Curation Revolution

Trending AND Best Sellers
Good idea to have TRENDING and BEST SELLERS categories. B2B SaaS companies may not have "best seller". "May not" because we believe every online marketing team should have an ecommerce store, but few B2B marketers take us up on that belief.  

Trending  is what is happening NOW. Best Sellers are what has happened over a longer period (say a month, quarter or year). Trending is a great word since it implies the influence of the "mob". 

The best "trending" is where the guts of the trending engine is shared and easy to see. Digg's voting engine or Facebook's thumbs up / down make it easy to SEE the tribe and their votes.

We added Trending as a category today, but are manually calculating what should be in the category form Google Analytics. Better to automate it all and then share what you automated. If you count sales, shares and subscriptions (immediately after)  TELL YOUR CUSTOMERS and they will give you the kind of feedback your system needs.

If you aren't that sophisticated yet do something like what we are doing. Share your GA results so customers know how you are calculating "trending" (reminds us we need to add that). Not as good as trending based on easy to SEE feedback loops, but trust creating nonetheless.  

Digital marketing is moving to real time CONTEXT & CONVERSATIONS. Curagami's Predictive Analytics Engine (cPAE) creates relevant web, email & mobile context

Amazing Content Marketing Tool
If you don't use Haiku Deck to help create visual marketing you are missing a powerful tool. We've created 36 Haiku Decks. Over the last 22 days those decks added 8,322 views or 378 new views each day.There is NOTHING we are doing with that kind of reach...NOTHING!

We are beginning to believe Slide Decks may be an exciting new marketing channel. Amazingly NONE of our 36 decks reported zero views over the last 22 days. Even OLD decks continue to be viewed making slides and slide decks VALUABLE content indeed. 

Not a complete surprise since Slideshare has been creating SEO magic for years, but Haiku Deck may have just legitimized slides as a marketing channel. You don't need an excuse to create Haiku Decks. No conference talks needed to win with these new visual marketing tools. SLIDES and Haiku Deck's CMS that sits on top of the Creative Commons are becoming a powerful content marketing tool and a widgetized marketing channel in their own right. 

Trending Haiku Decks Include

Crowdfunding Tips From The Clash +46% Views
http://shar.es/1ao3gt 

Gamify Content Marketing +36% Views 
http://shar.es/1ao3GS 

Invisible Giant: Why New SEO So Hard To See +8% Views
http://shar.es/1ao3ZG 

Warren Buffett's Tips for Startups remains Top Dog w/  7,700 Views
http://shar.es/1ao3Bj  

See performance for all 36 Haiku Decks we've created on Google Doc here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Ozsk4hHtT6Xm77SxQbP7EFw259oQMVC_5DY1bOU9dAk/edit?usp=sharing  

It's never a great idea to blindly follow trends, but it's good to know what they are. It's kind of similar to the old maxim that 'you have to know the rules to break the rules'. But in fractured and disjointed world, working out what the latest visual design trends actually are can be difficult.

7 SEO Tips and Trends
Appreciate @Os Ishmael sharing Anne Carton's great 7 SEO Trends for 2016 Post today. Anne's post was so good we linked it from the Curagami post it inspired. Our 7 SEO Trends / Tips for 2016:

* Great Content Creates Community (despite Content Shock) 

* Mobile and Smartphones Are Changing Everything

* Video RULES

* Community Is KEY

* Community Shock Is Coming

* Empower Ambassadors, Understand Proxy Marketing

* Fresh and NOW Beat Stale and THEN

Be sure to add your SEO tips for 2016 and we will mash them into this post with a link back and our thanks.

http://www.curagami.com/7-seo-tips-for-2016/?v=7516fd43adaa

Market Makers Matter
Janet McKean & Drew Baird Are Market Makers. Market makers see what is next a fraction before the rest of us. Janet's gift of vision is in the specialty gift space. Drew Baird is the founder of Moon-Audio.com and the creator of Dragon Audio Cables. 

Market makers matter now more than ever. Our advice? Become a market maker and learn from Janet and Drew.l 
 

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.

Here are 7 Tips From MoMA Curator:

1. Focus on Goals

2. Have Empathy

3. Be Careful, Cautious and Selective

4. Editorialize

5. Provide Attribution

6. Understand What’s Timely and Trending

7. Have an Eye for a Great Title

and 3 From Scenttrail (Martin Marty Smith on Scoopit)

8. Cast A WIDE Net, Curate Disparate Content.

9. Don't Forget OPC (Other People's Curation).

10. Use Rich Snippets to Consistently Theme Your Curation.

Cast a "wide net" pulling seemingly disparate subjects into your curation using our curatorial skills to create connection and synergy. Don't forget the most powerful content on YOUR network is THEIR User Generated Content (UGC) and curation. Rich Snippets don't recreate the content wheel but do them your curation creating a consistent blanket of meaning and value.

Added a comment about putting a title in front of a masterpiece in comments on Scoop.it:
http://blog.scoop.it/2014/02/13/7-qualities-of-highly-effective-content-curators/