Tom Gerace

Last updated March 07, 2019

Thomas August Gerace (born December 21, 1970 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) is the serial entrepreneur and market-innovator responsible for disruptive innovations such as founding Be Free, the first affiliate-marketing company, and SMAC, a committee to create a common vocabulary, standard buying units, and uniform measurement methods for social media. In December 2010, he launched Skyword, a content production platform. Currently, Gerace serves as CEO and founder of Skyword.

Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state located in the northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The Appalachian Mountains run through its middle. The Commonwealth is bordered by Delaware to the southeast, Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, Lake Erie and the Canadian province of Ontario to the northwest, New York to the north, and New Jersey to the east.

In business, a disruptive innovation is an innovation that creates a new market and value network and eventually disrupts an existing market and value network, displacing established market-leading firms, products, and alliances. The term was defined and first analyzed by the American scholar Clayton M. Christensen and his collaborators beginning in 1995, and has been called the most influential business idea of the early 21st century.

Education

Gerace received a Bachelor of Arts in Social Studies, magna cum laude , from Harvard University in 1993. He was a senior business analyst at the Harvard Business School, where he authored case studies including "The Internet" and "The National Information Infrastructure." He also assisted with the creation of the curriculum for the "Managing in the Marketspace" course within the MBA program.

A Bachelor of Arts is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, sciences, or both. Bachelor of Arts programs generally take three to four years depending on the country, institution, and specific specializations, majors, or minors. The word baccalaureus should not be confused with baccalaureatus, which refers to the one- to two-year postgraduate Bachelor of Arts with Honors degree in some countries.

Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with about 6,700 undergraduate students and about 15,250 post graduate students. Established in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, clergyman John Harvard, Harvard is the United States' oldest institution of higher learning, and its history, influence, and wealth have made it one of the world's most prestigious universities.

Harvard Business School (HBS) is the graduate business school of Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts. The school offers a large full-time MBA program, doctoral programs, HBS Online and many executive education programs. It owns Harvard Business Publishing, which publishes business books, leadership articles, online management tools for corporate learning, case studies and the monthly Harvard Business Review. It is home to the Baker Library/Bloomberg Center.

Be Free

In March 1996, Gerace and his brother, Samuel P. Gerace, Jr., founded Be Free, a publicly traded online marketing services company. Gerace was the Chief Marketing Officer and was awarded two U.S. Patents (5,848,396 and 5,991,735) for profiling computer users and targeting advertising based on that profiling. He raised more than $200 million and launched both U.S. and European operations. Gerace left Be Free when the company was acquired by ValueClick in 2002.

Skyword

In December 2010, Gerace launched Skyword, a content production platform that allows users to efficiently create content at scale and reach customers through search and the social web. The platform also offers a suite of services to help clients plan, execute and manage their content marketing programs. IBM, Bounty (brand), The Wall Street Journal's MarketWatch, Education.com and Everyday Health are among the leading brands and media companies that use the Skyword Platform to create brand-aligned content.^[1]

Content marketing is a form of marketing focused on creating, publishing, and distributing content for a targeted audience online. It is often used by businesses in order to:

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Bounty is an American paper towel product manufactured by Procter & Gamble (P&G) in the United States. It was introduced in 1965.

In October 2012, United Way Worldwide ^[2] and AutoTrader.com ^[3] announced they had signed on with Skyword to improve their content strategy and increase content production.

United Way Worldwide is the world’s largest privately-funded nonprofit, topping the list of “America's Favorite Charities” as determined by the Chronicle of Philanthropy. The Chronicle’s Oct. 2018 report ranks the 100 charities that Americans are most willing to support. The United Way network is made up of nearly 1,800 autonomous 501c3 organizations, governed and funded locally. The network spans more than 40 countries and territories. In each community, United Way brings people and organizations together to tackle challenges, with a focus on improving education, financial stability and health. In 2018, United Way served 61 million people around the globe, fueled by 2.9 million volunteers and 8.3 million donors. United Way’s Global Results Framework offers a data-driven snapshot of its community impact – including a snapshot of results in financial stability, education and health.

Content strategy refers to the planning, development, and management of content—written or in other media. The term has been particularly common in web development since the late 1990s. It is a recognized field in user experience design, and it also draws from adjacent disciplines such as information architecture, content management, business analysis, digital marketing, and technical communication.

Other ventures

Gerace later served for two years as Senior Vice President, Marketing for National Leisure Group (NLG), a $1 billion annual seller of travel. He is also the founding committee chair of SMAC, the Social Media Ad Consortium, and industry group launched in September 2008. SMAC is, according to its own description, "A group of advertising, communications, brand management and social media executives coming together to create a common vocabulary, standard buying units, and uniform measurement methods for social media." In addition, Gerace is the founder and CEO of the social networking site Gather.com (currently defunct), where members shared user-generated content online and earned a portion of the company’s advertising revenue. Gather.com was founded in 2005 by Gerace and the American Public Media Group (APMG), whose CEO and president was Gather's chairman, William H. Kling. As of today (February 23, 2015), gather.com no longer allows access in a social networking fashion as it only generates its own news feeds. The general public is no longer allowed access to its own content on the site.

Gather or Gather.com was a social networking website designed to encourage interaction by discussion of various social, political and cultural topics. Its headquarters were located in Boston, Massachusetts. It became defunct in 2015, but was rebooted in 2018 as a site publishing articles about digital marketing.

User-generated content (UGC), alternatively known as user-created content (UCC), is any form of content, such as images, videos, text and audio, that have been posted by users on online platforms such as social media and wikis. The term "user-generated content" and the concept it refers to entered mainstream usage in the mid-2000s, having arisen in web publishing and new media content production circles. The BBC adopted a user-generated content platform for its websites in 2005, and TIME Magazine named "You" as the Person of the Year in 2006, referring to the rise in the production of UGC on Web 2.0 platforms.

American Public Media Group, formerly the Minnesota Communications Group, is the non-profit parent organization of Minnesota Public Radio, American Public Media, Southern California Public Radio, and the Fitzgerald Theater. Jon McTaggart is APMG's President and CEO.

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Auto Trader Group plc is an automotive classified advertising business. It specialises in new and second hand automotive sales, including cars sold by private sellers and trade dealers. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange, and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.

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References

↑ "How IBM's Content Strategy Got IBM Midsize Insider into Google News and Sent Traffic Soaring". Content Marketing Institute. September 13, 2012.
↑ Ryan Joe (October 3, 2012). "Content marketing in a United Way". Direct Marketing News.
↑ "AutoTrader.com Embraces Innovative Skyword Technology to Scale Its Content Operations". Yahoo! Finance. October 16, 2012.

External links

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[Content_Marketing_Institute-1] "How IBM's Content Strategy Got IBM Midsize Insider into Google News and Sent Traffic Soaring". Content Marketing Institute. September 13, 2012.

[Direct_Marketing_News-2] Ryan Joe (October 3, 2012). "Content marketing in a United Way". Direct Marketing News.

[Yahoo!_Finance-3] "AutoTrader.com Embraces Innovative Skyword Technology to Scale Its Content Operations". Yahoo! Finance. October 16, 2012.