Curation Revolution

Biggest challenge to great web marketing may be learning to THINK like an Internet marketer. Here are 5 Secret Tips to help you become a great IMer.

Every online transaction started with a conversation and that why conversations are the new money and the rocket fuel creating the New Ecommerce Revolution.

 Newsjacking the Super Bowl with Dr. Dre
How Dr. Dre, Richard Sherman & Beats By Dre Headphones NEWSJACKED the super bowl with brilliant Internet marketing furthering the company's dominance.

Beats by Dre put on an impressive NEWSJACK last week. Richard Sherman made the "slow news week" before Super Bowl Hype starts this week anything but slow. Beats by Dre, the dominant high-end headphone company founded by the rapper and entrepreneur showed just how to surf a massive traffic wave with an impressive multi-channel attack:

* BeatsbyDre.com has Richard Sherman on its cover.
* Richard Sherman's picture is magically linked to every model of noise canceling headphone the company sells (neat trick that).
* Richard Sherman is on the company's GPlus page.
* The company’s Richard Sherman ad almost has 2M views on YouTube.

Great lessons from a brilliant Internet marketing team on how to make an event YOURS for a fraction of the cost advertisers will sped for a single 30 second ad.

Can a soda machine teach important Intenret markeitng lessons? Yep, the brilliant Coke Feestyle machine is a stduy in Lego-like building simple, adding touch so even complex things feel easy and the "appification" of everything.

We share ideas for how to move Coke Freestyle machines into an Internet of things by using a mobile app to create community and gamify their very cool soda machine: :

• Connect machines to the web and show top choices for this location.
• Also show top "downloads" from major related cities (Charlotte or Austin for Raleigh).
• Widgetize the "popular soda" app so it can be easily shared on blogs.
• Have a contest on who can create the most tasty new flavor. 
• Show a video on how to create new favors. 
• Create FourSquare-like mobile - Freestyle games and interactions.

Discovered the strange secret of Internet marketing last week. We lucky few Internet marketers must do some things BECAUSE everyone is doing them. We violate these "conventions" at our risk, but we can't stop there.

We can't stop with mere emulation of current convention because there is no money to be made there. Our Internet marketing must win hearts, minds, love and advocacy to become increasingly valuable. We can't win brand advocates by copying others.

We must take the risk of passionate disruption. Disruption in Internet marketing is a tricky business. Too little disruption and your Internet marketing is conventional and boring. Too much disruption and your Internet marketing is speaking to itself about itself.

Testing is the best way to find the thin and ever-changing line between conventional boring and just the right amount of loyalty creating disruption. This @HaikuDeck is about how and why your Internet marketing must "think" asynchronously. Why you must disrupt to win.

Papa and Marketing Got A Brand New Bag
This post is about the triptych of The Ask, The Give and The Share and how those marketing actions create The Commons.

The Commons, that special place where the sum is greater than the parts. The commons is where the Holy Grail of authority lives, where we collaboratively compete and all of our Google dreams are answered,

Swarms, Storms and Flocks

As a Director of Ecommerce I became fascinated with swarms, storms and flocks. Things happen inside the world’s largest content network for reasons that are beyond logical explanation. As the founder of Cure Cancer Starter, a crowdfunding platform for cancer research, I am fascinated with swarms, storms and flocks again. 

Swarm Storms is my name for the strange combination sentient mob behavior. Much like ants and bees the web forms with a collective consciousness that can feint and move like a school of fish or a flock of birds. 

If you've ever been fishing just prior to a storm you know the activity gets fast and furious before stopping almost entirely. Fish feel changes in pressure and react. Storms influence the creation and path of swarms.

Much of Internet marketing is weather forecasting. You model and predict where you thin your Internet marketing and website need to go. Sometimes you want to be out of the path of the storm while other storms you want to ride like a wave. 

All Internet marketers are weather forecasters and swarm storm creators. The linked post is the first post on swarm creation from Swarmise, a new book by Swedish political activist Rick Falkvinge. His a piece from the post describing a "swarm organization":
 

Excerpt 
"A swarm organization is a decentralized, collaborative effort of volunteers that looks like a hierarchical, traditional organization from the outside. It is built by a small core of people that construct a scaffolding of go-to people, enabling a large number of volunteers to cooperate on a common goal in quantities of people not possible before the net was available.

Working with a swarm requires you to do a lot of things completely in opposite from what you learn at an archetypal business school. You need to release the control of your brand and its messages.

You need to delegate authority to the point where anybody can make almost any decision for the entire organization. You need to accept and embrace that people in the organization will do exactly as they please, and the only way to lead is to inspire them to want to go where you want the organization as a whole to go."

*****
Rick is sharing the book one chapter at a time online. Stay tuned and buy the book when it comes out in the summer.  

This post helps lawyers understand how to create an online brand, tell stories with keywords, support with social media, and create websites that WIN.

Social Media Reach Is Dead, Long Live Content Curation & Cmmunity
@Guillaume Decugis  was nice enough to ask me to weigh in on his blog post. He knew it wouldn't be hard for me to write 1,000 words on something that I feel strongly about - what will tomorrow's marketing look like.

Little is certain OTHER than tomorrow's marketing will be very different than today's and unrecognizable from yesterdays. The post on G+ shares my reaction to Guillaume's post along with as much Nostradamas as I can muster at midnight after a long day.

The core is YES content curation is going to be an integral part of the friends of friends marketing creating community we see at our Triangle Startup Factory funded startup called Curagami (http://www.curagami.com ).

One BIG THING we've already learned is RESPECT, ADMIRATION and enough envy to fuel a train for what Marc, Guillaume, Ally and the Scoopiteers created. The post discusses how any cause moves from passion, through to business and finally into quackery.

That evolution is why all tactical online marketing is dead man walking. The key is winning and keeping hearts and minds. Certainly content curation is going to be HUGE in winning the LOVE any successful brand or online presence will require to be successful in tomorrow's marketing. Are there a few other things? You bet and I tried to share all of the hard won lessons about content, community and love team Curagami is learning.

My G+ Post
https://plus.google.com/102639884404823294558/posts/i1fzgtror51

Downloading the Vocus paper Monitoring The Social Media Conversation: From Facebook to Twitter via CIO Whie Papers is a pain. The paper helps explain what Curagami is all about. The paper has a PR slant, but its an important read for any and all Internet marketers: The prevalence of social media has not just grown …

Here are 5 Internet marketing tactics some genius friends are using to have a happy holidays (with names and website identieis kept secret as promised):

1. Mobile Games.

2. Disruptions.

3. Asking for help.

4. Listening.

5. Crowdfunding

What are you doing that is cool, unique and different this holidays? Tell me if you can, if not hope you will in January :). M  

Food for Thought, I imagine, is like TED before it became TED, with really great food. It's a unique conference hosted every year by Erwin Penland in the charming city of Greenville SC, and brings ...