Startup Revolution

Community In A Box
Community In A Box is about the only marketing left - friends of friends proxy marketing. 

Online only has one time – NOW.

Now is GOLIATH, a monster sure to kill us all except for a tiny DAVID slinging rocks at the future. David, undeterred by the monster’s apparent size or formidability, is unimpressed by yesterday’s victories. Yesterday’s victories mean little when a stone hits you in the face today.

Better to die on our feet slinging stones than live on knees comatose with yesterday’s victories or afraid of tomorrow’s insults. Tomorrow’s insults are inevitable. We are dreamers, dreamers who believe monsters fall to slingshots and stones. Our dream, our romantic vision, philosophy and belief is why
we’re creating “Community In A Box”.

You In?

Our SEO for Web Designers has surpassed Warren Buffett's Startups Tips to become our #1 Haiku Deck:

SEO for Web Designers (9,972 Views)
http://shar.es/1gyTSf

Warren Buffett's Startups Tips (9,050 Views)
http://shar.es/1gyTIK

Makes SEO for Web Designers our fastest and steepest trending Haiku Deck. Our 42 Decks have generated over 100,000 views proving visual marketing is here and slides are a new online marketing channel.

Wiki-ization of Marketing: Moving From Brands To Communities
1,342 views

As digital marketing becomes more about communities and less about control Wiki-like meritocracy is taking over.
http://shar.es/1nMGyS

Invisible Giant: Why the new SEO Is So Hard To See
2,317 views

The new SEO is being obscured by the social / mobile web, Google changes and the rapidly changing nature of content marketing & curation.
http://shar.es/1nM6nl

Tomorrow's Ecommerce Today
1,318 views

Is it possible to design tomorrow's ecommerce website today? Yes
http://shar.es/1nM6rX

Curagami Scores
We've tuned our Curgami engine to evaluate three website and brand CSFs (Critical Success Factor):

* Content.
* Community.
* Conversion.

The tool creates unique metrics such as Link Efficiency Indexes (LEI) to evaluate a website, close competitors and it establishes "best practice" averages viral content, sustainable community and asynchronous conversion ideas (not going up against a competitor's strength).

We started our journey to answer a simple question:

What content should a website create and why?

That simple question has soaked up six months of our lives and tens of thousands of our investors' cash. Good news is we are seeing light at the end of the tunnel. Will your website WIN armed with a Curgami Score Report?

Yes :). Marty & Team Curagami

CrowdFunde team is attending startup school. This Triangle Startup Factory Dairy shares our journey. Day 2 = creation of "unrealized networks", UGC & SEO.

Day 2: Tapping Unrealized Networks
Wow, what a day. Started with a Scrum-like standup and then worked the Business Model Canvas with TSF Founder Chris Heivly and Whitney. Discussing CrowdFunde's SEO benefit we realized that many businesses have "unrealized networks".

Unrealized networks are your customers. One undeniable New SEO truth is commons or platforms like HuffPost and Facebook out perform all other models. Problem is how does a small business easily add a "commons" that won't cost them a million bucks in cash or time?

CrowdFunde to the rescue.

CrowdFunde's goal is to help our partners TAP the gold they carry in their unrealized network. When I was a Director of Ecommerce our mailing list was around 50,000. We communicated with our customers regularly because email marketing was the most profitable Internet marketing channel (by far).

What we DID NOT do was for a community. We didn't realize benefits from our network. This Video Diary includes a 2 minute video that walks you through our first cut at tapping "unrealized networks". Please share any thoughts, reactions or ideas.

We are in "startup school" at the Triangle Startup Factory in Durham, NC for 12 weeks and everything is up for grabs. Together we create a cool tool, a "get more with less" tool to help conquer the "New SEO".

Thanks, CrowdFunde team and Marty

Google's New SEO Revolution wants improving heuristics the kind created by storytelling, cause and video marketing, the new Critical Success Factors.

SOne of the Lean Content best practices we’ve seen several speakers at our meetups recommend is to leverage existing audiences on top of your own to increase the reach and the impact of your content.

Content curation is key for Small To Medium Sized Businesses (SMBs) online success & Scoop.it's new Content Director makes curation a marketing reality.

Never Ending Battle Truth, Justice & American Way
Tough "Dog Days" of summer for "Super Hero" marketing tactics. Here is a list of the dead and dying tactics:

SMB Marketing Tactics Costing More, Getting Less:

* Yellow Pages (near death). 
* Print ads (near death).

* Val-u-pak coupons (near death).

* Coupons of any kind (losing relevance with smartphone users)..

* Groupons (blows brands up almost beyond repair).
* Email marketing (sick due to social / mobile web). 
* Social Media Marketing (sick and getting sicker fast). 
* Content Marketing.(content shock sick).

* Ecommerce (too many stores, same offerings).
* PPC (paying more to get less). 
* Retargeting (cat out of bag, so sick efficacy declining).
* Video Marketing (steep learning curve, expensive). 
* Viral Marketing (everyone has that cold now & hit or miss). 
* Cause Marketing (not as unique as once was & live or die with partner).

* Celebrity Marketing (expensive and live or die with branded celeb).

* SEO (don't even get us started, all but gone, baby, gone). 

Many of these "SMB" tactics are in a startup's launch plan too. Good luck with that. Startups have to double down on asynchronous tactics since their money is tight and they have little or no brand awareness yet.

Favorite startup asynchronous tactics of ours include:

* OPN (tap Other People's Networks).
* OPM (tap Other People's Money via crowdfunding).
* Crowdfunding.
* Friends-of-Friends marketing.
* Community (start handing of the keys to your content early).
* Partnerships.
* OPC (Other People's Content via content curation with attribution(.
* Video Marketing (learning curve and expense scares most away).
* Events.
* Training.
* Contests & Games.

That last bullet can be especially powerful for startups. Remember to create tools needed to empower advocates, contributors and Sherpas. Make it easy to help you by providing graphical tools, listening and curating content into a social space (curation is a form of social reward).  

Curagami & The Ecommerce Revolution Played Triangle Startup Factory's Pitchday today discussing how how to fix ecommerce marketing with Curagami.

SEO for content marketers shares 5 "Quick Tips" to avoid SEO bear traps like: dupe content, keywords as friends, little things, & it's a SoLoMo world.