

The bottom line is to just get started.  Have your core business initiative within your digital infrastructure  positioned and ready to go -  then curate a content program around your digital business model through blogs postings, Facebook, Twitter, e-mail, and other communication lanes and start to foster a relationship with people by giving them relevant data and interesting insights and/or deals on products.

Be patience and foster a relationship the emerging online consumers that can generate sales as well as buzz for your brand.

I’ll leave you with another great resource and a real sharp mind – Joe Pulizzi. He has some great content and has some great tips when it comes to this emerging field in marketing.  Click on the link to read about the 5 Keys to Success with Content Marketing by Joe.

Lastly, but most defintely not least is Mr. Crush it aka Wine Geek aka Garry Vee aka Mr. Gary Vaynerchuk – the dare I say – Mark Cuban of the content marketing world? See a cool short video below on why Gary feels major brands are missing the mark when it comes to content marketing because companies are just not niche enough.  You might see what I mean with my Cuban reference below too.  Enjoy and good luck!

Linchpin: GaryVee from Seth Godin on Vimeo.

Check out some of the latest headlines below in media news, social media chatter and interesting brands news.

In media news and trends, a media ad-buy survey – snippets of TV and digital ad budgets, revealing that in 2008 national advertisers in the survey committed 58% of their media budget towards TV versus today, in 2010 41% of their media budget is allocated towards TV.  In other news, online video consumption continues to grow, this piece reveals some interesting information including that in the month of January 2010 142.6 million unique views,  11 billion total streams, 77.5 streams per viewer, and 188.7 minutes per viewer.  Also, it is obvious that at this moment viewing TV programing online is a singular event versus a group event.

An interesting partnership is Showtime and Verizon teaming up for a Interactive TV venture.

In Social Media all the rage has been Foursquare and now Chatroulette.  Ad Age’s Digital Next has an interesting piece on Foursquare catching everyone up to speed on the potential of the social media-GPS based platform in the article: DIY LBS: Create Your Own Foursquare.

Also, Chatroulette is all the rage right now.  Ad Age’s Digital Next asks:  Did Chatroulette just launch the interactive video conference boom?  Also, click here to watch an excellent short film that my homegirl Tam Dhia posted on her site.  Will give you the skinny in a few minutes on what’s the hoopla all about.  Sounds interesting minus (and its a big minus my friends) the pervy-men-doing-who-knows-what-we-don’t-want-to-know, yet the possibility of random conversations with anyone in the world at any given moment is fascinating to anyone interested in communications and how new digital platforms will influence how we interact.

Some interesting brands news and insight is Target Debuts Mobile Ad Platform, and good news or bad news -  product placement increases in both volume and pitch.

My man Tony English put me up on the new Gorillaz track/music video featuring Mos Def and Bobby Womack and yes Bruce Willis is in the video.  It’s like that.  Unfortunately, they’ve disabled embedding so you’ll have to go to YouTube to see it, but it’s worth the click.

The video and song is spectacular and worth watching.  I’m always relived when I see great visual and sound being turned into a narrative where art is revealed.

Lady Gaga’s x ALICE IN WONDERLAND mash-up trailer is kind of brilliant.  Dare I say genius? Good looks Jen Yu! If you don’t follow Jen on Twitter or read her blog (Label Hoard) on the regulars then you are sleeping.

If you are into motion pictures and the science behind great cinema then you must go see CITIZEN KANE. I was introduced to Orson Welles by a funny Irish film teacher at a college-prep program I attended in Oxford prior to my Senior year of high school. Bless my parents and bless that nutty Irish film professor.

I only had four weeks with this professor of film but he gave me a tremendous foundation in film history. What he taught me about Citizen Kane and how it influenced cinema was tremendous. I came away from the class realizing you see a piece of CITIZEN KANE in every single modern film today – Orson Welles made the masterpiece in 1941.

By the way – when I say made the film he wrote, produced, directed, and starred in the film – WHAT?! No one was making movies like this then – the dude was ahead of his time.

WATCH AFI’s TWO MINUTE SEGMENT – some of the great filmmakers of today explain why the film is a masterpiece.

Another amazing tidbit is the story within the story when it comes to the  central character – “Kane”. The title and primary character of the film is based off of real-life elements of the then media tycoon, William Randolph Hearst – whose legacy still lives on today. This is as if Leo, Damon, or Toby decided to write a film about Rupert Murdoch at the present – it just doesn’t happen – but it did in 1941. Naturally at the time Hearst tried within all his power to prevent cinemas from playing the film and there was much controversy surrounding it.

The rest is history as they say – but regardless the stories inside and outside this masterpiece are tremendous.  I encourage people to get on their Netflix and start digging into a major inspiration and influence to the art of film, Orson Welles and Citizen Kane.

Watch this scene from the beginning of the film. It’s a lesson in writing, acting, and directing – revealing glimpse into the art of packaging terrific content.

By far – the actor of the moment (outside of Meryl Streep) – is Christoph Waltz, the scene-stealer from Quinten Tarantino’s INGLORIOUS BASTARDS.

I caught Christoph’s interview with Charlie Rose online the other day and any artist in film or TV should watch it.   Christoph is as interesting in this interview as he was in the film.  The dude is crazy because he dances between his intense-German demeanor while showing empathy, honesty, joy, and yet a serious intellect that he illustrates with his dialect and delivery.

The last three minutes of his interview is pretty amazing – any actor, writer, or director should watch it – Christoph’s honesty and story illustrates that the journey of an artist which is a lonely-hard-tough-road, yet there are those lucky moments in life – where opportunity meets preperation – for Mr. Waltz, that opportunity was Quinten Tarantino and a script called INGLORIOUS BASTARDS.

Bravo good sir – bravo.

Keeping up with the latest media trends and brand news is the latest Media Trends Report.

In brand news, Audi Leverages Brand By Driving Webisodes, social media is all the rage in marketing world as Kellogg Increases 2010 Ad Spend, Triples Social Media and the did anyone see Wieden+Kennedy’s new old spice campaign, it is awesome!!

In media, Digital Remains Fraction of Mag Ad Revenues , and TV Stations looking to mobile to recapture audiences.

In other interesting, digital trends - the Digital Consumer recap 2009 via Media Post, Facebook directs more online users than Google via SF Chronicle, and Brian Solis (dude’s a genius) writes a really interesting piece on how to measure ROI in social media.

So my peoples, Joanna Simkin and English have been telling me about this Rihanna Rude Boy video and while I’m not the biggest “Ri-Ri” fan – the video AND song are fire!!

I was so into the video, that I looked up the director who sure enough is probably hands down one of the most-dynamic-female-music-video-directors on the scene right now – Melina Matsoukas.   Her credits speak for themselves (seriously? Wow.) and you have to love her attitude with producing music videos – “A good video has the right visuals, a well conceptualised story and should be exciting and elicit reaction.”

The Ri-Ri video is really creative visually and doesn’t look like it cost the label too much dough.  It illustrates where it is at with the world today – deliver dynamic content for little overhead – do that and everyone will love you.

RUDE BOY by Rihanna

Melina also directed one of my favorite tracks and videos from a few years – Snoop Dogg’s Sensual Seduction.  It is a gem – check it out below.

SENSUAL SEDUCTION by Snoop Dogg