Startup Revolution

Emperors of Chocolate & New SEO
How would my former employer M&M/Mars or our arch rival Hershey react to the new SEO? Not so great. This is how the door gets opened for "clean slate" brands savvy at social media and who don't have a hundred years of built up animosity.  

Could a new candy company focused on social media and the web survive? Might be a long time before the giants even knew an upstart was around. First company to become the Emperor of online CONTENT wins :). so YES a new candy company could disrupt the space.  

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