Must Market

Follow & Learn From These 12 People
At the bottom of our Make Buffer's Social Failure Your Success Curagami post (http://www.curagami.com/buffers-social-failure-your-success/?v=7516fd43adaa ) we included a list of a few of our favorite web marketers. 

Each of these 12 people teach us things daily, and the list includes many from the Scoop.it community including:

@Guillaume Decugis 
@Kelly Hungerford 
@Cendrine Marrouat - https://www.cendrinemedia.com
@Brian Yanish - MarketingHits.com 

Read about why Buffer's social "failure" can be your success and discover some of my favorite teachers so your online marketing wins customer hearts, minds and loyalty. 

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). 

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Online NOW is the only time that matters, so even historical reference needs to be shared in present tense.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.

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

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 
 

Successful content marketing engages over time. Engagement needs online community and a role shift from content creators to community curators and GAME creators.

As semantic technology ramps up, how can marketers take advantage of this new age of content discovery? This deck touches on recent advances in semantic search and five disciplines to focus on for more effective SEO and Content Strategy. Full write-up & presentation notes: http://optimizepri.me/content-strategy-in-the-age-of-semantic-search

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

There is a new invisible giant, a giant using 5 "tricks" so the "new seo" is hard and harder to see and understand. This Haiku Deck and Curatti blog post is about how to see the invisible giant. How to win hearts, minds and loyalty online.

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.

SEO Blow Up
I know better, but moving to Woocommerce just blew up every URL on my blog. This post explains how URLs are tricky. URLs get changed in many unintended ways.

Changes to your Wordpress categories, use of an add on like Woocommerce or re-publishing after changing the URL window all change your URLs and require 301 redirects to maintain continuity with Google. URLs aren't just YOURS as this post shares.  

After spending 3 days creating manual redirects so my URLs won't stay broken my advice is try not to do that :). Marty  

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/  

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

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

Social Media It's The Conversation, Stupid is about the new rules of branding created by a social / mobile / connected world.

Marty Note
Wait long enough, or in my case live long enough, and it gets to be YOUR TURN (lol). I loved this Justin Gray post on Forbes explaining that MARKETING is the last thing an online play needs.

Couldn't agree more.

I was trained in a different kind of marketing than we practice now at our startup Curagami. I was trained to invade Russia in the winter. THEN messages were few enough and far enough between capturing territory and holding it was possible.

Not so much anymore.

These days capturing hearts, minds and loyalty is the game and everything is happening all at once all the time. The skills needed to play this game, as Justin so astutely notes, are different. Here is an excellent summary of those skills from his Forbes post:

• Content creators. In an era of shrinking attention spans, the ability to craft compelling stories into engaging online content is key. That’s why marketers need the same skills as a journalist: ideation, writing and editing.

• Analysts. Marketers need to know how to extract insights from data and use it to make meaningful decisions. They also need to create models to collect data and feedback easily.

• Designers. Modern marketers must have an eye for aesthetics and be able to capitalize on trends in real time. Look for candidates who can create high-quality, consumer-facing assets at a rapid pace.

• Planners. Marketers engineer a brand’s interface with the buyer, including when, how and where they’re interacting. That means creating workflows and campaigns based on buyers’ behaviors while paying attention to other messages and campaigns.

AGREE and not just because I'm benefiting from such an analysis. I imagine EVEN if I was still working for one of the largest Consumer Products companies as I did a lifetime ago (P&G, M&M/Mars) we wouldn't be invading Russia in the winter anymore.

UNLESS, we were invading with a tribe of brand Sherpas, telling the story as we went and watching our analytics and pivoting based on what we learn in near real time.

Can't Buy Love Rant
Are you as tired of the locust swarm offering 10, 000 or 100,000 followers for $5 as we are? We get it. We are AMERICANS damn-it and that means we get shit done FAST.

I used to be a Director of Ecommerce and worried about my job daily especially this time of year when plans moved from white boards to website and either came in or they didn't. Not coming in meant FAST pivots or look for work. My team and I got good at dancing for our means (lol).

EVEN if you could buy things that matter in today's new world of content is king, authority is queen and context matters you can't fool mother nature or Google. The math always wins. Think inflating your following by 10x in a few days might send up a red flag?

As much as I can RELATE and APPRECIATE our desire for a free lunch, better drugs, job security and love from millions I'm come today to bury Cesar not praise him. Cesar is old and left over and needs to GO.

Cesar is our belief in BIG IS BETTER even if big isn't real, true or honest. Cesar is our western belief in out ability to buy love. Our friends in the east know better.

Love comes from doing the no free lunch ditch digging that makes better people (we lucky few Internet marketers). We've long felt the real and most important "product" any website creates is a team capable of understanding how to win hearts, minds and loyalty online.

TRUST ME we keep looking for the shortcut too. The take this pill and lose 20 pounds or drink this magic potion, kiss a frog and become a prince is a powerful aphrodisiac.

Fairy tales were cool when we were 5. Believing in and subscribing to the most damaging fairy tale - that you can buy love - will hurt your marketing, brand and online trust.

If you can FOOL THEM, many still think, more power to you. The problem is the web is the world's biggest lie detecting amplifier. Would we love to have millions of connections, fans and supporters? Of course if only because such a following confirms our sweat equity and belief system - the karma of good people helping other good people.

We too can be tempted by the devil on our shoulder. We see and ascribe to the "Greater Good" theory instead of the Greater Fool theory. The greater good theory says karma gets repaid. Help others and you too will be helped. Treat others better than you want to be treated and you win the love you need to thrive.

The greater fool theory says a sucker is born every minute and so we should use the tools of mutually assured destruction or risk being left standing in the most important duck, duck, goose game of our lives.

The web is a daily battle between these two opposing armies. Hope you join team Curagami in the Greater Good army. If you are in the "Greater Fool" army you may win, but we still wouldn't want to live the SINGLE and ONLY life any of us are granted based on "a sucker is born every minute". Worked for P. T. Barnum until Cirque du Soleil leveled their circus karma so completely its never coming back (lol).M 

Successful content marketing engages over time. Engagement needs online community and a role shift from content creators to community curators and GAME creators.

Great Comment from Haiku Deck to our Curagami Why Haiku Deck Rocks post (http://www.curagami.com/featured/buffet-tools-conversations-top-haiku-decks/ ) prompted this riff about challenges faced by all online marketers.

The move from solipsistic lecturer to community and movement is the path we are all on whether we realize it or not. Haiku Deck has taken grat steps to move from SaaS to community and movement. Have you?

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