5 Content Curation Secrets

I have a few curating secrets I haven't seen widely written or shared. This doesn't mean much better, smarter curators like Michele, Robin or Brian don't know and practice these ideas, but I haven't seen posts on them so decided to share.

Marty's 5 Secret Content Curation Tips

1. Curate What Is Happening NOW

After last year's Raleigh Internet Summit streaming to the web was all the rage. I tested the idea and sure enough saw a similar pre-event – event-post-event traffic pattern (looks like a tall witches hat of a pointed bell curve). If something is moving one sure way to elongate the social media half life, the time when half the traffic the link or post will ever do comes in, is to call attention to the "Blow Up". Curate what is happening now and amplify the trend.
This idea WILL NOT create a trend. If you say something is blowing up when it is not then you will be disappointed by results and lose credibility so don't overuse this tactic. When something is special and being declared so by the mob share it with the rest of the class.

2. Near Real Time Beats All Other Time

There is a fire hose of data flooding at all times. Pick out news stories that fit your themes and curation and pounce fast. If I see an infographic I goto the source to see how old it is. Old infographics that are supportive of my themes are still valuable just not as valuable as one posted an hour ago with only 10 Tweets and 2 G+ shares. Those brand new, hardly been seen infographics are pure RT, Rescoop and traffic gold.

The reason we include social share data on the page is the same reason the Red Cross has a big thermometer outside their building marketing donation progress. Read BrainFluene By Dooley to learn why such a gauge is so important especially as we humans NEAR our goals.

Social share data helps speed up acceptance and it can help you know how old or exposed a link is or post is. If I walk into a Mashable post with no Tweets or other social shares I may share just becuase I know and trust the source and I'm in early. There are times EARLY trumps RELATED and walking in as the 3rd or 10th reader of a Mashable Post (or some other similar trusted souce) might be one of them. If the post was about Eskimos form Mars or something widely divergent from my core themes I might pass and not use it or I might write a tweet or a quick post on Esikmos from Mars (lol). Knowing me as you do which one do you see as more likely (#2 being the correct answer :).

3. Infographics Rock Traffic

When in doubt scoop or Retweet an infographic. If it feels like we are awash in infographics it is because we are, but we are because they work. Infographics tell a story with pictures and represent the larger "visual movement" I discussed yesterday in Visuals crushing Textuals (http://www.scoop.it/t/digital-revolution-leaderboard/p/2283733366/pinterest-defines-visuals-movement-gains-ground-on-facebook-twitter ). Find great curators of infographics such as my friend Michele (@maxOz http://www.scoop.it/u/maxoz#pg=1&mi=topics&si=curated&panel=followedPanel) and follow them, learn from them and steal from them (they won't mind :).

4. Create A Leaderboard

The master at this is Gerrit Bes, his Latest Social Media News Scoop is a Huffington Post-like aggregation of what is trending on Scoop.it http://www.scoop.it/t/latest-social-media-news . The brilliance of Gerrit's creation was immediately apparent when his visitor numbers were below mine but moving fast, very fast. Now Gerrit's vistor numbers are way above mine because for every post I curate or create he has 10 AND each of his posts has built in support system - the places he found them. This is the same dynamic as social contests and games. Putting User Generated Content (UGC) on your site creates the same "support it" knee jerk reaction.
Creating a leaderboard like the one I did last week: http://www.scoop.it/t/digital-revolution-leaderboard can also breathe new life into your social media with a second or third round. You post to the board as trending from yesterday and those who missed it can catch up. Every visitor Retweet you generate from such a leaderboard is all gravy.

5. Say Thank You

Seems like an easy idea, but so appreciated and meaningful. I work hard sharing and curating and do so for non-monetary reasons (love of the game). I also do so because people have helped me and I want to repay that help. I love curating, Scoop.it and the special friends I've made here. I created a Scoop called Thank You ( http://www.scoop.it/t/thank-you )because I was so moved and well supported by the brilliant, special people who didn't know me from a hole in the wall a year ago. When someone does something nice for you that you notice there are 10 more doing good things for you that you missed. Good rule of thumb is always say thanks, always. Second good rule of thumb is BE THANKFUL :).


Thanks everyone here ends my first 5 Marty Curation Secrets (lol).

Curating Shock Of The New - Scoopit Revolutions Analysis

Curating Shock Of The New

Curation is tricky. There is only so much TIME and the amount of curation you could do is always infinite, so creating priority is key.

Time Is Part Of Google's Algorithm

I used my 12 Scoop.it "Revolutions" to discover ways to value each feed. Feedback loops should change behavior. I want to know if I should increase, decrease or stay the same on the number of Scoop.it Revolutions. Since the amount of content is always infinite finding ways to value, prioritize and trim or add becomes very important.

Here are the current Scoop.it Revolutions and their start dates: 

• Curation (created May 11, 2011, 438 days)
• Startup (November 11, 2011, 261 days)
• Business Intelligence (December 6, 201, 236 days)
• Thank You (November 14, 201, 258 days)
• Mobile (February 23, 2012, 157 days)
• Design (February 23, 2012, 157 days)
• Ecomm (February 24, 2012, 156 days)
• SoLoMo (March 15, 2012, 136 days)
• Magento (May 31, 2012, 59 days)
• Marketing (June 15, 2012, 44 days)
• Leaders (July 26, 2012, 3 days)
• Social Media Marketing (July 26, 202, 3 days)

Summary Curation Revolution Stats

In order to work up to a fair "valuation" for each post I took several cuts at the data. The first cut was a simple long tail analysis of the number of posts by Revolution:

No surprise here. Scoops with the most days have the most posts. Next I started asking value questions such as what Scoops generate the most followers:

Life is getting more interesting. For every 1 Thank You Post I receive 8.44 followers. Stop this analysis here and you might think Thank You Revolution was the most important of the revolution.s Perhaps the hardest and most important idea I've learned after 12 years of Internet marketing is everything influences everything. It can be hard to tease out a single defining metric.

Needing some way to normalize the data across dimensions I "valued" each dimension in descending order. Curation Revolution had the most posts so it received a 12 for posts. Curation received a 9 for post to follow because that is where it fell in the stack. Valuing each dimension and scoop this way  produced this table:

Time matters to value across multiple dimensions. Time is the often forgotten variable in Google's algorithm. Think our organic efforts will deliver results in days or weeks and you will be disappointed. Organic content marketing is like planting crops.

Plant today to eat several months from now. Not All Curation Is Equal Time is important, but so is HEAT. Social Media Marketing and Digital Revolution Leaders are highlighted in green because they are coming up fast.

There is a NEWNESS factor that they are yet to incubate out of, but if they maintain their values they will come up faster than current leaders. Here is an interesting cut that shows the value being created by these new Scoops over the short time they've been live:

Summary We need to "normalize" out the impacts of time and other variables to see real curation value. The first step to understanding curation's Return On Investment is creating an apples to apples comparison across multiple dimensions of value (posts, followers to post, reactions to posts and time).

Once we see and understand how our curation efforts stack up against each other we can begin to normalize in other channels (PPC, inbound marketing, even traditional svertising). From this analysis I have a watch on SoLoMo as possibly too small a difference with Mobile an Design. SoLoMo (Social, Local and Mobile) may be worth keeping as the trend is building according to Google Insights for search:

Design is probably my failing. Design is important to Internet marketing so I keep my hand it, but it is not a focus. Design gets "left over" curation time an there hasn't been much time left over lately. Better to do 9 things well than 12 fair to average, but better to TEST 12 and cut down to 9. If you don't test you don't know, but once the data is in core down if and when you can safely eliminate any iceberg effects (impact on your stack you can't directly see and explaining that is for another time).

Related ScentTrails

Best SEO is No SEO

Scoop.it Rocks II

Scoop.it Rocks Here's Why

Why Scoopit Rocks II [Pictures]

CORRECT Web Address
Please Retweet, Stumble Up On and ReScoop this URL.
Thanks for helping fix my mess up as I will delete
the other one before the duplicate cops get upset.
Marty

Scoop.it's Magic Content Curation Wand

Scoop.it's founders Marc and Guillaume were nice enough to let me play with their amazing new curation tool in beta after reading Curation The Next Web Revolution. I loved Scoop.it right away and wrote about it in Scoop.it Rocks Here's Why. Not a bad initial write up but I missed a lot of stuff. This post seeks to right that wrong and do so in pictures.

Why Scoop.it Rocks - SEO POWER

Almost since the week I created Curation Revolution it has ranked #1 (absolute i.e. no float) on Google. You might think, "Not a highly searched term." And you would be RIGHT and WRONG. The correct way to form that sentence is not a highly searched term NOW. The "curation" search demand chart is almost straight up.

So I have a strong position on a long tail "curation" term is the proper way to think of achieving #1 ranking on Curation Revolution. Scoop.it uses the power of its platform, read Platforms vs. Websites to know why websites are dead, to help Scoop.it's curator / members achieve what would have been 10x as SEO hard without this cool tool and Marc's and Guillaume's willingness to SHARE their resources (unlike people named Zuckerberg).

Scoop.it is better positioned to bridge the commerce / content gap than Facebook because they are more generous in sharing the bounty we curators help their site earn. Before there is MONEY there is traffic, social shares and Google-Juice :).

I've been an Internet marketer for more than 12 years. This is another way of saying I take NOTHING at face value (lol). I test, test and test more. I also had a Scoop.it skeptic on my staff so we set a harder 2nd test. Could we break into the first page of Google for "Business Intelligence Revolution"? Scoop.it was up to this challenge as these Mike's Free Keyword Checker (another favorite tool) results prove:

Why Scoop.it Rocks - Views and Community

Hope you will follow Martin Marty Smith on Scoop.it. You may help my "views" meter turn over to 21,000. Doesn't sound like much and it isn't compared to uber-curators like Robin Good or Michele Smorgon (Maxoz), but let's compare apples to apples in terms of my curation / creation efforts.  

ScentTrail Marketing Blog Stats

Started in 2008
PageRank: 3
Followers: 3
Posts: 538
Views: 87,000
Google #1s: 5

Scoop.it Stats

Started in late 2010
PageRank: 4
Followers: 607
Posts: thousands
Google #1s: 2
Links: 25,870
Views: 20,025

Have to award the gold to Scoop.it here for greater return on much less effort. Scoop.it wins the More and More, Faster and Faster, Better and Better race hands down. Blogging is still important, but Scoop.it should be the hub of your social activities.  

Community
You won't find a nicer, more helpful group of people than the Scoop.it community. The Scoop.it community is blissfully troll free (knocking on my laptop as I write that) and people at the top of its group of the brilliant gamification such as Jesus Hernandez or John van den Bink are generous and kind with their time and support of your curation efforts no matter how fledgling :).

I'm going to try to work with one of my favorite curators, Mike Ellsworth to write / edit Curating The Company. Publishing a book is on my bucket list and stuff on my bucket list gets done (see Martin's Ride To Cure Cancer my 2010 bicycle ride across America). We want to include other curators such as Susan Bainbridge and Jan Gordon (to name just 2) too so if you would like to write a chapter of Curating The Company let us know.

Why Scoop.it Rocks
Bridging The Content / Commerce Gap

Why would I build a store in Facebook? A: I wouldn't because consumers don't trust Facebook. Wrote a Scoop the other day titled: People Love Amazon And Want To Spend Money, They Fear Facebook. This is double damning, a Chinese finger puzzle. Harder Facebook tries to get out the more stuck they are.

Included ideas for how Facebook could create money / trust, but Scoop.it isn't going to have half the trouble (granted that is an intuitive guess) in making money via gaining customer trust. Facebook's aggressive anti-business stance from their founding is catching up with them now. One BIG signal to consumers that Facebook is trustworthy with their money is when big brands start asking for it on Facebook. Instead big brands are running for the hills.

Scoop.it's willingness to share its platform and the juice we all create bodes better for Google and so with businesses. Scoop.it is the organizing left brain to the curating / creating and merchandising right brian. I've struggled with this mind / body, right brain creative / left brain engineer issue since creating my first site in 1999 (FoundObjects.com now RIP except in the archive and my blog). Bridging the gap between content and commerce is hard. They tend toward the mutually exclusive.

The rub in ecommerce is you must have content. Content is the key to Google and Google is where the people are so content = MONEY. Problem is content is expensive. Content is hard to create, hard to maintain and hard to get anyone to care about (Retweet, ReScoop, LIKE, etc.).

You have to have content that doesn't lower conversion but has a high and easy update frequency. You need the GOOD content in other words. Good content is especially important after Google's Panda and Penguin updates that prize QDF, or Quality Deserves Freshness, and QDD, Quality Deserves Diversity, content. I've reviewed hundreds of tools, some created by friends, and none are as graceful about bridge building between the two sides of the content / commerce Rubicon as Scoop.it. None.

Why Scoop.it Rocks -
Management Team and Team

I threw a little bit of a fit after Scoop.it took away several cherished feedback loop features (Likes and Dislikes of New Scoop.it UI) and Guillaume and the team passed the Martin hysterical fit test (ever read something you wrote and want to run and hide LOL). Guillaume gets off a plane and starts working the issue. This was a crucial test of the joint "ownership" clause of a tool like this and the Scoop.it team passed with flying colors.

Hardest thing to do in our new digital revolution where community trumps all is to GIVE UP control of your prized children to the mob. Scoop.it's team brought the features back without diminishing the significant new UI they've created (read Likes and Likes of The New Scoop.it UI to see how I am starting to get what they were after. Finally, if you are still with me read Internet Marketing's Secrets - Taxonomy, SEO and Scoopit for more.

Why Scoop.it Rocks -
Creating Network Effect

In case you missed the memo, we are all the creation of network effects business now. The reason we must create ever increasing return from the same or less effort is Metcalfe's Law. Metcalfe's Law values a telecommunication's network at SQUARE its members. Read Linked by Barabasi to learn the value of "propriety linking" or a concept we all know well called The Rich Get Richer.

The positive virtual cycles your website will need to matter are, said another way, a network effect. Scoop.it, as I pointed out in the stats comparing it to my blog, create the steepest, fastest network effect I've ever seen and believe me I've searched hundreds of tools for the magic chart above.

The blue columns represent curation (Scoops) on Curation Revolution. The white line represents the VALUE inside any content network - views by people. The ideal tool requires less and less work to get more and more return. Yes this is another reference to my More and More, Faster and Faster, Better And Better rule and Scoop.it, by the steepness and separation between the blue columns and white lines reach for network effect heaven.

Why Scoop.it Rocks Conclusion

Scoop.it Rocks and making it the hub of your personal or company's social media marketing is a genius move. If you are NOT using Scoop.it hope you are in the web development business. Love to create competitive advantage with a FREE tool (I've moved to Pro and pay $79 a month now).

Story of Cancer Trust - Giving Things Away With Your Help

 After a tough week post-chemo I've decided the time to "get my affairs in order" is here. I don't share this to be depressing or sad. I am neither :). I'm tired of being sick (more tired than you can imagine), but I take heart in accomplishing something. Time to start any journey is always NOW.

How We Will Create
The Story Of Cancer Trust:

* Create the Story of Cancer trust (my estate will go into the trust).
* Create hybrid 501c3 nonprofit (allows some profits).
* Create a plan to consistently donate $1M to cancer research.
* Give away my cherished URLs (StoryofCancer.com, CureCancerStore.com).
* Give URLs to a 501c3 we believe will be a good partner.
* Create a Story of Cancer community online.
* Create the Cure Cancer Store.
* Help cancer patients by curating information, sharing and becoming a resource.
* Help cancer researchers who aren't doing things in the "normal" way.
* Create a campaign, Save Martin, Save the World, to help Dr. van Deventer, my oncologist raise the $225,000 he needs to continue his research into CLL (my cancer :).

Since there are a lot of moving parts and I want to SEE this StoryOfCancer.com before moving on to whatever is next I've set plans in motion yesterday and today. Here is what is happening next:

Trust
I've ask Jon Jordan and Mark Foulkrod, my "bosses" (really my friends) atAtlantic BT ( http://www.atlanticbt.com ) to be the guardians of the trust. We are meeting on Thursday to iron out details.

Board
There are people who've been contributing resources and love right along who won't be forgotten such as Eric and Cynthia Garrison from WTE.net ( http://www.wte.net). They will be board members and continue to be trusted resources. Dr. Hank van Deventer will also be invited to be a board member. My brother and sister will be asked to be board members too (other suggestions?).

Dr. Hank van Deventer Pitch August 3
Will be presenting Story of Cancer business plan to Dr. van Deventer about the Story of Cancer trust and the Save Martin, Save the World campaign to Dr. V a week from this Friday (I will share a copy on ScentTrail Marketing).

Set Appointment To See Karen Cochran at the Duke Cancer Institute
Haven't seen or talked to Karen since joining Atlantic BT (my bad) and Martin's Ride To Cure Cancer ( http://www.martinsride.com/ ), so overdue for a checkin and will make the Story of Cancer pitch.

Your Help Is Needed...
To Create The Story of Cancer

If you are reading this and would like to help there are a million ways you can become part of the Story of Cancer "team". Here are a few ideas I have sitting here today:

* Know a good Cancer Support 501c3 we should be talking to? Please share and we will include your recommendations in our pitch meetings and strategy. A great partner is one who will understand enough about Internet marketing to know of the immense value we are about to grant (in excess of $1M).

* Know good board members? Boards can make or break an effort like this and I only have the one estate (lol), so intelligent, caring board members with experience where we are thin (nonprofit world of donations, grants and Charity Navigator) would be much appreciated suggestions.

* LIKE Cure Cancer Store and Story of Cancer on Facebook. This is where we will go to ask for ideas, feedback and inspiration.

* Ideation - This post may sound like I know what I'm doing. I know a little about Internet marketing but forming trusts and 501c3 are areas of absolute ignorance. If you have expertise and would like to help in exchange for little more than our thanks join our Facebook groups and give a shout out to my mobriff(at)gmail email.

* Friendship & Support - I have great friends in Scoop.it, people I care about and who care about me. There is NO WAY to create anything or become a "cancer survivor" without friends and support. Thanks to those who have already saved my life and thanks to those who will continue to do so. You guys rock :) !.

Here is where we are forming the Story of Cancer community now (on Facebook):

Story of Cancer http://www.facebook.com/StoryofCancer
Cure Cancer Store: http://www.facebook.com/CureCancerStore


As always my thanks and love to all.

Marty

Internet Marketing Secrets - Taxonomy, SEO and Scoopit

Guillaume Decugis, Scoop.it's CEO, ask me to explain my Scoop.it UI look and feel and functionality ideas. Since my comments were about to set a record for words in a comment box I've moved them here :). Here is some background:

What Is Scoop.it?
Scoop.it is an amazing curation tool that provides great tools to create beautiful magazine-like curations on topics Scoop.it spiders the social web on keywords users provide AND can accept manual URLs. I curate about 50% from information related to my topics manually from my writing, Tweets or using tools such as Zite, Flipboad and my Google RSS reader. Scoop.it's crawlers find the other 50%.

What Prompted Martin's Scoop.it UI Thoughts

Curation Revolution was my first Scoop.it topic. Marc Rougier, Scoop.it's other founder, read Curation The Next Revolution and offered access to Scoop.it's beta. Curation Revolution has had #1 (absolute i.e. non-float) on Google on the term "curation revolution" since weeks after we created it. Curation Revolution doesn't get many searches (yet), but it is close enough to "curation" and curaton's beautifully trending 500,000 searches a year to provide a way to capture the hill (have to explain how to use long tail terms linked together as an army to capture highly competitive terms later).

The Google trends chart on "curation" is exactly what I look for. A chart like the one above says a market is forming and I want to join based on the steepness of that curve and its predicted path.


Charts like the curation Google Trends chart are what I live for. It means the curation content train is leaving the station full of steam and promise. The next question is what to do about it:

• Create related content.
• Probe long tail keywords to see what has legs.
• Find tools like Scoop.it that can deploy network effects to help form the attack.

Some of my readers hate it when I use words like "attack", but there is no free floating, unassigned web traffic anymore. You aren't gifted your website's traffic you must take it from someone else. The cool thing about the Google Trends and Insights charts for curate is curation's big bang happend in 2010. Now take a look at Marketing across the globe:

Wrong direction right? Marketing is a vise. Its's already highly competitive and point of diminishing returns has been reached. This is another way of saying you are going to fight about 100X as hard for a diminishing result. Curation, on the other hand, takes less to become an authority and it is gaining share (some of marketing's traffic is getting hip to multi-keyword searches and breaking off pieces of Marketing's search volume).

This brings us to Scoop.it's amazing opportunity. Here is why I am VERY excited about Scoop.it right now:

• Scoop.it is better equipped to straddle the content/commerce divide than other tools (or Facebook). 
• Scoop.it creates blog-like SEO strength because Platforms Rule.
• Scoop.it's amazing new visual UI as Visuals Crush Textuals (major trend think Pinterest vs. Twitter, most of the things Facebook fans like are picture and videos, and etc..).

Straddle The Content And Commerce Rubicon

Finding a way to have content and ecommerce strength in the same location has proven difficult to impossible before Scoop.it. I struggled with this issue as a Director of Ecommerce. It seemed I could tell great stories or convert but not both. Content and commerce seemed mutually exclusive: winning on one meant a loss on the other. I also needed to create or curate at least 100X the amount of content my team and I could create on our own. The answer to our team shortfall were things like:

• Multi-author blogs and Wikis, Forums. 
• User Generated Content (UGC) via reviews, contests, comments and guest blog posts. 
• Plug and play tools that created network effects with little work (Scoop.it, Paper.li).

Here is a magical demonstration of Scoop.it ability to create a cherished "network effect":

See Scoop.it's magic? The blue bars are curation effort, the white line represents views. The white line's stability in the first gap when I got sick and couldn't curate for a bit and its growing ability to leave the blue bars of curation and create views without a 1 to 1 relationship between curation and views (or think of it as curation and work) mean this is a rare, magical tool. Pinterest has this same "network effect" dynamic btw.

Scoop.it has the rare ability to, after some building, become plug, play and forget it or, more accurately, plug, plan and reduce the amount of effort needed to create exponential returns. Since any content development team is too far behind to ever catch up, remember Amazon has 600M pages in Google as I write this, they must find tools capable of achieving multiple goals simultaneously.

Scoop.it is SEO excellent because they share benefits from their platform members / curators (Read Platforms vs. Websites to see why this sharing is so important to SEO). The first step in straddling the content / commerce Rubicon is to be able to create more content than a team can based on its natural 1 to 1 (one person to 2,000 hours a year roughly) relationship.

Scoop.it creates the best community benefits and network effects for YOU. Facebook crates these same benefits FOR THEMSELVES first and crumbs are left to the content creators. Scoop.it reverses this polarity placing mutual benefit on the table and sharing real power - thus the absolute #1 on Curation Revolution in Google almost since we started.

Here is the beautiful new Scoop.it UI:

The second part of any commerce / content bridge is a visual UI with taxonomy control. Scoop.it has half of this with their amazing update of a week ago. They have the visual dynamics. My first reaction was, "This is beautiful and cool." My second reaction was, "Where are the tools I depend on to curate such as current views?" The "missing features" issue was distracting but quickly fixed. Now I'm jacking the UI by:

• Changing my curation topics to be related (everything is a revolution now).
• Look at this page: http://www.scoop.it/u/martin-marty-smith.
• There is the "Magazine".

This is my admin page (above). If you go to Marty Marty Smith's page on Scoop.it you will see a different page. There is a "Follow" Call To Action (CTA) blue button on the bottom left of each topic. Not wild about that button as it is confusing. Would prefer a great CTA that is more general here like "Discover" and an orange button on that background might create more contrast and conversion (testable in any case).

"Discover" intrigues and makes "Follow" on the subsequent pages seem more like something I want to do. Have to earn permission before you use CTA's like follow and we don't have that level of permission for first time visitors yet on the master page. Easy to test, easy to fix.

I've never driven links into this master page because it didn't look near this good. I didn't see how I could use Scoop.it to bridge the Content / Commerce Rubicon until this beautiful new page. Now ideas are leaping all over :).

There are still UI issues including:

• Flatness of the presentation makes everything look equal when it never is. 
• There are no L2 or L3 subcategories within topics. 
• There is no internal search (that I am aware of). 
• There are no ways to expose the analytics to visitors such as:
• Top Commented Content.
• Top Read Content.
• Top Rescooped Content.

The list above are my favorite turbo-charge curation tactics.

When something is trending I call attention to it as trending and it trends more. When something blows up I share that because what IS blowing up is always more likely to blow up more than something that is not lifting off. Here is one way I might complete the content / commerce fit. Take the topics that is dominant, in my case Curation Revolution, and do more with it. Make it the backbone of the store.

How Marty would cross the Content / Commerce Rubicon with New Scoop.it (hastily created and NOT a graphic designer, but you can see what is in my mind if somewhat roughly):

Here is the Curation Revolution menu that supports the image above:

Curation Revolution Store.
Curation Revolution Main (portal page to L2 categories like StoryTelling).
Curation Revolution Sale (compiled across L2 store categories such as books, travel, electronics and with a canonical URL so no dupe content penalties from Google ).

We could use the far right column to create different content cuts (these are all already in the analytics they just aren't faced out to visitors where the money is) such as:

Top Searches (could do content, products or content and products in the return set and I would probably opt for the later).

Deal area (where the Free Shipping Is now and a curated space controlled by business rules or hand curated depending on the complexity of the driving database).

Top Content - I would like to business rule the top commented, rescooped and viewed content. This kind of reach in and grab tribal data creates a feeling of the tribe, "like me" comparisons and increases speed and adoption of trending content. I learned a valuable Internet marketing lesson from my old direct mail bosses.

Feed The BEAR

This means spend more time on trending topics than anything else. You would rather have a page 1 listing on any term than page 400 on any term. No one sees the page 400 but some traffic will see you on page one, so feed the bear to make trending topics blow up bigger and faster. If an idea is a dud MOVE ON. Page ones play, page 5 on don't (unless they are trending up and will be on page one soon).

Current Scoop.it is a little too flat and non-hierarchical. This means we can't create hints other than the page view and those are BIG and IMPORTANT hints. Problem is the page view hints are now out of order. Nothing drives visitors more crazy than seeing the most important thing tucked in the 2nd position. The current presentation is left to right alphabetical.

When you see my total scoops at 19,000 with 11,000 coming from Curation Revolution you want to know more about Curation Revolution (it is only natural). Current layout depresses the natural response instead of feeding the bear.

The current UI makes visitors work too hard and doesn't put enough control in my curation hands. I would use that control to focus the trending topics, reinforce their tribal nature, tease the next related thread and find ways to bridge the content / commerce Rubicon.

Guillaume made a suggestion and asked a question. Here is my response:


Guillaume,
Used your idea to create a "portal-like" page on Is Branding An Artifact Of The Past just now. Here is the "portal" page that summarizes 2 previous scoops and links to a blog post linking the entire thread in a single place: http://www.scoop.it/t/curation-revolution/p/2225942199/q-is-branding-an-artifact-of-the-past-a-yes-what-to-do-about-it

The permalink does create good portal leaps. To be most effective I probably need to carry all links on all pages. The problem with the permalink is it gives up the visual clarity of having those posts stacked on top of one another. In this case the 3rd post is actually a summary of the other too plus a little more so could more than cover it with the permalink.

But, if I'm curating a story where A leads to B leads to C and back again AND I'm telling that story visually it would be great to always cluster the look in stack (straight up and down), column (2 on left, 2 on right) or leading on left with 2 stacked on right.

If I could visually link article together so they move through time as one unit then I tell more complex stories over time. I'm discovering this on our Atlantic BT blog. Currently our blog is very one off. One article stands alone and so encourages visitors to come in, read that article and leave. When we add other suggested and connected reading our Time On Site and Pages Viewed go up exponentially.

Same idea for Scoop.it. Right now the only taxonomy comes from the topic, but within the topic may be several subcategories of interest. Storytelling would be a good example of a subcategory in Curation Revolution. I might have three great storytelling scoops from

Karen Dietz that tell more of a story together than the do apart, so it would be great to create a visual link, a layer if you will, where these stories are combined and there is an overlay explaining the uniting thread.

Tags can do this of course, but I don't know how to use tabs to tell subcategory-like stories yet. If I tagged all 3 Storytelling Karen Dietz and defined their common thread, narration tips for example, then we have the join. Now I need the three Scoops to move together through time (as a subcategory would).

Ever seen a cotton candy machine? Here is the taxonomy: Curation Revolution (L1), Storytelling (L2), Narration (L3). As the cotton candy content is scooped the candy forming in L2 and L3 grows in density and contributing strength.

I wrote a piece on Siloing and bleeding (PR) recently  and I'm attempting to organize my scoops in a way that could allocate the strong SEO we've earned on Curation Revolution to other subcategories of keywords within Curation Revolution.

Curation Revolution is so strong I wouldn't pass rank down to Storytelling. Not a good idea to pass rank DOWN so much. I might get to a point where Storytelling needs to break out and be its own topic. Right now it would be hard to see that tipping point in the analytics because the taxonomy's only definition is at the L1 level. I have no way of knowing if Storytelling is getting enough juice inside the stack to break it out.

Your new UI has started this thinking or made it more immediate because: http://www.scoop.it/u/martin-marty-smith is one heck of a beautiful page now thanks to your changes. But your organization of the information (alpha) makes it tough to drive link juice in there. Curation Revolution is more than half my traffic yet it is next to BI Revolution.

***** This is where I stopped to dig deeper into what I've been thinking ever since seeing the new Scoop.it visual UI recounted above.

Late and Guillaume is probably the only one still reading, so hope some of this makes sense. Don't have tie to sleep and edit so opting for sleep (lol).

Marty

Internet Markeing's Secret: More and More, Faster and Faster, Better and Better

Martin's Internet Marketing Secret

Looking back it was always there, obscured by the web's constant sturm and drang, but present and findable. We humans are funny. We search furiously for gold. Not finding any, or not finding any easily recognizable as GOLD, we double our efforts as if there is some relationship between our efforts and the finding of GOLD.

If finding gold was only a matter of redoubling effort everyone would have more gold than they could image. If everyone had more gold than they could imagine its value would plummet. We humans can create irony out of a pile of sticks (lol). We walk by real gold chasing something that appears to be gold but isn't. We find fool's gold.

Amazon's Sword In The Ecommerce Stone

At my core I am a merchant. Creating my first online store in 1999 I fell hopelessly in love. I fell for the ability to share a secret with strangers across a crowded room, to become friends and confidants so easily. My first store, FoundObjects.com, is RIP but may be the finest achievement of my life.

To look at it now you may not see its difficult beauty. Now always changes THEN, but I know the behind the curtains story. I know how hard it was to teach my dominant right brain the engineering necessary to create those Mondrian lines. Seeing something so clearly in my mind and NOT being able to express it visually just about drove me crazy (ask my ex LOL). 

I watch my betters to learn and in a possibly vain belief constant vigilance can stave off being dinner. I've fought Amazon to a standstill on the term "ScentTrail", so I know it can be done for small of amounts of time on keywords Amazon doesn't care about (lol).

I was watching Amazon when I found a graph from the government describing Amazon's ecommerce dominance. The chart had years on the X axis and money on the Y and looked very similar to the diagram at the top of this post. Slowly and over time the importance of Amazon's graph came into view like the sun at the beach at dawn on a clear summer morning. Light filters in slowly as the earth turns its face to its benefactor. Suddenly there is the sun, the day and realization.

Martin's Realization

Amazon's beautiful, tuned, precise engine should teach every Internet marketer a valuable lesson. We are in the More & More, Faster & Faster and Better & Better business and we build sand castles on the beach at low tide (sorry to mix a metaphor but couldn't resist).

More & More
More of what you may be wondering. More of everything would be my all too simple answer. More content, more links, more pages, more visuals, more video, more products, more visitors, more money, more profits and more freedom. More doesn't ever stop, slow down or stand alone.

More is tied to its sister FASTER and brother BETTER. These three ideas exist in a ballet, a graceful symmetry. They dance together or they don't dance at all. If you dump MORE on your site without its sister FASTER and brother BETTER you will only irritate the Google Gods. Don't do that is my advice after 12 years of trying, sometimes in vain, to appease these powerful, somewhat mythical Gods.

More resulting from an engine in the process of tuning itself toward the impossible goal of perfection is the more of my secret find. Not MORE for the sake of itself, but more in the service of some greater good. More in the service of a balanced and happy family. MORE singing in harmony with FASTER and BETTER.

Time, I realized somewhere along this journey to a more enlightened Internet marketing, is the servant of the mythical Google Gods. Time is what determines if MORE is in sync with its sister and brother or SPAM. Amazon knows how to play MORE like the fine balanced violin it must be.

Faster & Faster
The Internet only has one TIME dimension - FASTER. Faster is the result of the web's "you see me, I see" you nature. We used to create marketing plans for a year or even years ahead. It is not that we were totally and ridiculously arrogant, we were, but we created with a timeline long since lost because the market's rhythm was set that way. Our You See Me, I See You then was so SLOW compared to the constant NOW of today's Internet marketing dominated world.

Moments after posting these secrets they crawl then possibly walk, run and fly around the world. There are no secrets anymore. Time is over. NOW is what we have and where we live. Just when it seems like there surely can't be a FASTER there always is and it is remarkably faster, an order of magnitude faster.

Time is such an artificial concept, so man made, it is beyond flexible. Time can be bent, twisted and sped up or collapsed. Time inside of a content network exists as an expression of VALUES, values such as your websites page count, visitor metrics and inbound links are in a constant state of churn. We are Internet marketing archaeologists only able to see evidence of time's passing hard pressed to know or understand the speed of an ever faster NOW.

Better & Better
Finally our brother Better & Better holds the magic wand of the only Internet marketing triptych that matters. Better is the magic math at the core of Google's engine - PageRank. When Google contemplated the impossible task of indexing infinity they realized not everything their spider would crawl would be equal. Some webpages would be more important than others.

The geniuses at Google figured out an impossibly complex algorithm to weigh the world, to organize infinity. Votes in the form of links are the core of Google's expression engine. Links represent someone else's valuation of YOUR content, life and worth. Over time and the various verisimilitude's of life, links are TRUTH, links are GOLD.

How can I start at Better & Better and work backwards will be a natural American time saving question. A question I must answer in an eastern way. You can't shorten this journey. This journey is life itself and so must be lived in balance and harmony or not at all. Remember, time is the hall monitor of the Gods.

This is not to say you can't use network time wisely. In fact you must do so, you must get smarter as time moves in the only direction it appears to know (forward). If you stay still or regress in your intelligent approach to the content, images and navigation that is your website then death is in the room. Like any shark, your website swims or dies.

Looking back as only man can or cares to, the Internet's biggest secret was always there.

Likes and Dislikes About New Scoop.it UI

WHY THIS POST IS COOL: Real Time Branding Realized after I finished and Tweeted this piece I buried the lead. What is COOL about this near real time conversation is what it can teach anyone interested in branding in the digital age. Customer service happens in real time now. Brand husbandry is communal and real time. See if you don't find the passions, ideas and inputs here illuminating about YOUR website, brand curation or social marketing. Marty

Even casual visitors to ScentTrail Marketing know how much I love Scoop.it. My Scoop.it Rocks Here's Why post is still among my most read post (along with Why Hunch.com Rocks).

Then Scoop.it changed their interface and blew up real good.

I created a post on my Curation Revolution Scoop.it feed: Likes and Dislikes About New Scoop.it UI that prompted some cool interaction summarized here with my comments in blue:

Guillaume Decugis, Scoop.it CEO

LinkedIn

Twitter


(1st  Post 6:00 This Morning)

Hi there. Just discovering this post after 11 long hours in a plane. A few short comments:
- as with any change there are always some getting used to and what mattered to us was the benefits on the long run
- as with any major release, there will be adjustments. In particular the 2 points you have marked as "losers" Marty will be addressed. We heard you (and others too).
- we're not arrogant and we're listening: we just can't be everywhere... We replied to all feedback we received on the new release on feedback.scoop.it as well as comments on our blog. I missed this thread so far and got it through Robin (thanks!)

No Worries Guillaume I was tired, it was late after a long day. Should have kept my powder dry. Good general rule for me is no communication after about 10:00 since I lose any sense of humor (lol). Now I have Bob Marley on and am much more mellow :).

- we did get user input beforehand and asked dozens frequent users not only for feedback but also to try out the new version through an early access. We apparently missed some of you on the list, really sorry about that... No punching intended. Honestly. But there will be a next time so don't be shy : if you'd like to have early access next time, make yourself known (open a ticket on feedback.scoop.it).

Not a big "open a ticket" kind of guy life being vastly too short, but as long as people I trust (Brian, Robin, Michele, Susan, etc...) are involved I'm well represented.

- Our team had lots of exchange with these early-access users and the feedback was very positive. Some problems were reported of course (Robin and I had several long exchanges on Search for instance - thanks again!) and it helped fix them. Our Search for instance has been completely revamped for this release in light of Robin's constructive criticism.

We will continue to innovate and sometimes we will break things or make mistakes. But we'll always listen and hopefully find good solutions. 

Robin Good
Uber-curator and one of the founding fathers of web content curation.

Twitter

Robin on Scoop.it

Site: http://robingood.masternewmedia.org/

 
Robin's Post at 8:22Robin Good (Today, 8:22 AM):
Hello Guillaume and thank you for your kind clarifications.

I'll be honest and sincere.

I think the main point, we as users are making, is that no-one among us got any clue, request or check relating to the features that have altogether disappeared from one day to the next.

Most of my late night frustration was with the lack of inclusion. Scoop.it is a community curation tool. I've gotten to know Robin, Michele, Mike, Gerrit, Susan and many others because the tool creates a sense of fellowship and tribal identity. If Robin doesn't feel included then NO ONE DOES and that can't be good. 

Asking us to join something or fill out a form is goofystupid (no offense). For me the question is WHAT is Scoop.it? Is it the code or what WE DO WITH IT. Remove Robin, Michele, Brian and 5 other people and your tool is just code like five other tools. WITH those people Scoop.it is a special PLACE. I understand you are scaling and personal touch is getting harder, but I remember the first email I got from Marc and it was real, smart and supportive. I wouldn't advise losing that touch or the key actors on your stage. I come for the PLAY not the theater :). And I feel included WHEN THEY DO.

I was contacted only to provide feedback about the search quality results and the new interest-graph based interface.

This ain't enough connection by half.

That is what disappoints most passionate and loyal users like Marty, MazOX, Timothy and many others who have not yet had the opportunity to discover this thread. Things that we felt useful and we used heavily were suddenly taken away from us without reason or explanation. In the name of having this new interface, we have lost some of the features which had become essential to our workflow.

Robin is on it here. It was dislocating and got more so as the day went on.

That's what feels so frustrating to us.

I never realized that I was going to give up all these features, and considered the new interface only as a means to try the new interest graph.

If you only looked at my usage stats you would have seen that every single day since the introduction of the new interface (in beta) I have systematically switched back to the old one, specifically because those very features were not accessible anymore.

Wow, that is telling. Note for future, if you see a power user switch back you aren't there yet (lol). I'm making that note for our work at Atlantic BT too.

If I knew or even remotely imagined that you were going to take them off, I would have told you in one split second.

In that direction would have been helpful to receive from you a clear text-based document informing, those in the community who you ask feedback from of the new features coming and the features planned for cancellation.

You would have had then proper feedback on this matter much ahead of time.

Overall I am quite disappointed myself, mainly because I am, like the others in this thread a passionate and eager user of Scoop.it.

We users are not all equal, and each one has different and peculiar needs. We understand that not all these needs can be satisfied. But to see features that have been very useful and dear to us, being taken away suddenly without any apparent reason for us, is not comforting nor exciting.

We, and I say this hoping to interpret the sentiment of the others, would much prefer much greater attention to this "listening" process. If we are to be your most loyal users and best marketing agents by way of our dedicated use of Scoop.it on a daily basis, you should have the duty to truly listen more attentively to our needs and to make double sure that when you release something new we are all going to be enthusiastic about it.

This idea of LISTEN BETTER is a key one Guillaume and you aren't there yet (again no offense). Forums and forms and BS are not consistent with your community, tool or branding. What you are suggesting sounds all IT and not human and so not consistent with what you've created. DISSONANCE KILLS BRANDS and your moves have introduced some (personally I HATE it when that happens). You have to walk among us, know who we are and CARE. 

I get life is overwhelming and crazy. I know you have a tiger by the tail, but the fastest, and I MEAN FAST, way to lose the tiger is to believe that you are listening well when you are NOT (been there, done that LOL). I've seen BIG BRANDS, established brands get punished by the appearance of indifference. Think of that, they weren't really indifferent THEY JUST APPEARED INDIFFERENT.

Your responding to this tread is good and a big PLUS. I also don't want to sound threatening since I know how hard what you are trying to do is since I've failed at it at least twice (lol). I go back to my original idea, form a "Buzz Team" of people who use and love the tool and represent the rest of us. Give this team real jobs. Ask for feedback, ask them to carry your communication to the community.

Go Wikipedia on this and you win. Go proprietary and indifferent and you lose. Appreciate your responding, but ACTIONS matter. I know I am saying things you already KNOW, but, caught as you are in the tornado, I can tell you that you aren't really acting on what you are hearing yet. Form a band of brothers and let us live vicariously through them.

This was clearly not the case.

As it was not also in previous updates and releases, giving me an increasing impression that, beyond the generous availability to fix bugs and errors, the company behind Scoop.it was not really in tune at all with its key users and their true needs.

Too few questions asked, too little exchange. This is the impression I am getting from this last release.

If others heavy Scoop.it users have strong opinions on this issue, they are welcome to comment and express their tale on this matter.

The issue is not: Scoop.it is bad, because it took away all the cool features we loved so much. The issue is: is Scoop.it really listening or is it only saying so? (again: I am not referring to Scoop.it generous and always timely availability to fix and correct tech issues and bugs - made exception for the display of images in Facebook which is a very frustrating and long-standing problem - but only to key strategic decisions as the ones just taken with the new interface changes). 

Robin is one of my favorite geniuses because he is SMART but yet a real mensh too. I love what Robin said here as it was more articulate and accurate than my late night rant. The other day I gold Robin how HOT it was here in North Carolina and he told me a three sentence story about Rome that made me FEEL cooler. That is the kind of man he is and if you are not already following him it is a MUST to do so.

Before Guillame's next post Stewart-Marshall shared this insightful comment.

Stewart-Marshall on @Stewartmar and on Scoop.itI'm a relative newbie, so perhaps don't feel as strongly about the old features viv-a-vis the new ones. However, I did miss the leaderboard - but I now access that by the link http://www.scoop.it/leaderboard/users (when I'm logged in, of course) instead of from dashboard. So at least I do still have that "feedback loop" that Marty referred to. But since it's still there, it just a matter of providing a button to click on the dashboard :-)

WOW, cool, brilliant idea from Stewart.

@Robin: understood. And as I said, we're going to put these two features back. Because we are listening.

Again, innovating means moving fast and sometimes breaking things or making mistakes. We clearly should have had Marty, MaxOz and others among the testers and we're going to include them next (+ others). We also sometimes hesitate about features and don't get very clear feedback from the community. So we try. And adjust rapidly after.

Now this is a GREAT response Guillaume. You've had your coffee now (lol). This is in fact PERFECT and instructional for anyone in a similar "crisis". You remind us of what we already know, you are ROCKING and ROLLING, but you don't use it as an excuse. Instead you pledge to do better. Great humanity, great listening and way to come back in the 3rd round :). This statement is consistent with your brand. This statement is something every startup entrepreneur reading this should WRITE DOWN and remember.

Overall, you won't miss these 2 features more than a few days. Promised!

I love this promise too. It is dangerous, but shows courage and that you are all in. Well done here too.

maxOz (Michele Smorgon)

Linkedin

@maxOz



9:35 my favorite Aussie and another UBER curator Michele Smorgon added to her previous post (I've put her in line response first)

I would also like to continue with this discussion further.

Firstly thank you Robin, I really appreciate you candidacy. Marty thank you for initiating this discussion, takes "balls".

There are some good things to having the Big C Michele, though I've rarely been described as "shy and retiring"  LOL :).

Guillaume, I believe others should be included, no matter how heavy a user they are.
Maybe send out a questionnaire to all users containing old features & new changes / features with a tick button? We may then obtain consensus of what should remain. These are the "Scoop.it Community" and as such should be the main consideration. Thank for your previous responses, however fixing what Robin or Marty or Stewart or Susan or myself is not the answer. Everyone wants to feel part of this Community, but may not be able to express their views as easily.  Put these questions to all the Community, proactively not reactively. Thanks for your time and hopefully your ears.
Michele @maxOz

This is why I am not so secretly in love with maxOz. Michele's spirit and curation is about inclusion, empathy and care. The best curators so so because they LOVE others. There are very good curators who are in it for ego, but they are capped at some point. Not Michele. Michele's grace and beauty comes through so clearly in her active curation as it does in this note. Here is Michele's first note not long after I started the controversy (lol).

July 11, 10:51 PM):
Marty, I'd like to thank you for the mention and more importantly I concur with your sentiments wholeheartedly!!! And to Robin's comment below, I think I am as upset and more than Robin.
I cannot see the benefits at all to the scoopit community.In fact to the contrary, we individually have become isolated from our scoopit friends and it feels on site very introspective.
Why was the design changed? What was the purpose of the design change and yes Community Members should have been polled to find out what works and what doesn't, before changing.
I think I'll stop my rant now and just let you kn ow it took approx. 5 minutes for me to find this post so I could comment.
Be well
xxx

Robin comes in next with .....

Robin Good (Today, 9:57 AM): "Proactively and not reactively" is really a great advice. Thank you MazOz. Stewart-Marshall thank you so much! - that's the URL that makes me happy again. http://www.scoop.it/leaderboard/users Guillaume: Roger. I trust your word and I appreciate your willingness to improve Scoop.it on this front. Then another favorite Gladys Pintado recooped the conversation to her Community Management Around the World feed. Next another favorite menchi friend Brian Yanish (another UBER curator and way up there on the leaderboard we all can find again thanks to Stewart :). Brian Yanish, CIO MarketingHits.com Linkedin @Marketing Hits Today, 11:53 AM): First off thank you Robin for letting me know about this discussion and Marty for "curating" it. I am glad that the topic about the leaderboard is being discussed. Search engines like Google have made the Internet competitive by giving or taking away both ranking and traffic and in the long run has made it work very financially positive for them. There were days where I was checking the leader board as much I was as I was checking my topics, I'm glad to hear I am not the only one. Lol Guillaume, I've got you in my sights, I'm less thousand away from you now. Lol As far as the other new changes made within Scoopit, I can see why many were made, from a new site visitor standpoint. We all want a new visitors to stay on the site longer and explore our topics, and maybe even join. The one thing that trending topics did for me is made me aware of new high-traffic topics. Agree with Brian, my initial post pointed out several "winner" ideas. Generally I find the new UI more visual and so more engaging. I think Brian is right that new users are going to take to it like ducks to water. Now on to what I like to call the eBay effect, where the company that owns the site doesn't realize that both the power users and the little guy have invested their time and in many cases their money into building their own little place within the site. With today's analytics tool, like ClickTales and others a site owner can really dig deep into what is working on a site and what is not based on real numbers. At least ScoopIt is working work hard to make changes to their site with the benefit of all in mind, not like many other products that I've beta tested. Keep innovating. Thanks Brian

Good post by Brian. He is always smart and helpful, another highly recommended follow.

@Brian - so now everyone knows why we removed the leaderboard: you were just about to pass me by and I couldn't tolerate it ;-) Just kidding of course... Thanks for your comment. And yes, we'll keep innovating!

@Michele - You're right and there's obviously more we can do on that front. We don't have a process for feature removal (but again this wasn't part of the plan... and they're coming back soon!). But we do have what I feel is the equivalent of what you suggest in our feedback forum: http://feedback.scoop.it Everyone can suggest an idea on that forum and everyone can vote for any idea. Though of course, we also pay a lot of attention to what our top users suggest (some of you actually suggested some ideas about giving more visibility to content that inspired this release), this Feedback forum has a strong influence on our roadmap. As of today, we've had 103 ideas completed that were originated from there.

Ah, G you were doing SO GOOD don't drop the ball now :). Here is the rub on a feedback forum - it creates a false sense of security. Truth will never be found in a "feedback forum". I appreciate your pointing it out and having one. That is great and as much as I am about to run it down, having one allows me to do so (lol). Believe me when I tell you the first riot I would start if you didn't have one is that you don't.

When you are marketing at this level 1% will share anything in your forum. 10% will vote on what the 1% posted and 89% will ride for free or not care. My "feedback forum" is Robin's scoops, Michele's empathy and Brian's humor. This is the only feedback forum I have time for, the only one I would ever care about since I've been marketing stuff for way too long to wade into anything remotely called a "feedback forum" even tough I understand others will (the 1%).

Important for you to understand about at least one strong thread of your community. We are REBELS we are self reliant and supportive of each other. You can reach us by proxy via people we know and trust, but you will NEVER get us into a "user feedback forum". Doesn't work that way. We don't work that way.

You might think I am an outlier. I may be, but I am not nearly the outlier Michele, Robin and handful of others are because they tower over me in skill, passion and brilliance. I'm just a working man's rebel, have been so all my life :). Faith Popcorn said something that is so important to Scoop.it's future I wish I could frame it and put it up on your wall.

Popcorn, an author and brilliant marketer, said, "People don't BUY brands they JOIN them." I've written about Scoop.it, told anyone who will listen and LOVE it like the French brothers and sisters I never had. I put on my beret, sip wine (the only time I drink btw) and toss my fist into the air with Scoop.it tattooed there.

This level of LOVE is the brand advocacy we all seek and you have. Now here is the trick, once given such a passionate love by an active tribe of REBELS can really help your cause. You don't even have to LOVE us back, but you do need to INCLUDE us. I don't mean me personally I am already drowning, but MICHELE and ROBIN and 5 others would be a good idea.

Think about it for just a minute. Instead of requiring me to do something I wouldn't do if I was dying, spend 5 minutes in a feedback forum, I get to hear about what you are up to from people I trust and you are your brand ambassadors. Better right? Easy too and CHEAP I bet you get more help than required with some special badges, a THANK YOU and sharing the funky t-shirts I bet you already create for your team.

Feedback forums are fine and, ,as I mentioned, I would clobber you if you didn't have one, but you have a chance to SAVE THE WORLD. Don't respond to such an opportunity with the usual suspects. Empower those who already love you, don't smack us again and listen better (or just listen to our proxy avatars those brand ambassadors who are part of your extended team).

Thanks for being so responsive and if you are still reading this so dedicated (lol). You, Marc and your entire team should know I only fight for things I love. Time is much too short to do anything else. You guys will be fine and rock on.

To all my friends who responded I love you guys. I know the L word isn't really common usage but I head into another round of chemo tomorrow, so F**K It. Love you all and can't repay the value you create in my life, not possible :).

Marty
Director Marketing
Atlantic BT (been working on this for hours, so best to link to my amazing employers who had the courage to hire a crazy rebel like yours truly LOL)

Internet Marketing Summer School

Do I Need An Internet Marketing Degree?
I don't think there is such a thing as an Internet marketing degree. By the time this stuff slows down enough to get in a college course it is too late. You are studying yesterday's news and so will need to be broken of bad habits when you join an Internet marketing company. My recent post on the top 10 Summer Internet Marketing Reading seems to have reignited the debate. Here are some helpful links if you are behind in your homework (lol):

Top 10 Internet Marketing Summer Reading

Experience vs. Internet Marketing Degree on Atlantic BT's Blog

Do I Need An Internet Marketing Degree on ScentTrail

Think Like An Internet Marketer Summer School
The most important Internet marketing traits must be learned but are hard to teach. If that sounds like a vicious CATCH-22 then you are thinking like an Internet marketer already :). I've decided to create ScentTrail's Internet Marketing Summer School.

For the next 6 weeks I will post a fictional but real life test case every Sunday. Internet Marketing Summer School "students" will have one week to respond. Respond to all 6 cases means you graduate from Internet Marketing Summer School (there will be a special badge and Tee for graduates). Since Internet marketing isn't linear, if you come up with a single GREAT answer you may earn your graduation badge immediately. If you don't find out about Internet Marketing Summer School until we've started, no worries. I will link all test cases from the top of this page. If you want to gamble and do one great answer then you may graduate on the spot since trying to understand the over (costs) vs. the under (return) of any marketing idea is thinking like an Internet marketer.

Internet Marketing Summer School: Test Situation #1 BobBaker.com (fictional but real):
Your name is John Smith. You run a successful sport fishing business online. Time is now just after July 4th. You've created a $2,000,000 online sport fishing store and reseller network. You started ten years ago with a brochure site about fly fishing in Montana. The original owner's brother, Bob Baker, is a famous fly fisherman and the flies he ties are coveted. You left corporate America to buy the fledgling fly shop in Raleigh, NC thinking you would spend time fishing and becoming a retailer. You don't have enough money to not have your investment pay returns. When you purchased the business you created a branded line of Bob Baker flies that account for half your sales.

Bob Baker flies are sold by your site BobBaker.com and by small independent fly fishing stores around America. You used to have a brick and mortar store but closed it as the rent went way up and the web took off, so you are loyal to these struggling independent resellers. Here are BobBaker.com's stats:

BobBaker.com Fictional Sport Fishing Site Stats
PageRank: 4
Inbound Links: 150 with Orvis PR6 the only PR greater than yours linking in
Most Popular Page: Home, After that the Bob Baker Sport Flies category Page
Daily Traffic: Spring/Summer 5,000 unique visitors, 4Q 8,000 daily uniques
Average Order Value: $45 in spring/summer $65 in 4Q
Conversion Rate: 3.5%
Cart Abandonment: 65% in Spring/Summer 62% in 4Q
Email List: 30,000 +/- 10% and accelerating lately due to mobile customers leaving the list (you are not optimized for mobile)
Email Mail Frequency: 1x per month (you pay your wife's brother's son to help with email on Constant Contact)
Traffic Sources:

• 30% from affiliates such as independent reseller sites and your monthly emails
• 30% PPC with $3 to $1 ROAS (return on ad spend)
• 30% other referal sites such as Orvis and sport fishermen review sites some of whom you pay to have banner ads on their sites
• 10% of your traffic comes from undetermined sources. 

Mobile traffic is currently a consistent 3% with spikes to 5% when you drop a monthly email. Your sales are 50% fly fishing gear from Orvis you don't make much margin on and 50% from your line of flies with a much better margin.

Current Business Situation
You've been approached by Walmart to include your line of Bob Baker flies in their stores. Walmart wants to buy millions as a "test" of adding your flies. They want a wholesale price that is 20% below your current cost. You "manufacture" your flies in America with a group you've worked with for years. They already buy some components such as the hook from Mexico, but the body of the flies are built by machines they created. You can currently just a about meet the demand for 20,000 Bob Baker flies a year.

In addition to your Bob Baker fly brand you wholesale Orvis line and rods. Orvis accounts for most of the other million in sales. The fly fishing equipment business doesn't generate all that much net net. You are lucky if you pull out 15% from the Orvis goods, but your line of Bob Baker flies is much more profitable producing a consistent 30% net margin.

You've built your online business by being careful to NOT sell the same flies on your online store as you sell via your independent wholesale channel. By keeping the Bob Baker Exclusive brand a retail only brand you've had the freedom to promote the Bob Baker Sport brand online without too much channel conflict. Your Sport line is, on average, 20% less expensive than the Exclusive brand sold via retailers. Your resellers have asked to be able to sell your Sport line but you've reserved it for your online store so far.

You have two seasons - Spring/Summer and Christmas. Spring/Summer sales are only about 75% of your holiday sales and controlled by your resellers. Holiday sales are more in your direct control as they come almost exclusively from BobBaker.com. Last year you dropped 3 emails a month during the holiday season plus a big Black Friday and Cyber Monday sale and you set new holiday sales records on BobBaker.com. 

Last year you banked a little under $400,000 from the business. You and your family of 4 (wife of 15 years and 2 daughters both in private high school) live on just under $100,000 thanks to costs of private schools and LIFE. You also had loans from slower years that ate another $100,000, so you have an investment fund of just under $200,000 to invest now.

What should You Invest $200,000 In Now?
What do you use the $200,000 to invest in? Here are options you've been mulling over:

• Doing the Walmart deal would take at least that much capital since you would have to find a new, much cheaper, source of Bob Baker flies.
• The website is 3 years old and isn't mobile friendly. You've noticed a lot of email list churn from mobile devices when you mail your 30,000 person list over the last six months. You are good enough with Google analytics to see mobile traffic is growing and sometimes reaches 5% of your traffic especially around the holidays and after an email drop. You've met with several web development companies including Atlantic BT in Raleigh, and they can rebuild your site on a Magento platform that is easily adaptive to mobile for somewhere north of $10,000 depending on features you want. Atlantic BT was the only web developers you spoke with that suggested spending as much money on content marketing as on the site redesign.
• Giving the Sport line to your current resellers would take about half your war chest in new Point of Purchase displays and other sales support. You've been wondering if you shouldn't relent and let your resellers have the Sport line too as it might help sell the Exclusive line in their stores.
  
• You've thought about adding a paper catalog and have had meetings with companies who could help create 4 catalogs a year for about half your war chest.
• You've thought about expanding your brand with a new Pro line and branding friends who are also great fly fisherman but who haven't achieved Bob's notoriety. To create 3 new lines of 5 flies each brand in your current setup would take most of your $200,000 war chest.
• You've thought about adding more inventory and expanding your 2,000 Stock Keeping Unit website to 10,000 SKUs. This would mean selling products OTHER than Orvis and this could endanger the Orvis relationship. Adding that much inventory would take all the working capital you have and mean using the rolling line of credit from the bank.
• You could use your war chest to hire more support for your site. Currently you have a company that helped your site get launched and who controls your Content Management System. Since you only have about 10% product churn right now, you haven't minded paying the company $30,000 a year to manage your site, but you are starting to feel the limitations since it takes days to make a change and the site hasn't been kept up-to-date in any thing other than inventory. You get 4 big seasonal changes and the company moves your inventory around based on work orders, but it feels too slow and unresponsive.
  
  The company that currently manages your site has pitched you a $50,000 redesign again using their proprietary Content Management System (CMS). You've put them off because you suspect doing the redesign with them and paying them to keep the site current would eat about half of your cash reserve and you are ready to be in more control of half your business (the amount the site controls). You are torn between hiring web designer, staying the course or using Atlantic BT to redesign and seeing what they have to offer on the marketing front.

Think Like An Internet Marketer Test
What should John do with his investment capital? Is the answer already outlined above or is it a combination of things listed above? Should John do something not listed above?

How To "Enter" your answer:

• Use the comments or write your own blog post and share the link in the comments. 
• You can write a note on your Facebook page and share the link in a comment. 
• You can write me an email (mobriff(at)gmail please put Internet Marketing Summer School Test #1 in the subject line as I get a lot of spam) and I will post your reply.
• "Winners" will get an Internet Marketing Degree badge, a tee and other social points and status that doesn't cost me money (lol). 

Deadline for the BobBaker Test #1 Is Sunday July 15th.

If you discover this test after July 15th you may take it, but please limit your response time to no more than a week since that is already about 6 days more than you would have as an Internet marketer (lol).

Good luck. If you have questions email them to me at mobriff(at)gmail and please put "Internet Marketing Summer School" in the subject so I know your question isn't spam.

Marty