Startup Revolution

3 Power Startups Tips
Stole this great email from Curagmai supporter and Startup Factory founder Chris Heivly to make a point about how to empower your Content and Brand Ambassadors.

Great tip from Chris too.

3 Power Startups Tips: http://www.curagami.com/3-startups-tips/?v=7516fd43adaa w/ Marty Note via @chrisheivly #startups #tips - 

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. 
 

The Tao of Marty summarizes the OVER (gain) versus UNDER (loss) philosophy we used to make over $30M in online sales with hundreds of thousands of orders. Want your ecommerce site to make money online? Read and share the Tao of Marty. 

Ghann’s Cricket Farm Interview Had a great day in Augusta with Clay Ghann and the team at Ghann’s. Ghann’s has been selling crickets to customers since 1952. How can your business survive over sixty years and span generations? Listen to Clay’s willingness to experiment, change and find great people to help. Thanks to Chris Lawrence …

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.

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.

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:

* Hedge & Diversify.

* Know your Over / Under.

* Card Count & Double Down.

* Become A Nowist.
* 4 out of 5 = Hall of Internet Marketing Fame.

Warren Buffet's Haiku Deck Lesson
One of the hardest web marketing lessons my former Direct Marketing bosses taught was to think Darwinian thoughts. I wanted to improve laggards.

Don't waste your time, came the advice and important digital marketing lesson, double down on winners. This wise lesson was just taught again by Warren Buffett.

Warren's Tips For Startups Haiku Deck has been on top of the 36 decks I've created. I started watching views by deck several months ago and my DM bosses lesson holds true.

Warren Buffett's Startup Tips (http://shar.es/10AbWU )
Buffett Gains: 878
Total Views: 8,100
% Gain: 12%

Social Media: It's A Conversation Stupid (http://shar.es/10AHlZ )
Gains: 1,915
Total Views: 6,297
% Gain: 44%

Once again Buffett proves the rich get richer.

This truth doesn't mean Social Media: Its A Conversation is unimportant. Knowing what is trending is a CSF (Critical Success Factor) for any web marketing team, but Buffett does prove Darwin was a web marketing pro long before there was a web. Double down on winners and leave laggards stands as one of the most important "laws" of our web marketing ecosystem :). M

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.

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

Training Your Mind
The hardest thing we teach our clients and anyone who will listen is becoming a great web marketer means letting go of a lot of preconceived notions about how things work. Here are the 5 secrets we share in our must recent Curagami post on learning how to think like a pro:

* Start with Why
* Gamify and Diversify

* Double Down

* Become A Nowist

* Baseball not Football

http://www.curagami.com/think-online-marketer/?v=7516fd43adaa  

How Crowdfunding Can Work
Great Josef Holm post on Krowdster about why crowdfunding campaigns fail also shows why and how they can work. Easy? Not even a  little bit, but crowdfunding is an important new marketing channel.  

Healthcare Is About To Explode
I have a friend, Mary Kay O'Connor founder of Starting Point (http://www.startingpnt.com/site/ ), who is about to jump off the roof. She's been selling, or attempting to sell, into healthcare for several years.

Healthcare is bureaucratic, infected with "Father Knows Best" syndrome, changing rapidly thanks to The Social Patient and ripe for the startup pickings. If your fabric is as TOUGH as my old boss Mary Kay's you may want to look HARD at healthcare since it is about to explode (whether it wants to or not). 

I built and launched my first startup a few months ago. Although it failed, it just fueled my entrepreneurial fire to la…

Amazon is a monster, but SMBs & smaller merchants can compete playing David to Amazon's Goliath. We discuss online marketing tactics to compete with Amazon.

Interesting, funny & sad watching car dealers create web & social marketing. Getting better is easy, fun and CHEAP as Web Marketing For Car Dealers shares.

We think of car dealers as "startups" because they need to start over and pivot their THINKING. Many of the tips shared in this Curagami post (http://www.curagami.com/magical-thinking/web-marketing-101-for-car-dealers/ ) such as:

* People not THINGS Sell.
* Stories and People, People and Stories...matter.

* Humanize your approach and thinking.

* Let THEM (customers and brand advocates) HELP.

apply to stsrtups too so killing a pair of birds with a single blog post today. Picture is of me (left) and Travis Lunsford in front of a ROGUE (seemed appropriate lol).

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.

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.

Web Analytics for non Quants
This Curagami post demystifies web metrics with simple questions, easy to understand ideas & proven lessons. Want to understand web metrics? Follow these tips and you will be managing your site' metrics like a pro.
http://www.curagami.com/featured/web-analytics-for-non-quants/