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

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 :).

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/

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

Warren Buffet's tips for startups as Bill Gates says, "Stick 'em up
Finishing our Haiku Deck Analysis (Scooped here http://sco.lt/80QYs5 and on Curagami here http://www.curagami.com/featured/buffet-tools-conversations-top-haiku-decks/ ) we were surprised how much our #1 views deck: Startup Tips From Warren Buffett is in front of #2 (Content Marketing Tools).

Fuffett is 35% ahead in views, but Warren is NOT the most shared. That honor goes to our fastest scaling deck ever - The Invisible Giant: Why The New SEO Is So Hard To See (http://shar.es/11X9fa ).

If you are a startup the Oracle of Omaha has tips for you and our tip is to use Haiku Deck. .

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).  

Every Startup Is An Elephant High Jumper
Every startup entrepreneur reading this knows what I'm talking about. Everyday team Curagami (http://www.curagami.com) tries to make the graceful dancing and jumping elephants we see so well in our mind, dreams and brainstorms.

We rub the bottle hoping for I Dream of Jeanie.

We know ODDS and OBSTRUCTION are against us. In the boring world of limited possibilities elephants don't dance. In our world elephants sit at the table and worry about their hair before a night of Disco Inferno.

It is not that our dreams are unrealistic. All dreams are unrealistic. No, the real challenge is in turning the crank ONE MORE TIME. When we rode bicycles from Durham to Santa Monica there were days when that single thought was all we (really me since the rest of the team was 20 years younger lol) could think about.

Turn the crank one more time.

Don't give up. Never give up because you can ONLY discover what it looks like to see NO MORE ROAD by continuing to turn the crank. And on that day, the day when you see nothing but ocean, you will have achieved something NO ONE can take from you ever - the knowledge that YES Elephants can jump of the moon as every startup knows.

Here's hoping YOUR startup elephant is a jumper :).

Marty & Team Curagami,
American Tobacco Campus, Durham, NC

Help A Startup Over The 4th of July Holiday
If you have 15 minutes you can help a startup over the 4th. We are trying to keep this, our first, ASK to 15 minutes or less. Click 3 links and answer 3 questions and your feedback will help a startup!

Will post our landing page link as soon as we finish making it (lol). In the meantime checkout our Evolution of Web Design & Marketing infographic: http://www.Curagami.com .

Great Daniel Ek +Spotify Founder Interview On Utilities As Experiences
Great conversation with Spotify's Swedish founder on +The Charlie Rose Show… - Martin W. Smith - Google+

"Startups face tremendous pressure while competing with their bigger counterparts. They neither have large manpower nor big infrastructure. Social media can become an effective solution in helping them grow. This infographic shows how startups should utilize the power of social media."

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. 
 

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.

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.

The Startup Factory fundeded startup Curagami launches its new content marketing roi tools into "friends beta". What's your Curagami Score? #helpastartup

& THANKS from Team Curagami

http://www.curagami.com/friends-beta/

Curagami & The Ecommerce Revolution Played Triangle Startup Factory's Pitchday today discussing how how to fix ecommerce marketing with Curagami.

How Netflix + Roku Is Changing Content Curation In Competitors Beware Ways.

Lunch With Smart Dogs at Triangle Startup Factory
Kip Frey (www.linkedin.com/pub/kip-frey/36/b09/384 pictured in middle above) is a smart entrepreneur who one might say has "gone to the dogs". Kip spoke at Free Lunch Friday at +Triangle StartUp Factory today about Dognition (https://www.dognition.com/ ).

Dognition is a Myers/Briggs personality test for dogs. During an hour long fascinating conversation Kip made several points we've heard consistently from Chris and Dave at TSF such as:

* Ideas that "seem true" create their own momentum.
* Look for ideas that "create a new category".
* Ideas with great partnership hooks work best since partners help create scale with OPL (Other Poeple's Lists) and OPC (Other People's Content).

Dognition is a cool idea since we humans are always anthropomorphizing our animals. Now you can do a test AT HOME with your dog to figure out which one of 9 classifications your dog's personality falls within. You can compare your dog to dogs in your area, across the country or possibly the world (soon Kip mentioned they are already speaking to interested parties in China).

I found Kip and Dognition's #brandingstrategy fascinating. Kip and the team at Dognition spent a year working on the #DIY version of their test. They needed enough data shared by "citizen scientists" after taking their test that the hard work created in the lab held up even in the DIY home version.

"I think people are more interested in their dogs than in their DNA," Kip said at one point and I agree. There are 70M dog owning families in America (so one in three roughly) and each year brings 7M new dogs to market.

_____________________________________
Branding            vs                   Scale

The tension between creating a brand with meaning and the scale necessary to support that meaning was interesting. Kip decided to do a deal with Purina One to gain scale. Sounds like he had to defend the sizable deal with his board because they were worried about "brand purity".

#branding is tricky. Too much scale too fast could marginalize the brand. The science at the core of the test is something that could be seen as goofy in the wrong context. By doing an exclusive with Purina One for 2014 Dognition gets millions in partner ad dollars - the test is a freebie if dog owners complete a 28 day "Purina One 28 Day Challenge" (http://www.purinaone.com/dogs/28-Day-Challenge/main-page ).

Cool promo and great legitimacy for Dognition and possibly just the right amount of scale. Partnerships bring interesting challenges. Dognition can get swallowed whole by Purina, and can anyone spot the BIG #socialmarketing error on the Purina One challenge page? http://www.purinaone.com/dogs/28-Day-Challenge/main-page

ERROR - Love that Purina is using Tweets, but seeing 46 day old Tweets HURTS the social legitimacy of their campaign. A 46 day old tweet from a customer is fine IN ROTATION, but what if the only representation I see has old content?

When curating old and new social content from Purina and users always have something in the roll that is current, only several hours hold max. Using customer Tweets is brave, but stale in its current implementation. Even if the Purina staff creates Tweets today that related to something that happened 46 days ago have something current on social.

Building  a #story off of #UGC is what +CrowdFunde is all about. Conversations require different #contentcuration and #contentcreation than promotional push. Purina One's misuse of #SMM is a perfect validation for a tool like CrowdFunde that helps create, curate and converse with the most valuable content on earth - User Generated Content (UGC).

By isolating old tweets without a clear understanding about why they are there, other than being self congratulatory, Purina destroys what they hope to build - active, alive conversations.

We think Dognition will have great conversations since learning your dog's personality feels like something MADE for social shares, but HOW you share social conversations is tricky as a big brand like Purina proves. Turning conversations into #engagemn and #loyalty is trickier still.

Cool talk today with many lessons for #startups and #Internetmarketers . Dognition is going to be on 60 Minutes in April and they will have a reality TV show on Nat Geo Wild so conversations will happen. Team at CrowdFunde wishes our fellow Durham #startup   luck and a free CrowdFunde installation if they want to discover how to build community on a scale hard to knock down or duplicate...because building ongoing engagement after initial novelty is based on the quality, frequency and value of Dognition's (and any brand's) CONVERSATIONS!

Thanks to Kip for speaking with TSF startups today! Marty

PS. Kip asked for feedback on the Dognition site and since I know there are a lot of ecommerce conversion experts that follow me send me your thoughts and I will pull together 5 to 10 "would be better if" kinds of feedback for https://www.dognition.com/ .