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Medium's Read Time App and Scoop.it's Lean Content
This Curagami post shares KUDOS for Guillaume Decugis and the @scoopit team. Medium's making their read time app, somethg they call Readism, available across the web is sure to hasten every prediction Guilluame and company made about lean content marketing several years ago.
Medium's new "app" is a Chrome extension. If you are creating content and NOT using it you're nuts. We decided to make two posts instead of one when we saw six minute read time on our lean content + tools riff.
We wanted to add a few tools to Scoop.it's Why Lean Content Is The Future of Content Marketingpost. We wanted to add:
- Haiku Deck (like more than Slideshare)
- Feedly Pro (so you have a site)
But their side did say "many more", so we will save our 1,000 word six minute read content curation tools post for tomorrow. In the meantime, if you're not using Medium's read time app Readism and you use content to market online you're nuts.
http://www.curagami.com/lean-content-marketing-medium-cool/
Blogging & Content Curation
Does Blogging Matter looks at the dissonance between the way we create content (bell curve) and the way content marketing is consumed (power distribution).
This Curagami post shares the natural friction between how we need to create content (in order to learn) and market pressures to improve at a supernatural rate. Content curation is how we bridge the content marketing gap.
Learn More
http://www.curagami.com/does-blogging-matter/?v=7516fd43adaa
Content curation is key for Small To Medium Sized Businesses (SMBs) online success & Scoop.it's new Content Director makes curation a marketing reality.
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
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.
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
How Netflix + Roku Is Changing Content Curation In Competitors Beware Ways.
In last 15 years, eCommerce marketing has evolved a lot. It's no longer confined to keyword stuffing or PPC. In 2013, website optimization, guest blogging and responsive design was in vogue.
* Mobile optimization: Agree!
* Mobile advertising: Agree!
* Targeting wearable devices: Too Early (talk about more than target in 2014).
* Long-form content: Agree! (stories are about to rule the world).
* Social and search ads: Agree!
* Authorship branding: Agree!
* Omni-channel user experience: Agree!
* Better delivery: Agree!
Local SEO: For some this makes sense.
* Marketing automation: Harder to imagine in Ecom, but open to the idea of it.
Via YDeveloper
Startup Tips From CEO Dognition - The Personality Test For Dogs
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/ .
From Journalism.co.uk: "The content curation website Bundlr has just announced a new version of its service which allows for embedding of content from a wide range of sources.
By partnering with Embedly the site now supports over 200 sources of content, including Storify, Pinterest and Amazon, for users to add to their bundles.
Embedly is the service that the new version of Twitter uses to embed photographs and articles in your Twitter stream and is used by a host of other sites such as Reddit and Bitly and comes as a WordPress plugin.
While Bundlr was originally seen as an alternative to sites like Storify, which can be used to create stories from curated links and content, Bundlr's focus is now on creating a top-level resource for curated content around a story or topic."
(Source: Journalism.co.uk)
Try it out: http://bundlr.com/
Via Robin Good
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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.
@Kelly Hungerfordand @Ally Greermay be the best community managers on the planet. We included our favorite storyteller / teacher ( @Dr. Karen Dietz since online communities will become more and more about stories (yours and THEIRS where theirs = customers and brand advocates).
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:
Via Brian Yanish - MarketingHits.com
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 .
If you love using Scoop.it we have a job for you. CrowdFunde, a Durham NC startup, is searching for the top 10 content curators in the world. CrowdFunde is a new company dedicated to helping websites, brands and companies tap wisdom of crowds.
And we need 10 great content curators to help!
If you are a great content curator we want to recognize your contribution, pay you to do something you love and include you in a cool new company about to change the way ecommerce merchants create content marketing and the way content marketers know what content to create.
If you are a great curator we hope you will apply at CrowdFunde.com
http://www.crowdfunde.com/top-curator-contest-crowdfunde-hiring/
Robin Good: Pathbrite is a new web service which allows you to collect, bring together and layout any kind of media content (from video clips, to images and text) to create a visually compelling personal portfolio of skills and experiences. In fact, Pathbrite can be used for any number of purposes that involve creating a good looking web presence in which one can easily bring together different types of content to create a "collection". A music band video portfolio, a photographer book and list of achievements, a sport master illustrated hall of fame. From the official site: "Curate all your stuff to create beautiful portfolios.
Arrange and describe all your digital artifacts in a way that tells your whole story—tailored for any audience."
"Pathbrite ePortfolios are the best way to collect, track and showcase a lifetime of learning and achievements, and to get recommended pathways for continuous success." Key traits: -> Aggregate everything about you in one place. -> Import anything digital from any source, including a resume, documents, audio, video, recommendations.
-> Publish and share your story on Pathbrite or with your selected social networks.
-> Configure and personalize the layout of your portfolio. Examples: https://beta.pathbrite.com/#!/public/Gallery/Collection%20of%20example%20portfolios ; Try it out now: www.pathbrite.com
***** Looks like Robin found another great tool. Marty
Via Robin Good
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![Top 10 eCommerce Marketing Trends For 2014 [+ @Scenttrail Take] | Startup Revolution | Scoop.it](https://img.scoop.it/C1w3rPjE-r1DZKyDwRXVUzl72eJkfbmt4t8yenImKBVvK0kTmF0xjctABnaLJIm9)
