Curation Revolution

There are no "right' or "wrong" ways to use social media, but there are ways to grow your following faster and get more return from your social efforts.

Not all brands are created equal. Some can help your online marketing more than others. Use our Curagami Brand Score to map your content marketing for ROI.

Every online transaction started with a conversation and that why conversations are the new money and the rocket fuel creating the New Ecommerce Revolution.

Want to excel at content curation? Here are 7 tactics for content curation success:

Marty Note
My favorite is the idea of "packaging" your content. Fascinating.

Fires happen to every website no matter how careful their overseers. Fires destroy value. Today's online marketing fires are complex and intertwined requiring specialized cross functional teams to extinguish. These teams are called Hellfighters.

Curation Collisions
I've been thinking about where the synchronous and asynchronous meet. It feels like the only art left is to COLLIDE ideas previously thought of as pristine or distinct. Together the active juxtaposition adds depth, information, mystery and hooks.

Hooks are TOUGH. We've been advertised to right up to our last nerve. The net effect of millions of ads is we don't believe much. Our skeptical hide is thick.

When we swing things around like a great Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) and smash them into one another we create the kind of surprise and arrested development that stops frenzied process just long enough to slip some passionate communication about how our parts can exceed our whole.

Can't think of a better idea of creating juxtaposition than the Poetics of Gesture image that pastes Twombly on a Basquiat. Too good!

What about you? Have you collided content creating surprise and arresting images in support of your #contentmarketing or #contentcuration?

Group boards on Pinterest can be your secret to increased followers, improved engagement, and reaching a larger audience with less effort.

Marty Note
Great Curation Revolution suggestion from my friend Bill Gassett (@MassRealty). I love group boards too because they crowdsource great Pinterest content. My Group Board include:

King of Pinterest (2,047 followers, 121 contributors)
http://www.pinterest.com/scenttrail/king-of-pinterest/

Queen of Pinterest (3,290 followers, 325 contributors)
http://www.pinterest.com/scenttrail/queen-of-pinterest/

Love these boards since the share GREAT stuff and my work load GOES DOWN even as they get better. One caveat is Pinterest can be strange about allowing you to invite contributors. I could easily have 1,000 contributors to both boards if Pinterest didn't have such a tight and strange grip on the invite reins.

Bill Gassett & Crowdfunding Real Estate
Great call about crowdfunding real estate yesterday with @Bill Gassett. Bill is a leader in the use of social media, blogging and G+ for realtors. Bill explained that his business tends to be mercenary - they don't inter-link.

Bill does and that is why he has thousands of followers on G+ and his other social nets. I introduced Bill to Scoop.it and he loves it. Next journey we will take together is to add #crowdfunding to his real estate site:
http://www.maxrealestateexposure.com/  

CrowdFunde now has 4 partners with one pending. Instead of STOPPING we are going to increase the number of beta partners from 5 to 10. We haven't found a 501c3 nonprofit yet and the more content we have flowing through the engine fast the more CrowdFunde's rising content marketing and crowdfunding tide will help create scale.

SO, our Partner SEARCH is still ON! Learn more details here:
http://crowdfunde.com/crowdfunde-partner-contest/  

Social Media Reach Is Dead, Long Live Content Curation & Cmmunity
@Guillaume Decugis  was nice enough to ask me to weigh in on his blog post. He knew it wouldn't be hard for me to write 1,000 words on something that I feel strongly about - what will tomorrow's marketing look like.

Little is certain OTHER than tomorrow's marketing will be very different than today's and unrecognizable from yesterdays. The post on G+ shares my reaction to Guillaume's post along with as much Nostradamas as I can muster at midnight after a long day.

The core is YES content curation is going to be an integral part of the friends of friends marketing creating community we see at our Triangle Startup Factory funded startup called Curagami (http://www.curagami.com ).

One BIG THING we've already learned is RESPECT, ADMIRATION and enough envy to fuel a train for what Marc, Guillaume, Ally and the Scoopiteers created. The post discusses how any cause moves from passion, through to business and finally into quackery.

That evolution is why all tactical online marketing is dead man walking. The key is winning and keeping hearts and minds. Certainly content curation is going to be HUGE in winning the LOVE any successful brand or online presence will require to be successful in tomorrow's marketing. Are there a few other things? You bet and I tried to share all of the hard won lessons about content, community and love team Curagami is learning.

My G+ Post
https://plus.google.com/102639884404823294558/posts/i1fzgtror51

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.

[Content Marketing, Must Read] Great slides by Rand Fishkin on what makes an effective content marketing strategy. He outlines 5 reasons why your strategy might fail: You believed the biggest myth content marketing ever told the world You made content without a community You invested in content creation, but not in it's amplification You ignored content's most powerful channel: SEO You gave up too fast

Even Google wants to escape the old SERPs only Google. Mobile, social and community are changing the web's landscape. Google is watching organic search growth slow thanks to social and mobile. Don't get hung out, diversify your Internet marketing.

Movements THEN Campaigns within Movements
http://www.crowdfunde.com earned its first paycheck today as we begin to help our friends at http://www.moon-audio.com create an "umbrella" movement to create online community, improve SEO, win hearts and minds and convert more visitors to customers and customers to advocates and supporters. 

This G+ post shares much of what we discussed today about the advantages of creating a movement in a socially connected mobile time. If you love music hope you will jumpin and help us create Music Is A Movement's pieces such as:

* Our ASK for UGC (User Generated Content) such as what is your favorite music? Why? What is your favorite gear? Why? 
* Stories are going to be important. What is best way to ask for them?
* Arresting visuals are going to be important, where to we find them. 
* How can we create CONTENT to support an abstract, personal and short lived (music) to shareable content (vids, pics, stories)?  
* What is best way to connect tribe members.
* What are our KPIs. 

Going to be fascinating to use our new tools for the first time to help Moon Audio change the world a little by developing a MOVEMENT and then positioning their marketing inside the movement's context and ever evolving User Generated Content boundaries.  

What about you? How do you win hearts and minds with your #Interntmarketing.  

This GPlus Post discusses how to avoid the lemmings traps so many Internet marketers follow the leader into. The post also shares @MarkTraphagen's brilliant idea - use the not yet competitively frenzied G+ environment as the HUB of all your Internet Marketing. 

Sure I know we've been preaching TAPESTRY and I've been preaching that too. We are somewhere NEW and DIFFERENT now. The TIME it takes you to catch your competitors on Facebook and Twitter CAN'T GENERATE ROI.

You may win the battle, catch up on Facebook and lose the war. Don't do that. Look for BLUE OCEANS, places like G+ and video marketing (and those two ideas are related thanks to hangouts) where setting up a "virtual positive cycle" means in a short amount of time you will get MORE with LESS.

Don't duel in the sun just because everyone is doing it.  

@Jaana Nyström is a great curator and she just beat me to the punch :). When she shared her EPIC journey of using G+ to move from "nobody" to "somebody" I planned to blog about her amazing journey. The content and message was too good to be trapped in comments.

Read this post CAREFULLY as you may recognize where you are on Jaana's timeline of personal brand development. There are several "inside baseball" tips to pay particular attention to including:

* Don't worry about perfection, start publishing.
* G+ is an AMAZING and vastly under used tool (start there add more social nets later).
* No matter what, keep turning the crank (keep going) since the only sin you and your personal band can't recover from is NOT PLAYING.

Great stuff from an amazing curator. What lessons did you learn from Jaana Nystrom? What similar lessons have you learned as you create a meaningful personal brand?

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.

Here are 7 Tips From MoMA Curator:

1. Focus on Goals

2. Have Empathy

3. Be Careful, Cautious and Selective

4. Editorialize

5. Provide Attribution

6. Understand What’s Timely and Trending

7. Have an Eye for a Great Title

and 3 From Scenttrail (Martin Marty Smith on Scoopit)

8. Cast A WIDE Net, Curate Disparate Content.

9. Don't Forget OPC (Other People's Curation).

10. Use Rich Snippets to Consistently Theme Your Curation.

Cast a "wide net" pulling seemingly disparate subjects into your curation using our curatorial skills to create connection and synergy. Don't forget the most powerful content on YOUR network is THEIR User Generated Content (UGC) and curation. Rich Snippets don't recreate the content wheel but do them your curation creating a consistent blanket of meaning and value.

Added a comment about putting a title in front of a masterpiece in comments on Scoop.it:
http://blog.scoop.it/2014/02/13/7-qualities-of-highly-effective-content-curators/