Startup Revolution

When we read about content marketing successes, we so often hear stories from glamorous industries with substantial budgets, but YNAB is not one of these stories. In fact, it couldn’t be farther from that reality. It is however, a success story of David vs Goliath proportions, building a thriving community of users in a highly

Telling Holiday Ecom Stories
Why do most online merchants shy away from stories in the 4th quarter? Time to make the donuts doesn't mean stories don't matter. Shout less, listen more and telling better stories means your online commerce website wins this holiday season. Here are our 5 Holiday Ecommerce Storytelling Tips: 

* Create Umbrella Themes

* Tell Price, Shipping, and Guarantee Stories

* Share Brand Relevant Customer Stories

* Tell Seasonal VISUAL Stories

* ASK FOR HELP

Discover more 4Q storytelling tips for online merchants:

http://www.curagami.com/ecommerce-holiday-5-storytelling-tips/?v=7516fd43adaa

Adding Scoopit Magazines
This post shares the easy how and why of adding @Scoop.it "magazines" to your blog or websties. We work with and around a lot of startups. Every startup is so widget focused they have a hard time creating the content marketing needed. 

Why is content marketing so NEEDED for startups? Well let's see. Want to get funded? Want to scale? Content marketing can help, but virtually no startup thinks that way. 

Every startup we know is so widget focused they can't see forest for trees. Widget focus isn't unimportant, but at some point soon you will need to sell that widget to someone for money. Content is the magic key in that "sell to someone for money" door. 

The best return on any startup's content marketing time is to curate content - i.e. leverage brand relevant content from experts. When you don't have time or inclination to create great content you can get more reach and return from finding highly relevant sources (for your business content) and curating them. 

Be sure to follow and contribute to those who you curate from too (or your curation can feel like stealing). This Curagami post explains how easy it is to curate content with Scoop.it and then add the magazines you create to your startup's blog or site. 
 

SOne of the Lean Content best practices we’ve seen several speakers at our meetups recommend is to leverage existing audiences on top of your own to increase the reach and the impact of your content.

Please Note: Waitlist Thanks to our friends at FedEx Curagami’s agency business, our incubation lab where we invest in customers and they invest in us, is currently CLOSED. With 4 active clients we have no room at the Inn. This doesn’t mean we can’t help. We have friends in every aspect of online marketing. Friends …

Added Zillow-ification of Content to Asking Key Ecommerce Questions Haiku Deck: http://shar.es/1gcmvT

The slide shares a common problem. Regional industries from banking to real estate have feedback loops that reinforce their regional-ness. They are big fish in small ponds.

Along comes startup entrepreneurs who understand the "socket layers" of information architecture in a platform world. They create a platform, roll up the regional content, tag, filter and package information that WAS free but held in a thousand places and SELL the package back to the proprietary and once powerful big fish in their small pond.

Google's only "boundary" is the web their only VOTE inbound links and the social and search clout earned. Google thinks and acts differently. Google fishes the world's oceans and will think about fishing on Mars should such a possibility present itself.

Information is free doesn't mean what you think. Information is free means information is boundless and so able to be formed and reformed in an infinite variety of ways. The power distribution of everything is something Google and their roll up students know and regional once powerful big fish learn the hard way.

How do I know so much about this? Some of my best friends are roll-up artists capable of hiding the pea or the red queen in ways so clever and adroit those paying for their information don't even seem to realize or know how badly they've just been zillow-ized :).

Visit one of Australia's top rated business blogs. The team at Anecdote share insights on business strategy, storytelling, leadership and collaboration.

@Kelly Hungerfordand @Ally Greermay be the best community managers on the planet. We included our favorite storyteller / teacher ( @Dr. Karen Dietz since online communities will become more and more about stories (yours and THEIRS where theirs = customers and brand advocates).

Maybe our web marketing needs to slow down, build online community and curate more? Thomas Hellum's slow TV provides valuable lessons in what's next online.

Here are a few of Slow TV's valuable lessons in the creation of sustainable online community:

• Social media + mobile = powerful community building tools combination.
• Happening NOW creates an “event-like” atmosphere especially if you don’t edit the timeline.
• Pre-sell community with an ASK, “What do you want to see”.
• Use the web for support before, during and after event.

Crowdfunding Where BUZZ Lives In Time For the Holidays
Working on http://www.curagami.com taught us important content marketing lessons such as:

* Buzz is HARD to create by yourself.
* Want buzz? Go to where the BUZZ is and mashup.
* Crowdfunding is highly SOCIAL and very BUZZ worthy.

* Crazy Guy / Girl in basement is a compelling aspirational story.

That last bullet is where the moneyball lives. The reason crowdfunding sites such as Kickstarter ROCK SEO and content marketing is great entrepreneurs share their cool ideas AND their social network. Platforms such as Kickstarter get to sit back and pick and choose what to help BLOW UP (or their algorithm does).

Here MoMA creates a curated content partnership with Kickstarter helping to add legitimacy to everyone's hand (for MoMA, Kickstarter and the projects curated into MoMA's holiday guide). What is stopping YOU from creating a similar partnership with a cool crowdfunding platform and featuring BUZZ worthy products you curate?

Answer: NOTHING other than the limitation of our merchandising imaginations and those boundaries should be few and far between :).M

15 Ways To Funk Up Your Startup
Watching Mr. Dynamite, HBO's great documentary about James Brown, got us thinking of ways to FUNK UP your startup including:

* Crowdfunding - James Brown knew how to ask for help.
* Content Marketing - Share your journey DAILY.
* 'Splainer Video - broll your elevator pitch & put on YouTube.

* Daily Social Media Shares - Build Your Tribe NOW.
* Contest - When in doubt create a low cost high yield contest.
* Games - Make your startup a game with many winners.
* Arresting Visuals - STOP THEM NOW.
* Stories - Share yours and they share theirs.
* Awards - Find the under appreciated and give 'em an award.
* Daily Difference - do something (anything) different today.

* Listen More, Talk Less.
* Curate - mashup this, that and the other thing.

* Coach - say something nice about something YOU didn't do daily.

* When THEY tell you there are RULES don't believe 'em.

* Teach - Watch one, Do one and then TEACH ONE to really get the hang of marketing in a digital age.

Community In A Box
Community In A Box is about the only marketing left - friends of friends proxy marketing. 

Online only has one time – NOW.

Now is GOLIATH, a monster sure to kill us all except for a tiny DAVID slinging rocks at the future. David, undeterred by the monster’s apparent size or formidability, is unimpressed by yesterday’s victories. Yesterday’s victories mean little when a stone hits you in the face today.

Better to die on our feet slinging stones than live on knees comatose with yesterday’s victories or afraid of tomorrow’s insults. Tomorrow’s insults are inevitable. We are dreamers, dreamers who believe monsters fall to slingshots and stones. Our dream, our romantic vision, philosophy and belief is why
we’re creating “Community In A Box”.

You In?

5 Content Marketing Lessons From Ziggy Stardust is about the courage, vulnerability and love required to create meaningful content in a cluttered, noisy time.

Bowie's tips for content marketers include:

* Be A Chameleon

* Collaborate

*  Have Courage & Be Vulnerable

* Start with Why
* Love Yourself

Follow Bowie's lead and your content marketing will win influence and authority much like Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars did.

http://www.curagami.com/5-content-marketing-lessons-from-ziggy-strdust/?v=7516fd43adaa

Blogging & Content Curation
Does Blogging Matter looks at the dissonance between the way we create content (bell curve) and the way content marketing is consumed (power distribution).

This Curagami post shares the natural friction between how we need to create content (in order to learn) and market pressures to improve at a supernatural rate. Content curation is how we bridge the content marketing gap. 

Learn More
http://www.curagami.com/does-blogging-matter/?v=7516fd43adaa 

New Ecommerce Trends
New Ecommerce: Search For Blue Oceans is about the disruptive impact smartphones, ubiquitous connection and retailer innovation are creating in ecommerce.

• Smartphones and ubiquitous connection to the web
• Impact of videos and unboxing creating “gift box retailers”
• Social Shopping and slouching toward real-time
• Buying personas, web analytics & dynamic personalization
• Google and the New SEO where content is KING and social content QUEEN
   

 http://www.curagami.com/new-ecommerce-5-crucial-trends/?v=7516fd43adaa 

People Marketing shares hard won tips, ideas and stories about loving, curating, listening to your people to create winning online marketing.

We included this link in our Startups Revoluiton Scoop.it because startups are so WIDGET focused they forget PEOPLE provide the context and emotional connection needed to SELL. It is understandable that YOU love your widget, but your customers love THEMSELVES much more.

Creating "like me" moments mean your "product" becomes a movement your customers want to join. This journey from YOU and THEM (customers) to WE is the most important journey every website and all marketing is on whether the creators know it or not.  

Our SEO for Web Designers has surpassed Warren Buffett's Startups Tips to become our #1 Haiku Deck:

SEO for Web Designers (9,972 Views)
http://shar.es/1gyTSf

Warren Buffett's Startups Tips (9,050 Views)
http://shar.es/1gyTIK

Makes SEO for Web Designers our fastest and steepest trending Haiku Deck. Our 42 Decks have generated over 100,000 views proving visual marketing is here and slides are a new online marketing channel.

Two of my 3 #mustfollow content curators will be familiar to many Scoopiteers:

@Guillaume Decugisand @Marc Rougierare visionary startup entrepreneurs and content curators. I'm learning how to use their latest tool - Content Director - tomorrow and can't wait. If you don't follow both Guillaume and Marc on multiple platforms you should.

Denis Labelle is a great G+ curator (https://plus.google.com/u/0/+DenisLabelle/posts ) and a March #mustfollow too. Denis has a great eye, understands what is happening online and his growing G+ community is proof of his skills.

Content curation is key for Small To Medium Sized Businesses (SMBs) online success & Scoop.it's new Content Director makes curation a marketing reality.

Henry Copeland is a brilliant guy. His PullQuote app may be the most unknown cool tool out there. PullQuote allows you to grab a quote from a post and share it across your social nets.

Not unique....yet, but here is the rub - pull quote keeps an index of where the quote / tweet / Gplus post came from (link back to the very post and paragraph) AND you can see PullQuotes from friends.

PullQuote is such a cool tool I'm thinking of how to incorporate it into a friend's media startup. Always easier to mash something cool in than write it yourself.

Checkout Henry Copeland's PullQuote and see if you don't think is is the coolest unknown tool out there too:
http://pullquote.com/

Marty Note

Startups are so pressed for time they often ignore or make a C priority developing content marketing. That is a huge mistake when it comes time to close a round of funding.

Startups with following have leverage and so may survive. In this excellent two part series Andrian Leighton shares tips on how to blog and how to recycle old blog posts into new content. With these tips every startup has the time to develop the most overlooked but important thing almost all startups overlook - effective content marketing.

Clean Slate Brands
Time doesn't guarantee anything anymore. "Proudly in business for 100 years," sounds great until Uber cleans your clock. http://www.uber.com re-imagined what "cab" means in a mobile / social / reputation time.

I took my first Uber ride in Columbus, Ohio last week and it was EASY. I've also used Columbus Yellow Cab and spoken to the owner. Columbus Yellow Cab provided excellent service minus one important thing - a way to monitor how far my ride is.

Columbus Yellow Cab has an app too, one I will use on my next trip to Columbus this Wednesday, but Uber is a "clean slate" brand with little preconceived notions about owning anything OTHER than the most disruptive technology the cab business has ever seen.

Uber is about to change the very definition of "cab". And Uber isn't alone as this Trendwatching post about Clean Slate Brands shares.

Need Your Help
I'm writing the Ultimate Content Curation Guide For Business and need your help. If you love content curation please share thoughts about:

* How would you define content curation for business?
* Is content curation different for SMBs than big brands? If yes, how?
* How should startups curate content?
* What are your favorite content curation tools.

Send your thoughts on these questions or anything content curation related to martin(at)Curagami.com. Thanks, Marty

Two years ago, we published a two-part post on social media marketing safety with Internet marketer, curator, cancer survivor, entrepreneur and Friend of Paper.li, Marty Smith.

Well, guess what? Marty is back. And this time, he will share his journey and thoughts on entrepreneurship, e-commerce, social media and how his battle against cancer has shaped his thinking.