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Scooped by Martin (Marty) Smith |
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Bitcoin, Ecommerce, Money & Value Systems
In three posts I've tried to understand how Bitcoin changes ecommerce:
Bitcoin, Money & Value Systems (on G+)
https://plus.google.com/102639884404823294558/posts/YLFe4ow4rok
Bitcoin Manifesto (on @Scoop.it)
http://sco.lt/8SkV4D
And this post about Bitcoin and #startups. Bitcoin as infrastructure could change everything from online ecommerce to how we pay for groceries and a coke from a vending machine.
Sure the infrastructure to achieve such a vision is largely lacking presently, but it wasn't that long ago we didn't have an Internet either. Here is how I'm going to tune my Bitcoin radar:
* Learn how to install Bitcoin commerce (nothing is easy now, but first movers will get huge benefits).
* Understand how and where Bitcoin could create the greatest impact such as http://www.curagami.com client http://www.moon-audio.com.
* Understand how Bitcoin's platform could connect to other major trends such as social, mobile and connection.
The reason I want to understand how to install Bitcoin commerce is 1. It Ain't Easy Now and 2. Customers with large international buying groups could benefit the most and the fastest. Moon-Audio sells their magical audio cables all over the world. What they've been lacking is an easy way to safely sell around the world.
if there is even a tiny chance Bitcoin can fill those shoes I'm interested and a student. If anyone reading this has resources about how to install Bitcoin commerce please share.
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DIY Customers Are Important
Do-It_Yourself customers may be the most important customers on earth. Here are a few ways DIY customers create benefits for digitial marketers and websites:
* Social Shares on Facebook, Twitter and +Google+.
* Creates #ugc (User Generated Content) or the best content you can't buy.
* Drive links into their content on your site.
We are working on a series of http://www.Curagami.com posts on how to engage and benefit from DIY Customer Marketing. If you have tips, ideas or experiences you think would help please share (martin(at)Curagami.com).
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![10 Reasons Blogs, Articles and Guest Posts ROCK Startups via @jodyporowski [6 via @Scenttrail] | Startup Revolution | Scoop.it](https://img.scoop.it/cctmqOim5s_uV-crLfoSeTl72eJkfbmt4t8yenImKBVvK0kTmF0xjctABnaLJIm9)
Marty Note
Love this Jody Porowski post since she shares directly and doesn't lay claim to expertise she doesn't have (rare). I also love here reasons for why content marketing matters beyond pure traffic generation such as:
1. Drive Traffic.
2. Increase Awareness.
3. Create new Connections.
4. Produce Warm Fuzzies.
Great list. I would add:
5. Creates online community (net effect of 1 - 4).
6. Voice is authority, authority is reputation, reputation is all.
7. Provides grappling hooks out to social media to accomplish #2.
8. Shares values and nonverbals communication such as WE LISTEN (especially when you curate or incorporate content from users).
9. Promotes User Generated Content (they won't share if you don't).
10. Define your USP and UCA (Unique Selling Proposition and Unique Customer Aspiration).
YES, we live in a post content-shock world, but construct a website without a voice and see how it performs (it won't). Stories, shared intimacy and risk form the basis of any successful online community. Remember 1:9:90 Rule says 1% of a site's visitors will advocate and share valuable UGC (User Generated Content), 9% will vote and share especially content from the highly trusted 1%ers and 90% read and visit (important to traffic numbers but hard to engage).
We used to think content and voice was the ante for an Ambassador Program or the creation of valuable brand advocates and Sheraps. Team Curagami changed our mind recently and now advise customers such as Moon-Audio.com (manufacturers amazing audio cables and sells high-end headphones and earphones) to ASK for help NOW.
Continue to develop content and voice since the more trusted you are the greater chance you have at the gold at the end of the web marketing rainbow - sustainable online community. BUT ASK FOR HELP immediately, specifically and often.
Such a great post by Jody I couldn't help adding a riff from my experience as a content marketer, content curator and former Ecommerce Director. Added to Startups Revolution because content marketing is one of the rocks many startups get hung upon. Don't over think content marketing and create something daily.
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![Want Trusted Content? Startups Do 10 Things [+4 From @Scenttrail] | Startup Revolution | Scoop.it](https://img.scoop.it/CJNVsTM7hCTvHwOkGrOBczl72eJkfbmt4t8yenImKBVvK0kTmF0xjctABnaLJIm9)
Marty Note On Developing Trusted Content
Startups must create content to develop trust and community. Content marketing. and this may be a surprise to some, is not an end unto itself. You create and share content to help, educate and share. Startups should create content to develop a self-sustaining community.
Sharing content requires being vulnerable, real and authentic. The six tips from the linked post focus on creating honest communication. My 4 content marketing tips describe how to create content sure to be shared (a form of trust), built upon and provide the feedback loops you need to run an online business:
Six Content Tips (from the link)
* Eliminate Hype.
* Make Your Content As Unbiased as possible.
* Present alternative perspectives (from trusted leaders and gurus).
* Include objective research.
* Beware of product pitches (just say NO to product pitches).
* Proclaim your identity (be honestly who you ARE as any disparity creates dissonance).
Marty's 4 Content Marketing Tips (to promote shares and feedback)
* End with a question asking for feedback & don't mind if none comes (1:9:90 Rule says only about 10% of your visitors are going to engage with your content is ways you can see).
* Shorten your sentences & paragraphs and lose the conjunctions and personal pronouns.
* Create short (10 words or less) headlines with "grabbers".
* Create, shoot or develop original art.
Questions are great. We use questions in three ways:
* We ask and then answer our own question as a way to engage a clear line of reasoning and thinking.
* We ask contextually relevant questions at the end of a post looking for feedback on a reader's experience.
* We ask and leave open questions in heading sand sub-heads to promote the content as answer reading the curiosity of a question prompts.
Short and Sweet
Shorten and create SEO writing. SEO writing is reducing your "stop words" such as personal pronouns or other words search spiders can't understand. SEO may be out of favor these days, but those "spider tips" apply to creating content to promote online readership and engagement too. Think Hemingway more than Faulkner.
Original Art
Startups shouldn't use stock photography. Stock creates dissonance with any startup's main positioning. All startups are claiming to be smarter and more creative than the other guy. When you use sock you look just like the other guy. Just say NO to stock no matter how much your designer wants to use it. CORNED use stock but ask your design team to create unique edits and perspectives so your stock doesn't look like everyone else.
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Rescooped by Martin (Marty) Smith from Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight |
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Last month, 14% of our website visitors AND new contacts came from Pinterest. Pretty good, right?
Well, for one of our clients, 48 percent of his traffic 57% of new contacts came from Pinterest.
...This example of the smoothie recipes is almost too easy. I know. But that doesn’t mean your landscaping company has no choice but to create ebooks about smoothies! Let’s say you created an ebook on starting a vegetable garden. The planning process may be broken down into a few steps. Then there is preparation, a trip to the nursery or hardware store, etc. Each of those steps could use its own pinnable image. You could either create one template and change out the text. Or, you could use colorful images of vegetables and gardens with some text outlining a specific tip or step in the process.
And that, my friends, is my #1 tip for how to get massive numbers of leads from Pinterest.
On Pinterest, it's all about the pictures. Here's how to get better results.
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CrowdFunde Accepted Triangle Startup (TSF) Factory
Thanks to friends who wrote cards and letters and thanks to the team at Triangle Startup Factory, our Durham, NC based startup incubator, who are willing to take a risk on CrowdFUnde as we smash content marketing and crowdfunding together to see what happens.
Our TSF session starts March 10th and we hope you will join us as we share this great startup adventure.
CrowdFunde
http://www.crowdfunde.com
Haiku Deck Pitch to TSF
http://shar.es/QFOzU
Triangle Startup Factory
http://thestartupfactory.co/
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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.
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Netflix-ification
While we wont all become a digital media download artist we will all go through four stages of growth hacking:
* Disruptive Technology - used to consolidate a market (i.e. Blockbuster) and map a future.
* Online Community - learning to curate instead of create.
* Engine Phase - putting in less to get more out.
* Return as Creator - informed by Big Data and able to make "community based" bets.
Want to learn your future? Take a look at Netflix's immediate past.
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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).
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Rescooped by Martin (Marty) Smith from Expertiential Design |
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Marty Note
The linked post is important, but not for the reasons they think. The post mentions the factoid that most people wouldn't mind if 73% of brands disappeared. The post discusses brands like Tom's who wins hearts and minds with cause marketing.
We love Tom's too. Yes, what you do with customer money is important these days. We prefer the Cone Communications (http://www.conecomm.com/ ) "social good" study that shows a growing trend. Consumers what to know how your STUFF helps change the world.
People don't BUY brands they JOIN them.
Faith Popcorn
Marketing guru Faith Popcorn's quote is a favorite. We would reposition the linked post toward the more important question - how is your brand creating sustainable community. Since most of http://www.Curagami.com customers are online merchants we would write the goal as, "How is your brand creating sustainable ONLINE community".
Online community is the secret to branding and engagement over time. We think of loyalty with two dimensions:
* Engagement over TIME (joining and visiting).
* Advocacy (willing to share with friends).
Every visitor can achieve #1, but a tiny % of your website's traffic will ever do #1 due to the 1:9:90 Rule. The 1:9:90 Rule explains the strange math of website visitors:
1% Contributors - 1% of your traffic will contribute content such as comments, reviews and the social shares such User Generated Content (UGC) generate.
9% Supporters - this group loves to share your content especially if it came from the 1%ers.
90% Readers - More important than their label makes them sound, Readders are the core of your visitors and so essential to SEO and your expanding web universe.
The trick to web marketing few discuss is converting that tribe of Contributors, Supporters and Readers into a sustainable online community. Branding creates the shorthand your Contributors and Supports use to ADVOCATE.
When you market by proxy, you are using Contributors and Supporters to reach their friends, you must encapsulate deep meaning into shareable "Made To Stick" bits and bytes. Your advocates can't share if your message is too complicated, so boil it down, mix it up and test, test and test some more. In there somewhere is the strange alchemy your brand needs to compel action (joining and advocating) and so win hearts, minds and loyalty.
BTW, I bent this post toward startups because every startup is tabula rasa when it comes to branding. Startups are blank slates written on by every piece of content, social share and tool created. We don't brand in order to create loyalty we win hearts, minds and loyalty in order to create brands and First Rule of Branding is what the linked post has backwards.
According to a survey, most people would not care if 73% of the brands would disappear!?
Share your latest experience on what your favorite brands are doing to earn your Loyalty, and ultimately your Advocacy?
It does start with earning your #trust.
Great insight @annettefranz @SDLjames with strong value connections @TOMS @USAA
"Most people worldwide would not care if more than 73% of brand disappeared." So, are companies wasting their money on advertisements and marketing; since, most people won't care about weather the brand will disappeared or not?! People who have brand loyalty are supposed to care if the brand they are loyal to will be available or not on the future. Also would these people considered faithful to their brand if they don't care?
What are brands might been doing wrong with customers?
don't focus on the customersare not providing value relative to priceare not providing value relative to the competition/alternativeshave broken customers' trustdon't deliver on their promisesdon't care about customersdon't meet customer expectationsare not innovative (think "same old same old")deliver a fragmented or poor experienceWith all of these point, the relationship between them and their customers will be broken. Therefore, companies should focus more on their customers and design a good customer experience. Companies shouldn't only care about making money, they should also care and focus about being a part of something that matters to people and mean something to them.
Most of the article was asking questions and some questions didn't have answers in the article, they are open for general thinking and answering. It's interesting about how most people won't care if a brand disappeared on the future; for me I would! Of course life won't stop and new brands will enter the market. However, Some brands people got used to it and can's change that easily; the example of Apple. I also found it important about what they mentioned for customers relationship with the company. In my opinion, companies that focuses more on their relationship with their customers and making sure to build an experience with their customers are more successful than companies that focusses on making profits and increase their revenue. I a customer became loyal to a company and he had an experience with that company, he won't mind paying more on that company's goods. The reason is that the company had built a trust and an experience to that customer so he will be faithful and he would care about the brand and the company.
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Scooped by Martin (Marty) Smith |
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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
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BURN DOWN YOUR WEBSITE.
Beat the rush. Have courage, light a match, become a NOWIST :). M
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Quality Deserves Freshness QDF is important to "new SEO". This post & Haiku Deck share marketing, tactics & strategy tips so QDF works for not against you.
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Scooped by Martin (Marty) Smith |
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Know thyself is great Internet marketing advice and this post helps explain how to define your Unique Selling Propositions and Unique Customer Aspirations.
UCA is the startups secret weapon. When you are aligned to UCA your startup scales. When your ideas are out of alignment or not communicated well (been there, done that) your startup doesn't scale.
Wrote this piece for Atlantic BT during my tenure as Marketing Director.
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Curagami Scores
We've tuned our Curgami engine to evaluate three website and brand CSFs (Critical Success Factor):
* Content.
* Community.
* Conversion.
The tool creates unique metrics such as Link Efficiency Indexes (LEI) to evaluate a website, close competitors and it establishes "best practice" averages viral content, sustainable community and asynchronous conversion ideas (not going up against a competitor's strength).
We started our journey to answer a simple question:
What content should a website create and why?
That simple question has soaked up six months of our lives and tens of thousands of our investors' cash. Good news is we are seeing light at the end of the tunnel. Will your website WIN armed with a Curgami Score Report?
Yes :). Marty & Team Curagami
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Without revenue a small business is just a hobby. So, how does a typical small business go about getting clients and revenue?
Without revenue a small business is just a hobby.
Typical small business marketing follows a path of diminishing returns.
Great Curatti.com post by @CogentCoach Michael Nelson. Agree, " Without revenue a small business is just a hobby." Also agree, " Typical small business marketing follows a path of diminishing returns", but have a thought to add there.
Michael discusses the diminishing returns of a reference network that slowly decays out (from previous employer). Diminish returns also applies to many things Small to Medium Sized Business do to "advertise" their business.
All the networking, advertising and hand wringing a SMB does WITHOUT a viable website / blog is diminished by more than half. The ONLY way to assure what you did today GROWS is to create a "getting bigger everyday" online presence (period, full stop).
Important to find marketing that produces the opposite of "diminishing returns', marketing where you get MORE back from less effort over time. Michael describes this well too:
This saturation and frequency of use make digital marketing a great option for marketing and building relationships with your prospects and clients.
"While digital marketing is a great option, it is a confusing milieu of platforms, services, tools, etc. Rather than chasing about trying to do a bit of everything, it’s best to create a system and measure your results. When you get comfortable, you can add a bit more or expand your reach with your system."
"Create a system" or as P&G taught me all those years ago, "Work your plan" is important. Here are some tips for that system:
* Do a core set of activities DAILY.
* Always reserve 20% (or so) of your time to test new ideas, tools, websites, and partners.
* Reserve another 20% of your time to respond to and curate content from your previously shared content.
* Follow people who help you (since it is an online Thank You Note) and follow people you can learn from.
* Keep life and business in balance and don't get discouraged since it can take months or a year before content marketing begins to scale.
* Don't worry about "breaking" anything. Internet marketing is like building sand castles on the beach and the tide is always about to come in.
* Learn to SURF trends, don't try and wrestle them.
Great post and YES you must build a viable, sustainable and growing Digital Marketing Ecosystem if you want to do anything these days.
Marty
