Medium Rocks We love using Medium. Medium is the perfect blend of blog, Scoop.it and about 5 other tools we can’t live without. We had a Medium Rocks post that seems to have escaped, so we wanted to reestablish how important we think this micro-blogging tool is becoming. Fellow Scoop.iteer @Cendrine Marrouat - https://www.cendrinemedia.com is on Medium.
What about you? If you are on Medium let us know so we can follow and feature you in our people to follow on Medium list.
the Marty Note - Future of...Well Everything This post reminds me of a favorite recent read - The Intention Economy by Doc Searls. I've never understood the distinction between the sharing and on-demand economies. This Inc post provides an excellent definition of both.
The post asks the larger question too. Who will survive and why without really answering it other than philosophically since only time will tell. These two paragraphs are worth burning into your memory:
"Uber is the classic example--I need a ride and four minutes later a driver picks me up. Even better, I can see exactly how close the driver is getting to my location the entire time I'm waiting, which improves the actual experience of a well-designed service. Customers are expecting the same seamless delivery of every kind of service fromfinding a place to sleep to food delivery. The list of services people want to be able to quickly order online will keep growing.
For optimized online purchasing and guaranteed consistency, companies should consider the nuances within the market and become the expert in each industry of interest. And according to Davis, the key to becoming an industry expert is having a smooth path to purchase. This includes transparent pricing, easy estimates, and a simple way to purchase the service online.
Uber is the classic example--I need a ride and four minutes later a driver picks me up. Even better, I can see exactly how close the driver is getting to my location the entire time I'm waiting, which improves the actual experience of a well-designed service. Customers are expecting the same seamless delivery of every kind of service fromfinding a place to sleep to food delivery. The list of services people want to be able to quickly order online will keep growing.
For optimized online purchasing and guaranteed consistency, companies should consider the nuances within the market and become the expert in each industry of interest. And according to Davis, the key to becoming an industry expert is having a smooth path to purchase. This includes transparent pricing, easy estimates, and a simple way to purchase the service online."
There was an employee a secret cop at Twitter I had to call. My feed was on the wrong side of some unwritten law and it was in "Twitter Jail". Finally, I got an email through to the secret cop and she told me in an overly hurried voice (amazing how you can get so much information between the lines in an email) that I was no longer n Twitter Jail.
San Francisco Rocky Horror Warp Read the post and try not to do everything Read Write outlines, but we have another take - don't put your company in San Francisco or don't leave it there. San Francisco is an AMAZING place.
If I could afford to live there I would be in San Francisco. When I sold sweetener for NutraSweet to Dryers in Berkley I loved staying at the Claremont. But there is something warping about the bay area. The arrogance, tunnel vision and pit bull meanness are hard to overstate.
I've had versions of the secret cop story over and over. One of the owners of Bunchball, a gamification engine, tore me up one side and down the other for the sin of wanting to purchase and use his software to help cure cancer.
For all the MAGIC in the air help, the bay area and success can be deadly combinations. Twitter was so LARGE and IN CHARGE, I had to beg a secret cop to release me from jail despite never understanding what I did to end up there in the first place. If you believe in business karma then every customer slap eventually comes back.
Nietzsche's Superman Nietzsche believed adversity created life. No adversity, no challenge, no life. Twitter's adversity can teach valuable lessons in life's inevitable humility, the curse of being the smartest guys in the room and time's constant arrow toward entropy.
Entropy is a truth we all know - everything organized becomes less so, everything valued now becomes less so, everything known becomes boring, and every lesson hangs around until learned.
Twitter is great and can become greater still, but not without soul searching adversity and connection with customers. Yep, no more secret cops. Listening more and abusing less would be good.
Twitter is sitting on a mountain of fascinating information. SHARE IT. What about asking for help, innovation, and ideas from customers? What about asking for help?
Entropy happens, we all die, but we and Twitter don't have to die TODAY. If Twitter keeps doing what they've been doing they are done. If Twitter listens, opens up and looks for help they win big. Just because you are young, rich and smart doesn't mean HELP isn't valuable or the oxygen needed now.
When in doubt be nice. Be nice today because tomorrow someone can treat you like you treated them when you were sure the world revolves aorund you, your company and its brilliance. The world runs on pain, joy and beauty. If your company can relieve one (pain) and promote others (joy and beauty) life is good. Success is rarely about YOU and always about THEM & US :). Marty
Marty Note There are about a million implications of this Marketing Land report showing content push +35% while engagement collapses. One implication is we are using the right tool. @Scoop.it and content curation is the future. As @Guillaume Decugis and his team shares (over and over), content curation's greater reach, democracy, and engagement is better for you, your band and website.
As we shared on G+ (Inevitable Lightness of Being) and Curagami (Burn Down Your Website) the tactical past is giving way to a different marketing future. Hold on to the past and become irrelevant. The future is about curating, caring and collaborating more and that means Scoop.it's genius becomes even MORE important :). Marty
Sindhya Valloppillil's Revelation E-commerce Is Broken & Branding Is Bullshit riffs Helix CEO Sindhya Valloppillil's in Business Insider. Sindha's ideas about why many merchants and investors don't understand e-commerce 3.0 are among the best we've read.
What do you think e-commerce 3.0 will look and feel like? What are your favorite sites?
Anne Truitt Minimalist Sculptor Stumbled on Anne Truitt's great sculptures today. Was so blown away I creatd a quick (less than a minute) tribute video.
Stuck In Mobile With Memphis Blues Again I'm stuck in Van Horn West Texas thanks to the day after Christmas blizzard. Stuck also because the highways (I10 and I20) have been closed. This experience made are realize something important every brand manager and web team needs to know.
How would you answer this question, "What 3 things are you doing to connect with customers in real time in 2016?" If "mobile" isn't part of at least 2 of your answers you aren't ready for 2016. TxDot, the Texas Department of Transportation, isn't ready for 2016 and this post shares why.
Post also shares ideas on how to connect such as:
Assign A Social Media Master – Someone responsible for aggregating ALL social information about an event and sharing across platforms
Create Event Hashtags – Create hashtags such as #dec15i10i20 to FORM a community then aggregate from multiple sources using YOUR event hashtag
Live Video and Photo Feeds – Why can’t we SEE the problem and then the resolution? Seeing = believing and seeing the parking lot that I-10 became east of Van Horn would reduce the number of motorists driving toward the abyss.
Learn more about how your company, team and brand can win in an emergency by curating content and developing community in real time.
5 Cool Content Marketing Tools shares how we use Scoop.it, Haiku Deck, Paper.li, Gplus & Pinterest to create, test and improve Curagmai's content marketing. Tools discussed:
Favorite About Us pages shares an e-commerce master class video on how to create a great About Us page and asks for your favorite About Us Pages examples.
Great About Us Pages:
* Tell A Story. * Share Values
* Outline a Movement
* Help Build Community
Share your favorite about us pages in reactions (on Scoop.it), comments on the Curagmai post or email martin(at)Curagami.com. Thanks, Marty
Buffer's Social "Failure" = Your Success Make Buffer's Social Failure Your success with lessons from three great web marketing books including Superforecasting, The Silo Effect and The Black Swan. The post builds on a Buffer post sharing their shocking 50% decline in social media traffic.
The real question is - ARE THEY FAILING.
They seem to think so and that thought may point to bigger issues. Issues well outlined in 3 great web marketing books (note if you buy using the links to Amazon below you make a contribution to curing cancer TY)
How web marketers THINK about what they are doing matters and this Curagami post shares tips on how to THink Like An Internet Marketer along with links to some of our favorite web marketers including several from Scoop.it:
Impostor syndrome is much more common that you'd think.
Martin (Marty) Smith's insight:
Imposter Syndrome Every assign your achievements to luck or some supernatural force? You may be suffering from "Imposter Syndrome" as outlined by Mike San Román for Buffer. Here are Mike's 8 Tips to overcome:
Get On Board Scop.it Content Curation Bus We love curating congent with Scoop.it. Content curation with a great tool like Scoop.it may be more important now than ever. After Google’s algorithm revolution (Panda, Penguin) you need a safe place to test content. Content curation may be the most important online marketing idea few understand. Read why Scoop.it is a monster #cooltools.
Read why you should get on the Scoop.it Content Curation Bus today:
In New Ecommerce Story Rules riffs a post from Mathew Jenkin about video game developer since online commerce is a game too. Similarities between video game and online commerce development are numerous and insightful. Every visit to an online store is a quest and this post explains how to build a hero / protagonist journey into your online story.
Drone Marketing Watch the insanely cool video of the DARPA drone flying indoors at 45mph and ask if your content is that cool. Even better ask how you can co-opt cool content like this to serve your brand, website and goals.
The web is always about two things - NOW and EVERYTHING. If you and your team truly understand those ideas and how they apply to the web and your online marketing then you watch a seemingly unrelated video of a drone thinking, "How can we use this".
The web is always about NOW and EVERYTHING so if you use the platform your marketing is always happening NOW and is about EVERYTHING whether you realize it or not.
Marty Note As a content curator and publisher I've had content we wrote copied and brazenly stolen. Google's latest algorithm changes seem to be reducing whole cloth copying, but another and potentially more dangerous dragon is rising - the content hack.
It is possible to do all kinds of bad things to your content as this Search Engine Land post shares. This highly recommended post doesn't only share scary stories and examples of content hacks. The post also shares a great set of tools to help publishers ward off what may be inevitable - someone hacking their content.
Ecommerce & Content Win Hearts Minds Loyalty How can your website cut through the impossible clutter of today's ultra-competitive online world? How can you find the right development partner to achieve your online goals?
This Curagami post shares how to find a vendor capable of helping your e-commerce website win along with our current Curagami Customer Hunt.
Content Marketing Battle UGC vs Landing Pages shares the battle with User Generated Content platforms and landing pages. We favor hybrid content marketing.
After being trapped, along with hundreds of others, of rthree days in the nice but desolute Van Horn, Texas stuck between the New Mexico mountins behind and ...
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.
Top 10 Curagami Posts Top 10 Posts shares how Banksy, friends and artists helped create Curagami's Top 10 Posts (by inbound links) despite our best efforts to the contrary (lol).
Here some BIG lessons from our Top 10 Posts from Banksy to Web Design:
Saturday Riff: Content Is Crap Content Is Crap shares our thoughts (in blue) on Greg Satell's HBR article. Greg's post is one of the most important content marketing posts we've read.
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