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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
Discover the trends shaping a new online commerce on Curagami: http://www.curagami.com/new-ecommerce-5-crucial-trends/?v=7516fd43adaa
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.
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.
Marty's Paper.li Story
About a week after starting as Atlantic BT's, largest web dev shop in Triangle area of NC, new Marketing Director my boss & founder / CEO Jon Jordan asked me, "What's this Paper.li" thing.
Jon's displeasure was obvious. I explained how Paper.li is a "get more, do less" content curation tool. Jon said, "It doesn't look like us," and I had to agree. My question back to Jon was, "Is 'looking like us' important," and you can guess his response.
To his credit, Jon asked me to do an analysis before shooting the limping horse. I also related our previous conversation about the "creation of a commons". On my second day as Marketing Director for ABT Jon and Mark Foulkrod, then COO, confessed a concern.
"We think you will steal from us," Mark said straight out (that is the way Mark is). The comment surprised me so I asked the right question. "Why are you worried and what do you think I will 'steal","I asked.
Jon shared the story of a previous employee who "blogged for himself on our dime". I never met the person, but I explained ABT had little or nothing I could "steal".
It was my turn to shock them. I shared how, at that time, ABT's Klout score was 19 while mine was 45. Together, I went on to explain, we were stronger than either apart. We would create a commons mingling my content, ABT's and curating in other content from gurus, thought leaders and ABT customers to create a "rising tide" sure to lift their online reputation boat and mine.
"You will gain more if only due to our starting points," I shared. At the end of my tenure (December 2013) ABT's Klout score was 50, a 233% increase. Mine was 65, a 44% bump.
Paper.li and Scoop.it were MAJOR contributors to the rising tide of ABT's commons. Scoop.it helped test content marketing ideas and Paper.li creates more community faster for LESS work than any tool I know or use (and I use a passel of 'em).
The brilliance behind Paper.li, that they present an algorithm filter of content you've already shared and or mashedup, makes it the GREATEST and most under utilized (and just about the cheapest) content curation tool.
Startups are so WIDGET FOCUSED they don't think about the day they want to share their widget with the world. Paper.li is guaranteed to make "sharing day" easier and for the cost of...well just about NOTHING a startup receives a powerful ally. If you are a starutp or Internet marketer and DON'T use my friends in Switzerland's coolest tool since sliced bread you are nuts.
Oh, btw, when I shared data showing Paper.li was the most powerful community creation tool we had Jon and Mark didn't care if it "looked like us" or not (lol).
** PS. Paper.lis great community manager @Kelly Hungerford just pointed out that if Paper.li had CSS and templating options then ABT's Paper.li would have looked like them. M
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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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.
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.
15 Ways To FUNK UP Your Startup
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.
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.
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.
Via Jeff Domansky
Never Ending Battle Truth, Justice & American Way
Tough "Dog Days" of summer for "Super Hero" marketing tactics. Here is a list of the dead and dying tactics:
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).
Many of these "SMB" tactics are in a startup's launch plan too. Good luck with that. Startups have to double down on asynchronous tactics since their money is tight and they have little or no brand awareness yet.
Favorite startup asynchronous tactics of ours include:
* OPN (tap Other People's Networks).
* OPM (tap Other People's Money via crowdfunding).
* Crowdfunding.
* Friends-of-Friends marketing.
* Community (start handing of the keys to your content early).
* Partnerships.
* OPC (Other People's Content via content curation with attribution(.
* Video Marketing (learning curve and expense scares most away).
* Events.
* Training.
* Contests & Games.
That last bullet can be especially powerful for startups. Remember to create tools needed to empower advocates, contributors and Sherpas. Make it easy to help you by providing graphical tools, listening and curating content into a social space (curation is a form of social reward).
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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)
