Curation Revolution

Thanks to FedEx
Sharing our Hero Marketing Haiku Deck last week with a group of Small to Medium Sized Businesses taught us how to tune the message. We noted how the TACTICS of competing with Amazon sparked real interest.

There are two components to competing with Amazon:

* 4Cs.
* Everything Is Everything.

Four Cs
Content, Customers, Commerce and Community are the four pillars of creating successful online marketing. The Uber-Goal is creating sustainable online community, or a community growing faster than its costs.

You create online community by curating more than you create and moving from US to WE. Content is how you signal customers your site, brands and company GET IT and want to create community.

You know you've created community when following increases, heuristic measures such as time on site, pages viewed and bounce rates improve and your site is getting closer to the magical 50% returning 50% new visitor mix.

Everything Is Everything
We've been struggling to explain how interconnected everything is these days. SEO, content marketing, content curation, email marketing, social media marketing and mobile marketing are working hand in glove now at increasingly faster pace. This more, faster, better loop means today's commerce is tomorrow's content, today's community is tomorrow's customer and round and round like a furious merry go round.

You win hearts, minds and loyalty today by understanding how to work the 4cs into a sustainable online community, a community of advocates wiling  to sacrifice and support you, your brand and ideas.

After Google's algorithm changes content is KING, context QUEEN. Online merchants who "match the hatch" of content to customers create advantage. Winning this advantage takes courage.

Courage because when one revolution happens things get crazy. When three revolutions are happening simultaneously its time to get in the basement with water and a year's supply of canned goods.

Instead of doing that we suggest reading about how content, commerce and social media can contribute to one another on CrowdFunde our startup dedicated to helping websites, brands and companies tap wisdom of crowds.

When Google went public 10 years ago, co-founder Larry Page said he wanted to get his search engine's users out of Google and to the right place as fast as possible. Today, Google is often doing the opposite. WSJ's Rolfe Winkler reports on the News Hub with Tanya Rivero. (Photo: Getty Images).

Marty Note
10 years old Google is moving from search to a content and commerce portal. Increasingly Google wants to be s destination not simply the world leading sieve. Content is king and the king is beginning to emulate one of their subjects - Amazon.

Amazon has been successful at balancing their business between content and commerce. Many Amazon interactions are "rich search" engagements where we use Amazon's reviews or vast scale to teach us something about an online marketplace.

Look at Amazon's nascent entry into streaming video market. Using their loyalty program, Prime, Amazon has the most addictive and best looking streaming option. Amazon's advantage? They SELL movies as well as giving away what feels like about 1/3 of their titles FREE to prime members.

BRILLIANT use of a loyalty program since it reinforces a key benefit, access, and creates a crack cocaine like addiction. When I want to find a movie Netflix doesn't have Amazon is where I go. Lately I even pay to "rent" or "buy" a title too having plowed through free titles.

Now let's turn back to Google and realize that content, search and content are VERY different things. Amazon's use of prime to improve their streaming option into a viable digital marketplace demonstrates the interconnected synergies a commerce & content player like Amazon can achieve.

Can Google become equally as successful at content and commerce? Perhaps, but one need only look at Yahoo's struggles to be both search and content portal to question whether either is sufficiently difficult to demand full attention.

As we search less and differently Google wants to diversify and protect the kingdom they've built. Entering oceans made red with competition as both content and commerce are is a different gig. Will be interesting to see how the king adapts to being a lowly prince.