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Brands should take inspiration from the motivation behind love letters when they communicate with their customers. Marketers can unlock the value of users’ 
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Adding Scoopit Magazines
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Netflix-ification * 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.
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Two of my 3 #mustfollow content curators will be familiar to many Scoopiteers:
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We have put together a list of tools that can help you create amazing visual content like infographics, memes, gifs, etc. Must read for every online marketer. Great list mostly new to me. Missing one of my favorite visual marketing tools Haiku Deck: http://haikudeck.com/ . Haiku Deck is much more than a simple UI on the Creative Commons. If you are SMART you will use Haiku and some of these other #cooltools to create the kind of arresting visual marketing we all need and aspire to daily.
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Marty Note * Advocacy (willing to share with friends). Via Eric_Determined / Eric Silverstein, Michael Allenberg
Eric_Determined / Eric Silverstein's curator insight,
November 7, 2014 2:07 PM
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 
Ahmed Alkandari's curator insight,
November 15, 2014 9:01 PM
"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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Crowdfunding Where BUZZ Lives In Time For the Holidays * Crazy Guy / Girl in basement is a compelling aspirational story.
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Suggested by Marius Fermi |
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![10 Truths of Simply Selling [Slidedeck] | Tactical Sales | Startup Revolution | Scoop.it](https://img.scoop.it/FiJaKZLkBBAnSaVtlJNpszl72eJkfbmt4t8yenImKBVvK0kTmF0xjctABnaLJIm9)
It’s time we take a step back, away from all of the ideas and best practices of sales and the art that is selling and consider what the simple, indisputable truths are of selling.
A tad "old school" but helpful selling tips such as:
#1 Initiating Contact
#2 Quick Qualification
#3 Demonstrate Your Offer
etc.
There are 10 similar "sales 101" tips. P&G taught me an excellent format to tell a sales story (back in the day lol):
Summarize The Situation (set up your pitch factually)
State The Idea (clear, short, punchy)
Explain How It Works (use examples and made to stick analogies)
Share Benefits (only two benefits make or save money)
We BUY with EMOTION and that format is organized around logic, but skillful salespeople know how to weave that format into what feels like a spontaneous and relevant story.
One of my favorite quotes is the old Indian saying:
Tell me a fact and I’ll learn. Tell me a truth and I’ll believe. But tell me a story and it will live in my heart forever.
Use the P&G format to organize but then riff a story, follow up with relevant links and social media to "simply sell" today.
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Scooped by Martin (Marty) Smith |
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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 E-Learning-Inclusivo (Mashup) |
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For entrepreneurs, time is especially precious. Every wasted minute is a lost opportunity for networking, growing the business, and of course making money.
It's handy having all of these on one page.
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Rescooped by Martin (Marty) Smith from MarketingHits |
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New business, major ambitions, no budget… now what? You know your startup brand should have a Twitter account, the marketing opportunities can rocket your company into the big leagues.
It’s a free platform that puts businesses on a level playing field, where a decent Tweet can reach up to 271 million active users at an unprecedented speed. Using it correctly unlocks a huge return with little to no financial investment.
That sounds perfect – if you wanted to reach an audience of that size on almost any other medium you’d be paying an amount of money that most small businesses in the US could only dream of.
Getting a solid foothold on Twitter can be a challenge if your brand isn’t established yet. But Twitter users follow at least 5 brands on average, so they’re willing to be courted by you if you can appeal to them.
This means that in every industry there are startups using Twitter to grow their audience, increase their leads, help their customers, and ultimately improve their bottom line. Here’s how you can be one of them:
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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
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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
Yeah, every startup I've ever met or worked on should be reading this post. Content marketing and content curation is so much more important than any startup team realizes and as this post proves. The first startup with a Chief Content Officer is something you should invest in.
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Steal These 5 Netflix Marketing Ideas
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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 :).
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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/
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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.
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Free Genius Lunches in Columbus Ohio
I'm living in Columbus, Ohio at the Blackwell Inn on the Ohio State University's campus from now until December 3rd (being treated by Dr. Byrd at the James Cancer Center). I love meeting, discussing and learning from fellow startups, entrepreneurs, artists and cool smart people.
I'm stealing @Phil Buckley Genius Lunch idea to see what is happening in Columbus. Team Curagami stands ready to answer Internet marketing questions and learn new tips, tricks and ideas. If you would like to have a Genius Lunch in Columbus check the calendar and email when you would like to meet.
Lear More Here
http://bit.ly/Free-Genius-Lunch-Columbus
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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
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Scooped by Martin (Marty) Smith |
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BURN DOWN YOUR WEBSITE.
Beat the rush. Have courage, light a match, become a NOWIST :). M
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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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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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The Curagami Story
Curagami was launched by Martin Smith and co-founder Phil Buckley when they found a need in the marketplace they felt was not being served and a window of opportunity.
Curagami helps ecommerce merchants discover the "new ecom" where commerce and content live harmoniously together. This is their story.
Marty Note
Great write up by @Lori Wilk about our #startup Curagami.
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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. .
Reading this now for comments tomorrow.