Must Market

SMM For Startups
Great tips here for #startups including:

Content Shock Meets Community Shock
Building on Mark Schaefer's brilliant Content Shock ideas the next web marketing tsunami will be Community Shock. Community Shock is when adding one more member DEPRESSES instead of LIFTS a site's ROI (because cost of acquiring new members became unsustainably high due to intense competition). 

Why I'm Not A SEO in 3 Parts

Why Not A SEO #1
Blue Oceans on Scenttrail Marketing 
http://www.scenttrail.com/why-im-not-an-seo/ 

Why Not SEO #2
Used Car Salesmen LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-im-seo-martin-marty-smith 

Why Not SEO #3
Confusingly Similar & the Psychology of Great Web Marketers
on Curagami
http://www.curagami.com/magical-thinking/new-seo/why-im-not-a-seo-3/  

Social Media: It’s The conversation, stupid Are You Listening? Why is it so hard for institutions and companies to listen? Here is a sequence of social marketing I created to support the James Cancer Hospital that underscores how listening creates opportunity in a social / mobile / connected time. 

Community shock is what comes after March Schaefer's content shock. This post shares 3 quick tips for winning the coming race to create online community:

* Social - embracing social media marketing.

* Mobile - operating mobile first and crating responsive websites.

* Gamification - using the 4th pillar of building online community to attain the scale and return every Internet marketer needs.

Why Contagious? You could read Jonah Berger’s Contagious: Why Things Catch On as an update to Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make A Big Difference, but I wouldn’t (lol). 

Berger’s assertion that Gladwell is mostly wrong seems moot. The Tipping Point is philosophy. Berger’s book is ditch digging psychology based on his empirical research at Wharton.

Berger shares 3 key ideas to create viral marketing:

• Find or Create Inner Remarkability.
• Leverage Game Mechanics.
• Make People Feel Like Insiders.

This Curatti.com post shares my favorite examples for each of Berger's Contagious traits including Red Bull for "Inner Remarkability", Scoop.it for leveraging game mechanics and Rue La La for making people feel like insiders.

What your sales back end can tell you about your small business marketing… When considering small business marketing, most owners think about getting exposure and visits/clicks/views, etc.

Easy Marketing Trick
Want to increase traffic to your blog without spending any money? Use JetPack's mobile icon to add an icon for your blog on your phone AND share with your customers so they have a quick link from their phones to your blog.

Featured on Reddit! 

Everything Is Harder Suddenly everything online seems harder. Or there may be a slow drip with energy and value leaking out seemingly unrecoverable. Google’s algorithmic haircuts hurt no matter how realization dawns. This post is about how to recover, regain and reposition your website after traffic, conversions and money are dealt an injury by an algorithm change by the Google Gods.

Follow these 5 Easy Steps to Recover:

• Stop, Wait & Listen.
• Analytics Deep Dive.
• Create New KPIs.
• Back In To Blue Oceans.
• Create Community.

Possibly "easy" is the wrong word (lol). First STOP whatever you've been doing since "old SEO" tactics don't work anymore. Next figure out where to go that new and start testing. This Curagami post shares several Haiku Decks and explains each of those 5 "Recovery" tips.

You are playing a game. Once more than one person is involved games have begun. Online communities must disrupt and gamify to win.

If you are going to create #contentmarketing these days it better be EPIC. There is way too much noise. Only Epic Content will do. Here are 5 Easy Steps To Create Epic Content Marketing:

* Get your C-level executives to BELIEVE.
* Think Mobile First.
* Work with customers and creating a "commons".
* COPE (Create Once Publish Everywhere).
* Write a Content Marketing Mission Statement.

Set the stage with those easy steps and EPIC is possible, epic content marketing is probable IF your commitment is strong, you learn fast and you don't mind failing a little. Remember the content you write is NOT about you.

Epic content marketing is always about CUSTOMERS. Answering questions, solving pain points and finding innovative ways to be "of service" are all great ideas for your EPIC content marketing.

Content's Marketing's Hard Rain A-Gonna Fall
As much as I love a good debate the one I covered on ScentTrail Marketing on Friday between Scoop.it CEO Guillaume and ace content blogger Mark Schaefer is moot.

Google's algorithm is set. Facebook's "edgerank" is tightening. As Barabasi notes in his highly recommended book LINKED: How Everything Is Connected To Everything Else a hard rain is about to fall on content creators.

Do I believe in Guilluame advocacy of content curation? Yes, do I believe content curation can save PR4 blogs? Not even a little bit. The rich are about to get richer. Smart move is to pay the freight - cut partnership deals with content hubs in your business segment.

This G+ post shares how to structure such a deal since you need to discuss a lot of dimensions of support (not just what you owe them for their greatness lol).

Quirky Email Marketing Makeover TIps
Quirky.com is new to email marketing. They haven't won the hard won lessons 7 years as a Director of Ecommerce teaches such as:

* Less is more in email marketing.

* Never forget your Call-To-Action.
* Selling more than one idea in an email is crazy.

Quirky started strong with a cold weather hero (hero is largest image on an email or webpage), but made a common "new to email marketing" mistake - they thought their content is as interesting to US as it is to THEM.

Not so much (lol).

Best to apply some Occam's razor to your email marketing cuttting down to a single relevant idea. Quirky's BEFORE makeover email could become 6 or 10 emails. Showed how I would change their email and bet those changes woud increase conversioins 10x.