Startup Revolution

Telling Holiday Ecom Stories
Why do most online merchants shy away from stories in the 4th quarter? Time to make the donuts doesn't mean stories don't matter. Shout less, listen more and telling better stories means your online commerce website wins this holiday season. Here are our 5 Holiday Ecommerce Storytelling Tips: 

* Create Umbrella Themes

* Tell Price, Shipping, and Guarantee Stories

* Share Brand Relevant Customer Stories

* Tell Seasonal VISUAL Stories

* ASK FOR HELP

Discover more 4Q storytelling tips for online merchants:

http://www.curagami.com/ecommerce-holiday-5-storytelling-tips/?v=7516fd43adaa

This post has blown up on Curatti with a potential audience well over 300,000 thanks to ReTweets and shares. Why? Because Red Bull has cracked the code. The code of how a brand must BE in the world.

Publisher, TV channel and Internet User Generated Content champion Red Bull's branding is an archetype for all.

http://curatti.com/red-bulls-branding-lesson-media-companies-now/

SHARE First & Worry About Everything Else Second
This Business 2 Community post is written for "business" but certainly applicable to startups. Startups must realize that "process is product". 
Process is product means everything you are doing right NOW is a product. 

The soon a startup begins publishing, broadcasting and sharing the easier it gets, the richer the fast feedback loops become and the more chances for success they create. 

Many startups think what they have is so amazing that it can't be shared. With few exceptions (biotech) it is NEVER the case that your thoughts are unique or so unknown that your share will quake the world. 

Any business is created in the execution developed for the idea. To worry about someone stealing your idea is to worry about the tide. Focus your energy on getting as much information out and in as many hands as you can as fast as you can. SHARE. 

Realize that the most important "product" you build is the team capable of building something, pivoting on a dime and responding to what they hear with meaningful and amazing results.  

If you don't have a way to capture your journey find one (write, video, infographics, animation, stories). Your goal should be to create the means of production - the framework where you can easily harvest UGC (User Generated Content) anytime needed. 

UGC is more important to a startup than oxygen. UGC helps gauge reaction, shape your product and determine a startup's future.  

Related Reading
Process Is Product on ScentTrail Marketing
http://scenttrail.blogspot.fr/2009/11/process-is-product.html 

5 Curagami Monster Trends
This is a great Fast Company post, but it is a bit overwhelming. Instead of trying to process 25 ideas all at once and all equally I've carved out 5 of team Curagami's favorite ideas, ideas that are creating a "new marketing" where we becomes US. We didn't include MOBILE since that should be understood by now. Mobile is everything starting NOW.

5 Curagami Monster Marketing Trends:

* Most branded content will come from consumers.
* Real time tracking & use of personas = customized experiences.

* Everything is a "catalyst for conversation".
* Rise of video & video sharing.
* Mashups and clutter filters will RULE.

Champion any 2 of these trends and your company, brand or startup will WIN and WIN BIG. What about you? What 5 trends strike you as MONSTER and must respond to trends?

We are ALL in the community building business now whether we know it or not thanks to Google and the web's slouching toward SOCIAL and MOBILE. This post shares a contentious CrowdFunde meeting where, as my friend Mark Traphagen pointed out, our company was born.

CrowdFunde Accepted Triangle Startup (TSF) Factory
Thanks to friends who wrote cards and letters and thanks to the team at Triangle Startup Factory, our Durham, NC based startup incubator, who are willing to take a risk on CrowdFUnde as we smash content marketing and crowdfunding together to see what happens.

Our TSF session starts March 10th and we hope you will join us as we share this great startup adventure.

CrowdFunde
http://www.crowdfunde.com

Haiku Deck Pitch to TSF
http://shar.es/QFOzU

Triangle Startup Factory
http://thestartupfactory.co/

Startups Can Jump The Class
If you are new to content marketing understanding how content marketing's four gears create a "virtual cycle" can help you jump the class. Content marketing's gears:

* Curation.
* Creation.
* Social.

* Ecommerce.

Clean Slate content marketers, thos so new to the game they have few preconceived ideas, can move to the head of the class by organizing their marketing differently and in alignment with ideas shared in Content Marketing's Gears.  

Why SoundCloud Will ROCK E-commerce . SoundCloud's Social Network for Sounds Do a test with me. Look at the REI tent product page picture above for 3