Curation Revolution

Top 10 Curagami Posts
Top 10 Posts shares how Banksy, friends and artists helped create Curagami's Top 10 Posts (by inbound links) despite our best efforts to the contrary (lol).

Here some BIG lessons from our Top 10 Posts from Banksy to Web Design:

* Tap Your Unconscious (and ramp risks)

* Friends Rock

* Shit Happens - Keep Creating

What BIG Lessons have you learned from your top 10? Share and we will curate your ideas, experiences and comments into the post:
http://www.curagami.com/top-10-posts/?v=7516fd43adaa  

http://www.curagami.com/top-10-posts/?v=7516fd43adaa

Why You Must Curate Content
We shocked a SEO Meetup suggesting 90% curation to 10% content creation. This deck explains why you MUST curate content. Content curation is a CSF (Critical Success Factor) for online marketing.

Among the 7 Reasons we share content are these three:

* Proof of "Digital Listening"

* Reach
* Costs

Discover 4 more reasons you must curate content at Haiku Deck: https://shar.es/1vwHY8 

How Their Rank Teaches You SEO Lessons
SEO: Their Rank Talks To You, but are you listening, emulating category leaders and finding ways to disrupt your space to win hearts, minds and loyalty online is the "new SEO". 

So if your question is, "You talking to ME?" and you are asking Google the answer is YES.  

Content Director Should Rock Content Marketing
I'm excited that th etalented @Scoop.itteam ( @Guillaume Decugis@Ally Greer@Marc Rougierand many others) are launching a new content curation tool called Content Director. As team Curagami shared in our 7 Reasons You Must Curate Content (http://shar.es/1ohSrO over 5,000 views now) knowing what content is making you money and why is a CSF (Critical Success Factor).

Can't wait for our demo tomorrow PM. Will report back.

Marty Note
Great post by Scoop.it team. At our cool tools for ecommerce merchants startup http://www.curagami.com we see all six of these mistakes. Here are some of the ways we've helped clients fix reasons their biz blogs sucked:

1.  No Subscription Form
   Agree with this mistake being #1 since it cuts off your Internet marketing nose to spite your face. BUT adding a subscription form can be tricky. If a client has a vast archive we always locate a large search box in their header. If NOT we  cross our fingers and put a subscription from up there.
   We HATE subscription forms in footers since it since the WRONG message. Footer forms say, "Sure you can join, but we don't care." Best location is left rail somewhere below your hero (largest image on the page is a hero) and that means your left column should be navvy (i.e. about 200 - 300 pixels and have other nuggets like social in there too). We don't like being forced right either since we read left to right so stuff on the left typically gets more "eye time". WE HATE popunders those annoying requests to join that must be cleared BUT they work with enough people that most online merchants use them. Our answer to that is if everyone jumped off a cliff would you too and then we realize we are sounding like our parents so we shut up (lol). If you have to popunder use http://rocketbolt.com/ as they are the least obnoxious popunder we've seen.
   
   
2. Content Is Skinny & Stale
   Blogs are a commitment. The deal you make is you WILL be blogging several times a week. Break that commitment and your biz blog will suck, never receive links and so you may as well stay home and watch TV for all the good adding less than 300+ posts a year will do you. Blogging is a discipline, a habit, your routine must incorporate if you want your content marketing to mean anything to visitors not related to you. Daily blogging gets easier the more you do it, but do it you must as fresh content is a huge part of the bargain you are striking with Google when you put a website into its view. Google is important, but your customers are even more important and they believe in QDF too (Quality Deserves Freshness), so blog it out. 
   
   
3. No Relevant CTAs
   Boy this is one of our HUGE pet peeves. If you don't have a BUTTON or LINK on your site that says the equivalent of CLICK ME THERE IS COOL STUFF HERE your biz blog sucks. CTAs are important, but you can have TOO MANY too, so strike a balance and ask for attention HERE and HERE.
   
   
4. No Related Links
   Blogs are NASTY bad at building relevant next links. Without a plugin your blog will be backwards. Most default WordPress themes publish "archives" in reverse publishing order (most recent first). BTW, that sucks. You are better off to have related links at the bottom of a post AND create Top 5 lists across several dimensions such as popularity, most shared, most commented on, staff favorites and even bottom 5. Creating a priority list does wonders for content because it brings the MOB into play. We want to know what OTHERS think is interesting or bad or amazing. Lists work so USE 'em.
   We think of content as products. We want to merchandise, combine and suggest content just like an ecommerce merchant creates cross-sale and up-sale.
   
   
5. Don't Leverage Analytics in PUBLIC
   I'm sitting at a Panera Bread writing this and there is a big sign sharing that the owners shared $19M with charity last year. Public feedback loops such as Top 5 ordered lists and Most Searched summaries help your visitors know you, your content and your tribe.
   
   
6. No Social Shares or BAD Social Shares
   Wow we could write a mile on this one, but we will give you the quick version. 1. Make it easy to share every page 2. Remember you want some shares for your SITE and some for the content people are reading now and those are two different things and need two different social widgets. 3. ALWAYS include your @name in your auto-tweets and shares. 

Great post by the Scoop.iteers. Hope those ideas help you know how to fix six reasons your biz blog sucks. Time and web attention are way to valuable to ever SUCK. That is not to say we've never SUCKED (lol), but we try not to stink forever. Blog on :). M

Biggest challenge to great web marketing may be learning to THINK like an Internet marketer. Here are 5 Secret Tips to help you become a great IMer.

Severe Marketing shares how P&G creates 360 degree brand marketing & how you and your website can too.

Movement Marketing With Orate.me
Why startups create movements & community from organic fuel such as narrowing focus, winning hearts, minds & loyalty and building online community.

Clash Crowdfunding Lessons
Crowdfunding may be the ultimate "in your face" DIY (Do It Yourself) disruption. Much like the CLASH's "punk ethos", so well described in The Future Is Unwritten the biopic documentary film about Joe Strummer, marketers must create content and community with authenticity and awesome, daring and original content.

Working on a companion Curagami blog post too. Here is link to HaikuDeck:

http://shar.es/11YHo2

Connection, our human ability to listen, share and respond, is the new ecommerce. This Haiku Deck is in support of Marty Smith's Keynote talk at FedEx Connection Conference 7.30.14.

Lions, Tigers, Bears & Content Shock & SMB Survival
Small to Medium Sized Businesses are overwhelmed. The clearest message we've received during our first six months creating our Startup Factory funded startup called Curagami is a clear protest. "Overwhelmed" is the most common adjective SMBs use to describe their situation.

Not hard to see why SMBs are feeling overwhelmed. Tactics that used to insure consistent yearly growth are sick. Tactics are drying up faster than ever.

SMB Marketing Tactics Costing More, Getting Less:

* Yellow Pages (near death).
* Print ads (near death).

* Val-u-pak coupons (near death).

* Coupons of any kind (losing relevance with smartphone users)..

* Groupons (blows brands up almost beyond repair).
* Email marketing (sick due to social / mobile web).
* Social Media Marketing (sick and getting sicker fast).
* Content Marketing.(content shock sick).

* Ecommerce (too many stores, same offerings).
* PPC (paying more to get less).
* Retargeting (cat out of bag, so sick efficacy declining).
* Video Marketing (steep learning curve, expensive).
* Viral Marketing (everyone has that cold now & hit or miss).
* Cause Marketing (not as unique as once was & live or die with partner).

* Celebrity Marketing (expensive and live or die with branded celeb).

* SEO (don't even get us started, all but gone, baby, gone).

3 Rays of Hope

1. Content Curation
Discussed by Scoop.it CEO @Guillaume Decugisin Social Media Publishing Is Dead As We Know It ( http://blog.scoop.it/2014/06/18/social-media-publishing-is-dead-as-we-know-it/ ).

2. Community
Banding and binding tribes of contributors, advocates and supporters to your cause.

3. Friends of Friends marketing.
Reaching new customers via WOM (Word-of-Mouth) supplied by fans, brand advocates and social marketing Sherpas willing to sacrifice and help your cause.

Curagami (http://wwww.curagami.com ) is focused on helping SMBs create sustainable community via the Friends-of-Friends marketing community generates.  

Am Scooping Guillaume's post to use in our Curagami board meeting tomorrow and we are working on 3 cool ideas:

* Curagami SMB Survival Guide - one page "action focused" recommendations on the tapestry of marketing tools and tactics needed to know where online "success" lives these days.

* Curagami $25,000 SMB Survival Contest - Help in seo, content marketing and community building to make this holiday online selling season great.

* Curagmai SMB Survival School - 1 day training to support SMBs at the American Tobacco Campus in Durham, NC.

After Google's algorithm changes content is KING, context QUEEN. Online merchants who "match the hatch" of content to customers create advantage. Winning this advantage takes courage.

Courage because when one revolution happens things get crazy. When three revolutions are happening simultaneously its time to get in the basement with water and a year's supply of canned goods.

Instead of doing that we suggest reading about how content, commerce and social media can contribute to one another on CrowdFunde our startup dedicated to helping websites, brands and companies tap wisdom of crowds.

Adding Scoop.it Magazines
Adding Scoopit Magazines to a blog or website is a Curagami post that shares the easy how and why of adding @Scoop.it "magazines" (feeds) and content curation, to your blog or website. Content curation via Scoopit adds inexpensive reach and customer engagement generating loyalty and return on investment.

How To Make $30M Online
When people ask me how teams I've managed made more than $30M online I say it's simple - find your 80:20 Rule, double down on winners, leave laggards and hire great people.

None of those things are nearly as "simple" as they sound, but you must know what NOT to do. Any website has an enduring and constant fractal called the 80:20 Rule. This post includes a video about the importance of your 80:20 Rule, how to use what you find and a link to an earlier post on how to find your 80:20 Rule. 

http://www.curagami.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/fractals-cover-image.png 

 

Journey To Unique & Uncontested
We are presenting ideas to a group of about 100 SMBs in Atlanta on 4.16. The BIG IDEA is don't attempt to play a sequential, incremental improvement game. That dog doesn't hunt anymore.

Discover BLUE OCEANS where you can create Unique and Uncontested business models that rule, evolve and win hearts, minds and loyalty fast and over time.

How can you discover Blue Oceans in your business vertical? We suggest "Disruption for Dummies" where you combine 2 or all of these surfable trends:

* Appification.

* Gamification.
* Social Shopping Nowists.
* Friends of Friends Marketing.

* Community.

The Iceberg Effect is why you may not know what you don't know when marketing online. This Curagami post shares how to avoid becoming an online Titanic.

Learn about The Iceberg Effect on our latest Curagami post:
http://www.curagami.com/featured/iceberg-effect-internet-marketing/

Why we need to become the best Sisyphusian stone rollers in the world:

* Internet marketing means change at ever faster rates forever.
* The Web IS so changing US is what we control & no more.
* Internet marketing isn't what you think.
* Most important idea is to KEEP testing, trying and listening.
* Master objective is & will always be creation of sustainable online community.

What about you? How has working online changed you? Share on G+, in comments on Scoop.it or email martin(at)Curagami.com.

Story may be the most important but least understood online marketing word there is. Understand why storytelling is "beyond important" for web marketing.

Over Planning Can KILL Your Content Marketing
We see a lot of experts, gurus and people who should know better sharing yesterday's advice. We've read thousands of words about the importance of goal setting, planning and objectives for content marketing.

People talk about creating content marketing calendars and planning everything to within an inch of your life. Good luck with that. Might have worked 3 years ago, but today's social / mobile / connected world means you need to become a NOWIST.

This Curagami post embeds the influential Joy Ito TED talk about becoming a Nowist by pulling from the network to meet demand. Your content needs to do the same.

AND You need to digitally listen. We riff a few paragraphs about what it means to digitally listen such as FOLLOWING those who follow you, Retweeting and curating content from your customers and brand advocates.

Next time you read 1,000 words on planning your "content calendar" STOP and read this Curagami post so you don't over plan your content marketing.

Brand Sculpting creates a brand's online community in alignment with User Generated Content, a growing tribe of advocates & trending keywords & content.

5 Tips
* 10 Tools including @Scoop.itPaper.li ( @Kelly Hungerford), Haiku Deck, G+, Pinterest & Others.
* Community & UGC.
* Digital Listening.
* Analytics.
* Moon Audio examples.

New SEO's invisible Giant uses magician tricks such as Google's floating filter bubbles, social media's disappearing act & friends you never knew you had. The Giant is more visible than ever.

Thousands, thanks to shares from friends such as @Kelly Hungerford@malek@ janlgordonand @Brian Yanish - MarketingHits.comhave "seen" the Invisible Giant of the #newseo. Have you?

Jeff Fromm in a great post for TBJ makes Curagami's tactical marketing is dead argument beautifully. Social Media Marketing is dead & here's what's next.

Marty Note
Great meeting today with our Triangle Startup Factory mentor Kirk Owen (@RKirkOwen). Kirk is a Jedi Master Mentor and Internet marketer. He is working with VC Firm Intersouth Partners (@intersouth) to create an online site to help teach music with a combination of VIDEO and "live" via the web instructors.

COOL idea for ecommerce merchants to adapt especially given results of this study showing higher engagement and more money when video marketing is supplemented by a "live" instructor.

So imagine you are the Bass Pro Shop site. You are learning about new lures from videos and waiting for the Bass Pro to come explain how he matches lures to weather, water and other conditions. Videos helped you learn some features but the "live to the web" presentation via a G+ Hangout or via a streaming service increases engagement and conversion.

Oh, Time on Site goes up to since I bet Bass Pro Shops would find a large audience consuming videos immediately before and after the "live" presentation. Kirk is an amazing IMer, entrepreneur, coach and mentor. Follow him on Twitter and if you are in the Triangle area of NC ask him to lunch and guarantee you will be smarter for it.