Content curation is a valuable skill in the field of education. When the focus is on student curation, it produces powerful learning. Practising content curation also aligns with the skills needed for the workforce.

Content curation

Students who are given a choice in selecting a topic for curating are more likely to engage deeply in learning, provided you offer a broad range of topics and allow the student the flexibility to take the curation project in a direction they personally connect with. This starts to resemble passion-based learning.

Personal connection

Students can select a topic of most interest to them, and then use a blog to share their curation work. Crucially, students need the teacher to provide feedback and comments daily on the student blogs through the life of the project so that students know their voice was being heard. The need to share and seek feedback adds more depth to understanding and helps to make new connections.

Sharing and authentic feedback

A museum curator describes the process of curating as "cherry-pick." Many of the items are left in the archives because not all the items are needed to tell the story the museum curator wants to tell. It is the same in content curation. When we curate, we cherry-pick the items that best tell the story we have in mind. We arrange the content in such a way to tell that story. That is why a blog or a curation tool that provides the ability to arrange, write, and reflect on the curated content is essential.

Storytelling

In the summer of 2012, I began an exploration of the concept of Content Curation, and what this meant for teachers and students. Little did I know at the time that my journey would involve curating…about curating.  Given the task of providing professional development for teachers to curate resources for backwards-designed units, I started researching…

marketingandsales

Marketing & Sales

writing

Reading & Writing

education

Learning & Education

Understanding Content Curation – A Refresh

In today’s information-saturated age, people are often too preoccupied to notice what you’re offering unless it’s packaged and presented appealingly enough to break through all the noise.<ul><li>When people ask, “What do you do?” or “Why should I buy this?” it’s your job to make a long story short.</li><li>If someone can’t repeat your message back to you after you’ve told it, they didn’t “get it.” </li><li>If someone can’t remember your message, you wouldn’t get their business.</li></ul>

POP!: The Premise

You need to answer the “9 Ws” for your message/product/service:<ul><li>What am I offering?</li><li>What problem does my idea or offering solve?</li><li>Why is it worth trying and buying?</li><li>Who is my target audience?</li><li>Who am I and what are my credentials?</li><li>Who are my competitors and how am I different from them?</li><li>What resistance or objections will people have to this?</li><li>What is the purpose of my pitch?</li><li>When, where, and how do I want people to take action?</li></ul>

The Nine Ws You Need To Ask Yourself

<ul><li>The first requirement of a POP pitch is to be purposeful. People need to be absolutely sure of what you do/offer from your image/introduction/slogans alone. Examples of memorable slogans are given.</li><li>A pitch also needs to be original or one of a kind. Things that are original are appealing or, at the least, novel enough to try.</li><li>Pithy means concise and precise. The top slogans of the 20th century, as selected by Advertising Age magazine, are all less than seven words.</li></ul>

Your Pitch: The Three Requirements

The “alphabetizing technique” is where you take some of the “core words” relating to your product/service/message and make them more original by going through the alphabet and changing the sound of the first syllable.A bar used the alphabetizing technique with their “happy hour” to produce “yappy hour”, a special hour for dog owners.The “spell chuck” technique is switching out words or parts of words with homophones, such as “Curl up and Dye” for a hairdresser, “VoluntEARS” for a Disney customer service program.

Word-y Techniques

Try to “capture conversational catchphrases.” Pick up on unique phrases used in your industry or in relation to your message/product. Build a Rewarding Career, Job Search Techniques sounds dull but  I Don’t Know What I Want, But I Know It’s Not This sounds catchy and conversation oriented.Come up with catchphrases that are linked to what the customer/reader wants to hear in relation to the product. For example, for a toothpaste company making a child’s toothpaste: Look, Ma. No cavities!

Catching The Conversation

Anytime we elicit a laugh, people are more likely to like us and whatever it is we’re offering.Use all sorts of humour (except adult, rude, offensive) in your message and pitches. Trashy newspaper headlines, etc.Rearrange clichés to end up with fresh sounding phrases. For example, “I rub people the right way.”To Michael Jordan, it was said “Remember, Michael, there’s no I in team.” Jordan replied, “Yeah, but there is in win.”

Using Humor

The “Half-and-Half Technique” is when you make columns of related words that are based on your message and then try combinations of them. This is a common technique for coming up with domain names.Blend two words into one, like giraffiti, staremaster, Internut etc.

Two To Tango

The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth

The “contraband” technique is when you take a contrary position in a message, such as a “TV is good for your kids” or an upside-down Christmas tree (“leaves more room on the floor for gifts!”) .Difference stands out.Think “how can I introduce something that causes people to rethink their assumptions and question their current beliefs?”

Saying The Unexpected

<ul><li>Alliteration is given as a technique to make powerful titles. Examples: Weight Watchers, King Kong, Boombox, Dirt Devil. </li><li>Do remember to never sacrifice clear for clever.</li><li>Change a message to fit a beat or natural-sounding flow if one presents itself (e.g. rhymes). </li><li>Is your slogan in a beat that’s easy to repeat?</li></ul>

Sounds Good To The Ears!

<ul><li>Make your content come alive with first-person stories.</li><li>Examples are better than explanations.</li><li>Re-enact stories rather than “telling” them. Be visceral and active in your storytelling.</li><li>People remember stories, even if they don't remember anything else.</li></ul>

Keeping The Interest: Storify

<ul><li>Comb newspapers for current quotes.</li><li>Quote yourself, if you wish.</li><li>Quotations are a quick way to establish precedence. (And to validate ideas.)</li><li>Open eyes, ears, hearts, and minds with Aha! quotes.</li><li>Craft a memorable money phase. “Show me the money” from Jerry Maguire is given as an example. Money phrases drive word-of-mouth marketing.</li><li>You can “rip off” quotes by changing them to include your message in a funny way. For example, “I think, therefore iPod.”</li></ul>

The Power Of Quotes

Pop! is a lively, fun, and inspiring guide to getting heard, getting remembered, and getting results.

An inspirational handbook introduces the POP! process--to make messages Purposeful, Original, and Pithy--in order to promote one's ideas successfully, discussing such concepts as Muse It or Lose It, the Eureka Moment, the Jerry Maguire Rule, Contra-Brand, and Idea Chemistry.

entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship

business

Business

startup

Startups

books

Books

While being memorable is important in one's personal life, it takes on an added urgency when trying to sell yourself, your business, or your product. In such a saturated market, with consumers being constantly bombarded with advertising messages and marketing images, how can you make sure to POP! out of the crowd? In her new book, Sam Horn reveals ways to ensure that you, your business and your product never blend into the background again. 'POP!' (or Purposeful, Original, and Pithy) has the power to propel even lifetime wallflowers into dynamic self-promoters.

Sam Horn

Pop!

Pop!: Stand Out in Any Crowd

<ul><li>Targeting blogs</li><li>Publicity</li><li>Unconventional PR</li><li>Search Engine Marketing</li><li>Social and Display ads</li><li>SEO</li><li>Content marketing</li><li>Email Marketing</li><li>Engineering as marketing.</li><li>Viral marketing.</li><li>Business development.</li><li>Sales. </li><li>Affiliate programs</li><li>Existing platforms. </li><li>Trade Shows. </li><li>Offline Events.</li><li>Speaking engagements. </li><li>Community building. </li></ul>

Traction Channels

Traction and product development should get 50-50 of your timeDefine your traction goal<ul><li>Phase I – Making something that people want</li><li>Phase II – Marketing something people want</li><li>Phase III – Scaling the business</li></ul>

Traction Thinking

<ul><li>Brainstorm every single traction channel to see which one works for you</li><li>Compile your brainstorming ideas for each traction channel in a spreadsheet with educated guesses</li><li>Run cheap traction tests in the channels that seem most promising</li><li>Find the most dominant channel in terms of customer acquisition</li><li>Have an explicit traction goal that you are working towards</li></ul>PublicityStart small. Focus on small sites especially if you want large media outlets to find your story.

Bullseye

<ul><li>Use search engine ads to test the right product positioning and messaging</li><li>Don’t expect early profit</li><li>Measure conversion so you can test SEM variables against profitability</li><li>Longer keywords are better than short ones</li><li>Monitor ad quality scores to get better placement</li></ul>Offline AdvertisingTV ads, billboards, direct mail, radio

Search Engine Marketing

<ul><li>There are two high-level strategies to choose from: fat-head and long-tail</li><li>Fat-head strategies involve trying to rank for search ranks that directly describe the company.</li><li>Long-tail strategies involve ranking for more specific terms with lower search volumes</li><li>SEO comes down to two things: content and links</li></ul>

Search Engine Optimization

Create short free courses that are geared towards educating potential customers about the product, or your problem space.A popular approach is to create a sequence of emails that slowly exposes your new customers to the key features in your product.For example, you could email them five days after they've signed up and say, "Hey, did you know we have this feature?"

Email Lists

A viral loop is a three-step process in its most basic form:A customer is exposed to a product or serviceThe customer shares the message with someone elseSome portion of the people exposed become your customers as wellEngineering As MarketingBuilding useful tools and resources in a way that attracts customers

Viral Marketing Strategy

Business development involves exchanging value through partnerships.<ul><li>Standard partnerships. Two companies work together to work on one or both their products</li><li>Joint ventures. In joint ventures, two companies work together to create a new product</li><li>Licensing. Happens when companies charge a fee to anyone using their brand</li><li>Distribution deals. Distribution deals work when one company provides a distribution channel to another company</li><li>Supply chain partnerships.  Connections help secure key inputs that are essential for certain products.</li></ul>

Business Development

Ask Situation questions. These questions will help you understand the prospect’s buying situation. An example of a situation question is how is your organization structured?Problem questions.  These kinds of questions clarify the buyer’s pain pointsImplication questions. These kinds of questions are meant to make the prospect aware of why they need to solve the problem they are facing ASAP.Need-payoff questions. These kinds of questions get the buyers thinking of the benefits of solving their problem

Sales Strategy(SPIN)

Traction shares secrets of what makes some startups experience massive growth while others die out. They identify 19 traction channels that can lift any startup to stardom.

Most startups don’t fail because they can’t build a product. Most startups fail because they can’t get traction. Startup advice tends to be a lot of platitudes repackaged with new buzzwords, but Traction is something else entirely. As Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares learned from their own experiences, building a successful company is hard. For every startup that grows to the point where it can go public or be profitably acquired, hundreds of others sputter and die. Smart entrepreneurs know that the key to success isn’t the originality of your offering, the brilliance of your team, or how much money you raise. It’s how consistently you can grow and acquire new customers (or, for a free service, users). That’s called traction, and it makes everything else easier—fund-raising, hiring, press, partnerships, acquisitions. Talk is cheap, but traction is hard evidence that you’re on the right path. Traction will teach you the nineteen channels you can use to build a customer base, and how to pick the right ones for your business. It draws on inter-views with more than forty successful founders, including Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia), Alexis Ohanian (reddit), Paul English (Kayak), and Dharmesh Shah (HubSpot). You’ll learn, for example, how to: ·Find and use offline ads and other channels your competitors probably aren’t using ·Get targeted media coverage that will help you reach more customers ·Boost the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns by automating staggered sets of prompts and updates ·Improve your search engine rankings and advertising through online tools and research Weinberg and Mares know that there’s no one-size-fits-all solution; every startup faces unique challenges and will benefit from a blend of these nineteen traction channels. They offer a three-step framework (called Bullseye) to figure out which ones will work best for your business. But no matter how you apply them, the lessons and examples in Traction will help you create and sustain the growth your business desperately needs.

product

Product & Design

Most startups don’t fail because they can’t build a product. Most startups fail because they can’t get traction.  Startup advice tends to be a lot of platitudes repackaged with new buzzwords, but Traction is something else entirely.   As Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares learned from their own experiences, building a successful company is hard. For every startup that grows to the point where it can go public or be profitably acquired, hundreds of others sputter and die.   Smart entrepreneurs know that the key to success isn’t the originality of your offering, the brilliance of your team, or how much money you raise. It’s how consistently you can grow and acquire new customers (or, for a free service, users). That’s called traction, and it makes everything else easier—fund-raising, hiring, press, partnerships, acquisitions. Talk is cheap, but traction is hard evidence that you’re on the right path. Traction will teach you the nineteen channels you can use to build a customer base, and how to pick the right ones for your business. It draws on inter-views with more than forty successful founders, including Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia), Alexis Ohanian (reddit), Paul English (Kayak), and Dharmesh Shah (HubSpot). You’ll learn, for example, how to:   ·Find and use offline ads and other channels your competitors probably aren’t using ·Get targeted media coverage that will help you reach more customers ·Boost the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns by automating staggered sets of prompts and updates ·Improve your search engine rankings and advertising through online tools and research Weinberg and Mares know that there’s no one-size-fits-all solution; every startup faces unique challenges and will benefit from a blend of these nineteen traction channels. They offer a three-step framework (called Bullseye) to figure out which ones will work best for your business. But no matter how you apply them, the lessons and examples in Traction will help you create and sustain the growth your business desperately needs.

Since 2008, I've been the CEO & Founder of DuckDuckGo, the Internet privacy company that empowers you to seamlessly take control of your personal information online, without any tradeoffs. Our private search engine is #4 in the U.S., Germany, Australia and dozens of other countries, answering over 9 billion queries in 2018.I also co-authored Super Thinking: The Big Book of Mental Models (Penguin Portfolio, 2019). Previously I co-authored Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth (Penguin Portfolio, 2015). Before DuckDuckGo, I founded other Internet-related companies. My formal education is from MIT (B.S. Physics, '97-01; M.S. from the Technology and Policy Program '03-05).

Gabriel Weinberg

Justin is the co-author of Traction Book: a Startup Guide to Getting Customers. Before writing the book, he ran growth at developer tools company Exceptional Cloud Services, which was acquired by Rackspace in 2013. Previously, he also co-founded a 3D printing company that was acquired in late 2011, and has consulted for startups and some of the most popular websites on the internet. He's also an active mentor at 500 Startups, a seed-stage investment fund and accelerator. 

Justin Mares

Traction

Traction: A Startup Guide to Getting Customers

The Metaverse will likely drastically change the way we act interpersonally online by mimicking the serendipity and spontaneity of real-world interaction.However, developing these new social modalities will require AI-assisted and Fully AI-created content.

Metaverse: “A persistent, infinitely-scaling virtual space with its own economy and identity system.”

<ol><li>Professionally-created content</li><li>User-generated content</li><li>AI-assisted user-generated content</li><li>Fully AI-created content</li></ol>

The Four Stages of Content Creation:

We have only reached the first two of content creation in which single person and small multiplayer experiences are the norm.In this format, socializing remains focused on engaging in specific activities - e.g. completing tasks in a game.

The Present:

The volume of professionally-created content is limited because it is expensive to produce. Thus, user-generated content offers a promising new avenue forward, but content quality is an issue.Instead, using AI as a co-creator will allow for greater volumes of content, as lay people will be equipped with the tools to create quality content. With recent and continued developments to AI, building the Metaverse seems imminent.

The Future:

Socializing will shift away from task/plan specific entertainment toward spontaneous shared activities.AI-powered characters will be virtually indistinguishable from actual individuals, and social interactions will more closely resemble those in the real world.

Social Effects:

Through UGC and AI, we’re inching closer to the Metaverse. But the most exciting part of that vision is its potential to reinvent our social interactions.

technologyandthefuture

Technology & The Future

artificialintelligence

Artificial Intelligence

Meet Me in the Metaverse | Andreessen Horowitz

In 2021, with 1.9 billion monthly active users in 150 countries, and an employee base of over 110,000, the company recorded an astonishing $58 billion in revenues.How has it been so consistently successful? An important contributing factor is its innovation strategy, which relies on a shared-service platform, or SSP.

ByteDance, the most valuable startup in the world, has shattered records for growth.

<ul><li>Bytedance uses its SSP platform differently from most companies. The company's product teams or units don't control their own operating resources.</li><li>Many common business, technology, and operating functions (among them HR and legal) are centralized and organized into corresponding teams, so that the right people can be found and flexibly deployed as needed to each new venture.</li></ul>

Specialized Teams

ByteDance has searched broadly for new product opportunities and does not hesitate to send multiple teams into the same segment.Rapid iterationIt is renowned for its speed of development and getting products to market, much of which is enabled by its SSP.Selective focusByteDance allocates key resources to a few select priorities for a few years at a time. Its first 3 years were dominated by text- and photo-content experiments relating to the success of Toutiao, its news app, while 2016 marked a pivot to a short video.After experimentation, it made growing its education business a priority.

Broad exploration

ByteDance’s SSP allows for new product teams to easily integrate best-in-class technologies and features, saving precious time and resourcesProductizing platform servicesShared services often begin as new functions but are elevated to the SSP level if use, actual or projected, increases across multiple productsOrganizational EnablersByteDance's SSP strategy - accelerate new projects by providing instant access to best-in-class technology and operations - has been so successful that one would expect many other companies to have embraced it.

Maximum-capability cross-pollination

ByteDance's strategy and operations are driven by a transparent, bi-monthly Objectives and Key Results (OKR) system that flows from the very top, aligning the priorities and actions of SSP and product teams.Explicitly flattened hierarchyByteDance eliminates the use of titles and deliberately flattened its hierarchy to just a few layers so that employees can focus on their responsibilities instead of worrying about status.

ByteDance's SSP-based innovation strategy has allowed the company to incubate rapidly and broadly and to scale efficiently, by using centralized but flexibly deployed technical and operational stacks.This strategy has served the company well in part because of the similarity among its various algorithm-driven products.

Data-driven culture

Unpacking the success of the company that built TikTok, Toutiao, and Douyin.

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

How ByteDance Became the World’s Most Valuable Startup

<ul><li>Big three (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter) have deep network effects, making it hard to compete</li><li>Successful vertical approaches: Craigslist and eBay are ripped apart by specific search category platforms</li><li>Easier to branch out of a niche in marketplaces compared to social networks</li></ul>

Horizontal social networks: steal market portion or go vertical?

<ul><li>Example: Twitch and Discord can venture beyond gaming, possibly into livestream shopping</li><li>The leadership team sets the ambition and strategy</li><li>Potential for gamification in fitness industry</li></ul>

To go vertical, find a niche community, and satisfy their needs

A consumer team Slack debate: Should social entrepreneurs attempt to compete with the Big 3 or unbundle horizontal platforms and go vertical?

Discover the world of business and economics.

economics

Economics

The Founder's Dilemma: To Compete or Unbundle | Andreessen Horowitz

<ul><li>Social media use is on the rise, with over 70 percent of Americans regularly online.</li><li>Social media and dating apps are potentially harmful to users, both emotionally and physically.</li><li>Researchers have found negative effects on body image, eating behavior, mood, and physical health.</li><li>Future research is required to better understand current findings and to determine how to safeguard healthy use of social media.</li><li>As the science-fiction quality of the metaverse becomes a reality, there is no question that what it means to be human is shifting, with uncertainty, promise, and peril.</li></ul>

Key Takeaways

Social media has become a mirror through which we catch a glimpse of ourselves, literally through selfies and photos taken by others, and through how we react to one another, through our experience of online connectedness both on major social media platforms as well as through dating apps and live interactive online events—and through the prospect of fully immersive experiences in virtual reality, within which we can take on any identity we wish in a world freed from the laws of physics and logic.

Social Media Is A Mirror

Researchers in a study have found that increased social media use predicted body dissatisfaction one year later, and body dissatisfaction also predicted greater social media use, with a small but significant effect size. There were differences between men and women: Social media use and body dissatisfaction worked both ways for women, but for men, while body satisfaction predicted social media use, the reverse was not true in this sample. Being younger, female, and having a higher BMI were associated with greater <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/basics/body-image">body image</a> dissatisfaction.

Social Media And Body Dissatisfaction

Another study focused on how women’s dating app use affected daily mood, body image, and eating behavior. Participants showed a correlation between lifetime dating app use and both disordered eating urges and negative mood. Neither idealized partner preference nor rejection sensitivity were correlated with eating or mood in this study.

Dating Apps And Eating Behaviour

Researchers looked at whether the coherence of sense of self, known as “<a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/basics/identity">self-concept</a> clarity”, influenced social media users to compare themselves with online depictions of idealized slender bodies. Participants with lower self-concept clarity compared themselves more with idealized body images and consequently reported greater body image dissatisfaction. The findings suggest that having a less well-developed sense of self increases the risk of negative reactions when browsing social media.

Comparing Ourselves With Instagram Influencers

Another study looked at how physical health may be affected by the <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/basics/stress">stress</a> associated with social media use. They found that greater social media use was associated with increased somatic symptoms, regardless of depression symptoms. Greater social media use was associated with more healthcare visits, also independent of depression. Finally, controlling for other factors (demographics, birth control use, depression, healthcare use), CRP levels were significantly elevated among those reporting greater social media use.

Social Media and Stress Related Disorders

<ul><li>As families and individuals make choices about social media, it is of critical importance that they be armed with up-to-date information about the impact of such behavior on health and well-being. </li><li>For parents, this research adds to the growing body of cautionary information and is a call to get educated and manage social media immersion. </li><li>For healthcare providers, assessing patients for social media use is a key element of treatment planning.</li></ul>

A Call To Action

There's no denying that social media and all the other promises of evolving information technology and <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/basics/artificial-intelligence">machine learning</a> hold great potential to improve quality of life, but only if we slow down and study the effect of these spectacular new tools and learn to use them wisely.

The Bottom Line

Emerging research suggests social media may be more harmful than we realize.

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

mentalhealth

Mental Health

artsandculture

Society, Arts & Culture

The Impact of Social Media on Body Image, Eating, and Health

There really isn't one definition of what it means to be a curator, and it's even more undefined in the NFT space.However, curators must possess a few core attributes that are Important in developing great art and having a wider audience appreciate that great art.

The Role of Curation and Art NFTs

<ul><li>Curators identify new talent and work with that talent to foster creativity and develop career objectives</li><li>Provide portfolio reviews, advocate for artists' work, and lend needed support throughout the artistic journey</li><li>In the context of crypto art, curators can usher artists into the space by helping them to understand how they can maximize their creativity</li></ul>

A Curator Works with Artists

<ul><li>Curators also curate art by thoughtfully organizing and arranging works and collections in a way that tells a story</li><li>This can include not only organizing exhibitions and shows but writing about artists, trends, and movements</li><li>They teach a broader audience how to appreciate art and help them understand why that art is important</li></ul>

Curators Curate

<ul><li>Meet the collector, and seek to understand their goals</li><li>Keep up on artists and art movements so they can better inform buyers</li><li>Educate them on the technology of the space, helping them to properly set up asset storage</li></ul>

Curators are Advisors to Collectors

<ul><li>Curators will know every inch of this new landscape, and be able to lead both artists and collectors through this relatively unknown world, providing education and direction along the way.</li><li>They help make art accessible, both to collectors through education and contextualization and to artists by breaking down the barriers to creation.</li></ul>

Curators are Guides in the NFT World

In a New York Times article dissecting the overuse of the term "curator," critic and historian Hans-Ulrich Obrist defines the role as "a catalyst, generator and motivator - a sparring partner, accompanying the artist while they build a show, and a bridge builder, creating a bridge to the public."

Catalysts of New Art Approaches

A curator can also help society better understand what art NFTs are, and provide insight into an individual work's value and meaning within the context of this historic art movement. Here are a few ways they will play a role in shaping the shaping of the crypto art scene.

Why Curators will have a role to play in fostering art NFTs just as they do in the real-world's art galleries and art industry by helping both collectors.

crypto

Cryptocurrency

Curators Will Play a Major Role in Fostering Art NFTs — Here’s Why

Your personal brand isn't just a tagline — it's you. It is the process of discovering and clarifying the qualities that differentiate an individual from the rest. Personal branding is a smart strategy for the ambitious and those seeking to set foot or level up their careers.

Personal Brand 

Personal branding is a smart strategy for ambitious entrepreneurs. 

career

Career

The 5 Vital Rules of Personal Branding

Instagram is filled with promotions of “loaded teas” — made with tea concentrate and fruit-flavoured drink mixes — often boast cheeky names like Bahama Mama or Mermaid and appear alongside promises of zero sugar, few calories, healthy antioxidants, and perhaps most importantly, a big dose of caffeine: #cleanenergy is a frequent accompanying hashtag, which makes sense considering that many loaded teas boast more than 160 milligrams of caffeine — more than double what’s in a cup of coffee.These drinks are sold by independent distributors from a multi-level marketing company, Herbalife.

Fruit-Flavoured Caffeine Fad

Founded in 1980, Herbalife employed the classic MLM model by signing up independent distributors who have two responsibilities: to sell the company’s protein powders and nutritional supplements, and to recruit others to become Herbalife distributors. Herbalife has been <a href="https://www.barrons.com/articles/herbalife-faces-fresh-legal-hurdle-51601059300">sued on</a> <a href="https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/south-florida-couple-among-thousands-of-plaintiffs-in-1-billion-lawsuit-against-herbalife/172685/">numerous</a> <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2014/11/herbalife-pyramid-scheme-lawsuit-15-million-settlement-in-class-action.html">occasions</a> for that business model, resulting in <a href="https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/blogs/business-blog/2016/07/its-no-longer-business-usual-herbalife-inside-look-200">one $200 million settlement</a> with the Federal Trade Commission in 2016 that required the company to completely revamp its compensation structure.

A Multi-Level Marketing(MLM) Business Of Loaded Teas

It’s easy to see the appeal of loaded teas. They’re low-calorie, look pretty on Instagram, and tap into trendy wellness culture buzzwords like “high in antioxidants” and “immune/energy boosting.” For dieters who are accustomed to the bitter aftertaste of artificial sweeteners and are tired of drinking plain old water, they offer a compelling alternative. Much like Starbucks coffee, too, these beverages are a way to convey status — if you can afford to buy an $8 drink every day, then you’re doing pretty well for yourself.

Buy It, Click It, Instagram It

The way most people make money in an MLM — and why <a href="https://mashable.com/article/multi-level-marketing-mlm-scam-avoid">most experts view the model as a scam for consumers</a> — is when they become an “upline,” or a person who has recruited new distributors. Uplines earn a percentage of all the items sold by and to people beneath them in the hierarchy, called “downlines.” People on the bottom end of the downline are not earning much.

How MLM Works

Increasingly, nutrition clubs are popping up across the country as technicolour tea shops, and almost every single one of them is affiliated with Herbalife. Even as loaded teas and meal replacement shakes grow in popularity, the function of these clubs is ultimately still the same as their predecessors: Instead of only selling the powder mixes and vitamins directly to consumers, they use Herbalife ingredients in their menus of drinks, shakes, and protein coffees. And every new customer that comes in to buy a Mystic Mermaid has the potential of being a new downline.

Colourful Tea Shops

There’s a growing trend of both online content creators and regular folks making their own loaded drinks at home. During the pandemic, <a href="https://go.redirectingat.com/?id=66960X1516589&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.etsy.com%2Fsearch%3Fq%3Dloaded%2520tea%2520at%2520home&referrer=eater.com&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.eater.com%2F22958985%2Floaded-teas-herbalife-mlm-silver-lining-lessons-dupes-nutrition-clubs">loaded tea kits</a>, which allow customers to make their own drinks with Herbalife supplements, became popular, but many at-home drinkers like the Stockstills are intentionally bypassing MLM ingredients to avoid supporting companies they see are harmful. Others made a similar decision in an attempt first to save money — who wouldn’t want to spend 65 cents on a good drink instead of $8?

Bypassing The Expensive MLM Overhead

Thanks to social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest, a DIY version of the loaded tea craze is becoming increasingly popular — these sites are replete with recipes for loaded teas and other “health drinks” like collagen-infused “beauty teas” that only require a trip to the grocery store, not an initial investment of nearly $100 in Herbalife products. But nutrition clubs are still opening across the country at a rapid clip, and there’s an obvious demand for loaded teas and meal replacement shakes, whether they’re made with Herbalife products in a store or by yourself at home.

Notorious multi-level marketing (MLM) company Herbalife is selling a dream to its health-focused beverage distributors, who are opening tea-slinging "nutrition clubs" at an alarming rate

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The Truth About Herbalife, the Company Behind America’s Latest Tea Obsession

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