Must Market

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). 

2M Views On GooglePlus
You may think, "2M views so what, many have more than that," and you would be right and wrong. Right because many friends including @Mark Traphagenand @Neil Ferree(to name just two) have many more G+ followers and views than little ole me.

The point of Social Media Marketing is not to win a horse race. The point is to communicate YOUR message in order to create scaled online community. Once your community more than pays for itself your "degrees of freedom" open up.

If you know of another "moderate effort, HUGE return" tool please share and I will use that one too. In the meantime G+ may be the best "do less, get more" online marketing tool ever created. G+ is Davids stone helping to slay giants - how else can a tribe the 4500 generate views of more than 2M?

So get out your sling and load up some G+ rocks today and your digital marketing will be slaying giants soon too :). M

Posted by Serge Salager on TechCrunch Editor’s note: Serge Salager was formerly CEO of OneMove Technologies and a marketing manager at Affinnova and Procter & Gamble.   After several years of relatively stagnant waters, what was a dull CRM landscape dominated by one player is heating up dramatically. Salesforce officially put its $3.5 billion market …

Marty Note
WOW and WOW. Hubspot confirms what web marketers already know - distance between CRM, CMS and Content Marketing / Curation is short. As distinctions between tools blurs because it must we will gain.

Perhaps a new generation of tools will actually WORK without needing to string a ten tools together, bridge five analytics ecosystems and answer the questions we need to know in near real time.

Pigs flying yet? HubSpot's CRM entry could be ALL GOOD though :). M

We shocked a SEO Meetup suggesting 90% curation to 10% content creation. This deck explains why you MUST curate content. Content curation is a CSF (Crtical Success Factor) for online marketing.

This Haiku Deck is the fastest to 2,000 views we've ever created. Discover the 7 reasons you MUST curate content:
http://shar.es/1XxuSs

Story Online
Find I'm using this post about how storytelling works different online. Creating content online is like composing music. We need an introduction, a chorus, bridge and conclusion.

When we share too much our customers can't build on our stories. When we share too little trust can't develop. This delicate balancing beam is where time becomes money and stories become community.  

The success of the ALS challenge has other nonprofits hoping to capture the viral wave.

As social media changes web marketint needw to inspire the kind of commitment, support and contribution made popular by Wiki-pedia. Market, create and communicate MOVEMENTS not simply SALES. Create and curate online community. Understand the Wiki-ization of Marketing.

Scoop.it & Curagami Record Day
Thanks to Curagami's Evolution of Web Design & Marketing Infographic (http://www.curagami.com/featured/evolution-web-design-marketing-infographic/) and post we had record views on 7.3.14. We wanted to look inside our record day so we created a series of charts & Graphs.

Since we can't share multiple images on Scoop.it we've pinned images to http://www.pinterest.com/scenttrail/curagami/

Chart 1 Traffic Pie Chart
66% of Curagami.com's record day visitors came from Scoop.it. My Scoops just passed 150,000 views. Views are helpful especialy for testing but conversions rule. In this context I would count a click from Scoop.it to the Curagami blog as a "conversion".

Find Charts Here
http://www.pinterest.com/scenttrail/curagami/

Chart 2 ROI By Traffic Source Chart

ROI v Work bar chart shows traffic over the work investment required. Scoop.it's "work units" of 6 were behind Twitter's 9 and ahead of G+'s 4. Scoop.it generated 6.5 "conversions" (traffic into Curagami.com.

I combined G+ and Google Search and Google is the next closest in work efficiency generated 2.5 conversions per unit of work. This means Scoop.it was 260% more "efficient" on Curagami's record day. than Google.

Google was 500% more efficient than Blog Links.

Find Charts Here
http://www.pinterest.com/scenttrail/curagami/

One Day Doesn't Make A Trend
While one record day doesn't make a trend the idea of creating an "efficiency index" for "Social conversions" is an important new metric we are working on at our Startup Factory funded startup called Curagami.

Social media requires INPUT, MONITORING and TUNING. Finding "get more with less" tools like Scoop.it are becoming increasingly important for digital marketing success. We don't have our Curagami Paper.li set up yet. Paper.li is another favorite "get more with less" tool.

We encourage marketers to think their INPUT, MONITORING and TUNING cycles with an eye for efficiency. Efficiency, how much RETURN comes from how much "work", is the great equalizer. TIME isn't infinite, but social demand is.

Given this contradiction, the amount of content you could create is always infinite while content you should create based on return is TINY. Efficiency like the one Scoop.it showed on Curagami's record day is something to watch.

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

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! 

Does your website have game? It is going to because gamification and games are how you win hearts, minds and loyalty over time online. This Curagami post welcomes SweetToothRewards.com, a new add-on to Magento, Shopify and others, and affordable gamification. Gamification is in your website's future because its benefits win hearts, minds and loyalty over time and help create sustainable online community. 

The Problem of Web Copy
Today a friend shared copy that fought itself. He was trying to tell two stories at once. You can't tell two stories at once without reader confusion. I suggested combining the two very cool elements he wanted to mash together into a single story.

"Think of each element as a character in the story, in a story where difference between them will become zero at resolution," I suggested. The conversation reminded me of why storytelling is the future of web copy and why storytelling online is different than writing novels.

Online NOW is the only time that matters, so even historical reference needs to be shared in present tense. Wandering down a historical path is a sure prescription for readers wandering off. Find more online storytelling tips in the G+ post.

This post shares 3 simple web metrics to help find the 20% of stuff controlling 80% of your online business because online only Pareto can hear you scream.

Use these three simple metrics to find your long tail:

Rank
% of Total
Running Total

Great Cause Marketing
+Unilever's Project Sunlight (https://www.projectsunlight.us ) is some of the best #causemarketing I've ever seen and I spent a year creating CureCancerStarter.org. Lots to learn from here including:

* Arresting Visual Marketing.
* Collage of stories under a united theme clearly defined yet artistically balanced.
* Multimedia approach (pictures, video, text, & multiple sites).
* Consistency of tone & pitch.
* Curation of THEIR stories, passion and emotion.
* Splash of logic kissing hand of emotion.

Great work, good cause and lots to learn from. #toogood

Burn Down The House: Marketing's Big Bang Manifesto
Insufficient describes how I felt driving to Columbus, Ohio to visit the wizards at Ohio State Medicine. Yesterday I created an outline for a book via a new Haiku Deck and it sucked.

It was no Cluetrain Manifesto.

First piece I wrote arriving at The Blackwell Inn on the Ohio State University Campus built on a piece Eli Fennel wrote yesterday. BURN DOWN THIS HOUSE: Marketing's Big Bang Manifesto is getting some great response so closer to the mark this time thanks to friends such as Mark Traphagen and great G+ voices such as David Kutcher and Eli Funnel.

Share your VOICE. Jump in with comments here, on G+ https://plus.google.com/102639884404823294558/posts/Tf9GNsX35qn or email martin(at)Curagami.com.

3 Trending Haiku Decks
Haiku Deck is a cool visual marketing tool we believe proves Slides are a new marketing channel. Haiku Deck isn't your father's slide deck template. Haiku Deck FORCES you to tell great stories and THINK about how to excite, lead and teach an audience even as you learn, think differently and rock a new content marketing channel.

Don't think Haiku Deck and slides are a new marketing channel? Take a look at some of these stats:

70, 216 = Total Views for team Curagami's 36 Haiku Decks 
7,963 = Views For Top Deck (Warren Buffett's Tips For Startups).
3,454 = views gained since 9.17 across all decks

T R E N D I N G

#1: Gamify Content Marketing (4,158 views +164% since 9.17)
http://shar.es/1aBtqW 
Now #5 overall and a Top Haiku Deck for us and the fastest to attain such heights. 

#2: Crowdfunding Tips From The Clash (1,223 views +128% since 9.17)
http://shar.es/1aBt5B 

#3: 5 Holiday Web Design Tips (845 views +113% since 9.17)
http://shar.es/1aBv3y 
 

There is a new ecommerce creating new "best practices" such as: easy free shipping, new him, her, kids merchandising, social shopping & UGC conversations.

Crowds, Icons & Tribes
The more we work our Startup Factory Funded statup http://www.Curagami.com the more every client needs a combination of :

* Crowds.
* Icons.
* Tribes.

Crowds bring wisdom. Remember how few were smarter than a class of 5th graders? Every websites most VAST under-utilized resource is the wisdom of crowds they AREN'T tapping.

Icons create the language that makes a crowd work just hard enough to feel exclusive and included. If anyone can join for free there is no perceived value. No perceived value means your visitors will click away. On the other hand, if you have a language only you and your tribe understand - that isn't too dense or complex - curiosity may catch the cat.

Finally tribes are everyone's end product. Tribes = sustainable web presence. Tribes means you can delegate JOBS to AMBASSADORS and get out of the way. Tribes means you are on your way to the land of get more, do less. Tribes are where we lucky few Internet marketers are headed and we are riding a bullet train called Curagami :). M

Conversion Go Up When

Visitors arriving on your website have expectations and not all visitors are equal. Some may be "new" to your content. Others may be learning your content and a small group may be as expert about your site's content as you.

Feed "newbie" content to experts is a sure way to frustrate two people - the expert and the new to your content person who didn't get the content they needed. This post is about MAPPING your content to your visitors needs and expectations.

Why map? Meeting and exceeding your visitors' expectations builds trust and community. Conversions don't happen without TRUST and COMMUNITY.