ScentTrail Marketing

WireBuzz Interview On Curing Cancer Friday

2013-06-19T13:30:00.000-04:00

What: Todd Hartley WireBuzz Interview LIVE on AIR (link to event)

When: Friday June 21st 7:00 PST 10:00 EST

Who: Mark Traphagen, Martin W. Smith

RE: Men's Health, Curing Cancer, Internet Marketing, Meaning of Life

Looking forward to discussing the BIG THINGS with my friend and fellow cancer survivor Mark Traphagen LIVE on AIR on Friday with Todd Hartley from WireBuzz. Mark is an amazing Internet marketer who knows Google Plus like you and I know the way home.

Mark has "gone viral" with almost 53,000 G+ followers adding 400 or more a day now. As one of the foremost experts on a suite of tools becoming increasingly important to SEO and Internet marketing Mark should be going viral. Learn 10% of what is in Mark's brain and you will make millions.

Friday should be fun. Hope you can join us to discuss curing cancer, Internet marketing and the meaning of life.

Papa and Marketing Got A Brand New Bag

2013-06-15T19:17:00.002-04:00

Marketing's Got A Brand New Bag

Yes everything is changing and change is faster than we can imagine. How our Internet marketing play will end is unclear. As we enter the middle acts some things are becoming as increasingly clear as a James Brown SHOUT. This post is about how Papa's new Internet marketing balances four ideas and actions:

The Ask
The Give
The Share
The Commons

The Ask

An ask is anything requiring someone to give up something of value. “Value” is defined broadly. Time has value. Information has value. Attention has value. Money is valuable too, but attention and advocacy must precede the “gift” of money in our new social, connected and mobile world. An ASK can be overly generous, but an ASK can never be less valuable than a GIVE.

The Give

The GIVE is anytime anyone (personally “you” or a company, brand, product or service) provide something of value. Again “value” can be a lot of things from a blog post with tips on email marketing to a special offer for loyal advocates.

The Share

The Share is anytime you advocate anything in any medium. What is the difference between a SHARE and a give? Sharing is a big GIVE, big and important enough to have its own classification especially since "link love" is the most important Google currency. Google's algorithms tabulate the "votes" of inbound links and social signals (likes, shares, comments).

The Commons

The triptych of The Ask, The Give and The Share form the base of the new marketing's actions. The commons is the beneficiary of those actions. Any website is a commons (whether creators know it or not). A commons is the space between two or more people, companies or even ideas. This is a shared space where the whole is greater than the parts. Every contributor to a commons agrees to a working partnership.

The “working partnership” of the web’s commons is where it is easy to fall into a trap. Approach the web as a robber and tenure will be short. Make sure you generously contribute more than you remove and you act within the web’s most basic but unstated covenant - the covenant of the commons.

Audience Determines Balance

Think you are more generous than “robber”? Beliefs must be communal. If you believe you are generous when perception is you are stingy then you aren’t as generous as you think.

In a post Panda and Penguin Google algorithm world any claim must be supported by “wisdom of crowds” social confirmation. Better to curate “claims” out of feedback from customers than make them unsupported. Your website operates like Wikipedia. Unsubstantiated claims are seen as spam and do more harm than good.

Philosophy is not a claim. Philosophy, mission and beliefs are yours to share and own. Even your “creation story” and beliefs are best when supported. If your creation story is LIKED and shared your “storytelling” resonates then it is valuable and you've struck a cord.

If the last paragraph sounds like your ABOUT page is the most important page on your website you are right. Any website's about page sets the philosophy and themes for the website, business and company. The three to five themes outlined on the About page should echo throughout the website, in printed material, email marketing and even on the walls of the company.

Your About page is a strategic CSF (Critical Success Factor).

Matching Walk and Talk

The web is NOT generous, kind or inherently supportive. The Internet is a huge amplifying lie detector. The web wants to expose lies and deceit so much it can “see” and “create” lies and deceit where none exist.

If your company or website is ever caught in such a trap don’t rage about injustice. Listen carefully and respond with patience and kindness. If you are in the wrong a full admission with specific steps to make sure the wrong never happens again is a good idea. If you are wronged your best hope is Brand Advocates come to your defense.

Brand Advocates and the Commons

When you are generous contributing more to the commons than you take out people notice. Some will say THANKS by becoming brand advocates. Brand Advocates are “virtual” team members who believe in you, your company, brand, product or service strongly enough to put personal capital “at risk” to help.

Personal capital, let’s call it Klout, is always at risk. Personal capital can only do two things: gain or decline. As we evolve into a more connected and flatter world the “long tail” is becoming longer as the absolute influence located in the “head” of the curve slowly wanes.

Things just don’t get as “big” as they used to. There are a thousand reasons for this, but the web is a major contributor. As the distance between Pro and Amateur decline (as technology becomes more pervasive and easier) two things happen simultaneously:

The mystique of being a PRO is lessened (shrinking their market). The ability of “amateurs” to create cool things increases (growing their market).

Unlike The Cult of the Amateur I don’t see the evolution of the long tail as the seventh sign consigning quality to the grave and insuring consumers suffer by having to watch endless poorly done home movies.

Attention is too valuable a currency to not be paid for things that “matter”. We may not understand the “value” of cat videos or someone shaking their booty who receives a million views, but a long tail market forms and is capable of placing value on things we may or may not understand (from a market perspective).

Today’s Internet marketers must be agnostic. If a cat video goes viral the correct reaction is, “Do we have any related content or can we create some,” since to disdain what is can be an expensive luxury few true Internet marketers can afford.

What Is Internet Marketing

Internet marketing isn’t what you think it is. You think Internet marketing is putting your STUFF (products, B2B philosophy or ideas) online. Creating digital communication is a small part of Internet marketing.

Listening, learning and curating are the actions that separate great Internet marketers from the pack. Average Internet marketers think their online marketing is about THEM. Great web marketers know Internet marketing is about US and “us” is generously created in the commons.

Related Work
This piece owes much to many including:

Phil Buckley's Content is the New SEO Ideas on 1918.com and at his SEO Meetup
David Amerland What If We Had A New Value System for Goods and Servies?
Mark Traphagen's posts on New Media Leders
Amy Lewis work on Engineers Unplugged

You In?

Here are helpful links so you know I'm not crazy, just in a hurry :).

Martin W. Smith, Director Marketing Atlantic BT

Martin Marty Smith on Facebook

Martin Marty Smith on Linkedin

Martin W. Smith on G+

Internet Marketing - Future Is About The Share

2013-06-13T21:30:00.001-04:00

Importance Of The Share

As many readers of ScentTrail know we believe the future will be shaped by The Ask, The Give, The Share and The Commons Revolution. Here are two examples illustrating power of The Share.

The SHARE Saves King and Queen of Pinterest

Results: Followers up 636% (from 196 to 1247)

Post Creation Time Reduction: -30%

I was frustrated with Pinterest. It was taking forever to find, follow and be followed by great boards. One of my favorite tactics when things are SLOW is to gamify, so I created a contest. Tell a story in 5 pins or less and the person entering the contest could become the KING or QUEEN of Pinterest.

I put up some cash and offered to make a donation to winners' favorite cancer charity. I didn't want to award the prize since the contest was about finding quality boards not mercenaries. Read Daniel Pink's excellent Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us to know why I am very careful about how online behavior is reinforced.

The contest received 4 entries, a totally flop. I awarded one of the two prizes. My friend and fellow cancer survivor Mark Traphagen won the other prize and, lucky for me, Mark hasn't insisted I make a contribution. Lucky for me because my salary is paying for development of CureCancerStarter.org (our crowdfunding platform for cancer research) so cash is beyond tight (sold my house TODAY in fact).

I was lazy about removing the boards and a funny thing happened. People started following the King and Queen of Pinterest boards at 5x the rate of my other boards. I've been an Internet marketer long enough to know when something unplanned is working DOUBLE DOWN. I did and we now have 123 Queen pinners and almost 100 King pinners.

The most amazing thing? Pinterest followers are up 636% (from just under 200 to 1247). I'm adding Pinterest followers faster and both community boards have great pinners who are regular contributors.

King & Queen of Pinterest Internet marketing lessons include:

Never give up (remove) anything online.
Be open to the curve (plans going in new directions).
When possible create community.
Community is more sustainable with less work.

Scoop.it Marketing Revolution

Results: Followers up 217% (from 96 to 209)

Post Curation Time Reduction: 50%

The Marketing Revolution was in a bad tailspin. Slipping from more than 156 followers down to 96 I wondered what was up. One of Ally Greer's Scoopiteers pointed out that the header graphic I added prevented anyone from being able to follow the feed. OUCH!

Having shot myself squarely in the foot I email Guillaume Decugis and asked how to undo my mistake. Nice to have friends who run cool software companies. Guillaume took a look, made a suggestion and the problem was fixed.

How did I want to recover and build a following? Invite friends to help. There is such a HUGE tectonic shift happening right now why not RIDE it instead of fighting the tsunami trend. The shift is we need an army of advocates, content creators, curators and friends to have success in today's Social, Connected and Mobile Internet marketing.

I invited great curators to post content to the Scoop.it Marketing Revolution. Joined by...

Brian Yanish, @MarketingHits
Gladys Pintado @GTPintado
John van den Brink @AtDotComSocial
Esther Coronel de Iberkleid (@Esthersuchi)
and eventually Jan Gordon (@JanLGordon)

These are GREAT curators. I would add more, but Scoopit tops out at five. Since resetting Scoop.it Marketing Revolution I've posted less and the feed has done better faster. Great to have such talented friends, but view the entire board.

The real revolution is THE SHARE. By sharing we creating a commons whose whole is more valuable than any part. We amplify our voices and create active conversations, curation and creation. The SHARE is why I've worked less and we've accomplished more.

What about you? Do you have great examples of The Ask, The Give, The Share or The Commons? Share your examples in comments and we will curate in.

Not Crazy, Just In A Hurry...You In?

Being Interviewed by The Tar Heel Traveler

2013-06-11T19:07:00.001-04:00

Scotty Mason is standing in my office at home asking me to type something. I know Scotty, WRAL's Tar Heel Traveler. Scotty created a feature about Martin's Ride To Cure Cancer before I left Durham on a bicycle heading west in the summer of 2010.

Today we are discussing Cure Cancer Starter and my "Selling Out" for cancer research for a Tar Heel Traveler segment to air soon. I asked when the Tar Heel Traveler Segment we create today will air? In July in concert with Cure Cancer Starter's launch Scotty replies. Cool, we are shooting for July 15th.

Great to see Scotty again. Scotty helped create the video on Cure Cancer Starter's landing page by asking great question (this is akin to asking the best quarterback in the NFL to teach me how to pass btw :).

Video Marketing Tips Learned Today
Here are a few things I picked up from watching Scotty work today:

Video Storytelling Tips

* Don't have questions written down.
* But be prepared and know your subject.
* Be open to accident and unplanned ideas.
* Create in the moment on what inspires you.
* Ask great open-ended questions.
* If you don't hear what you want ask the same question again later.
* Shoot lots of related b-roll.
* Write a script AFTER filming.
* Tell a story.

Watch Cure Cancer Starter Mission video shot by Ryan Shelley with Scotty asking questions off camera.

My favorite question today? Scotty asked me, looking around at my deserted and For Sale house, if I was depressed. We discussed going "all in" and selling everything I own on the Story of Cancer Store (which got listed on Google today thanks to friends who drove links to the store).

I explained that I LOVE my house, bikes and crazy art watches, but having a single purpose - the creation of Cure Cancer Starter - is liberating and exciting. I may have sounded like a Pema Chodron commercial explaining how much TIME means now. Time is much too important to squander.

Learned the appreciate LIFE lesson the hard way. Shaking my preconceived notions about what my life IS or could become was a good thing. I'm a cancerpreneur like my friend Chase Jones at VS-Cancer.org and countless others.

We cancerpreneurs are too busy to be down or to even worry much. Given the choice to dwell on having cancer or create new ideas to help cure it my vote is always going to be with the later :). We discussed my, "I'm not depressed, just in a hurry," beliefs today.

My leukemia has an average life expectancy of 10 years. I've had 3 rounds of chemo and am entering my ninth year. I'm not depressed or scared as much as IN A HURRY!.

Want to help cure cancer? You can help by:

* Buy something from the Story of Cancer Store.
* Make a donation on the Story of Cancer Store.

* Volunteer to help create Cure Cancer Starter (email Martin.Smith(at)atlanticbt.com).

* Like Cure Cancer Starter on Facebook.

Stay tuned for Scotty's Tar Heel Traveler segment and the launch of the first crowdfunding platform dedicated to cancer research created by a cancer survivor and the amazing teams at Atlantic BT, UNC Lineberger Cancer Center, Duke Cancer Institute, Roswell Park Cancer Institute, The City of Hope and the University of Wisconsin Carbone Cancer Center.

Not Crazy, Just In A Hurry...You In?

Marketing - Why All Marketing Is Personal Now

2013-06-08T12:47:00.000-04:00

Experience The New Luxury Good

If Tough Mudder CEO Will Dean is right and experience is the new luxury good then all marketing is personal. The Internet is changing everything. Why should we be surprised that our marketing voice must change?

Marketing and sales was in a bubble. For years everything BUT marketing and sales changed. Factories produced more STUFF faster. Growing process power and efficiency created a need to move merchandise. Madison Avenue was born.

When the mere fact of production is celebrated, exciting and new marketing and sales creates a group voice. Extend production as glory and you get "be like them" marketing. After WW II and up until about the late sixties we wanted to "be like" a mythical them.

We don't love impersonal things and matrix-like cruel corporations. We love PEOPLE, PLACES and THINGS. When we love we advocate. And boy can we advocate now. This post will be read by several hundred people with ten or so sharing with their tribe and so several hundred more with ten or so sharing with their tribe and so on to infinity.

There was a problem.

There is no "them". The idealized cardboard people we were sold only existed in ads. Throw enough ad dollars at anything and, for some short time, the beneficiary of the ad spend is cool (current example is recent Fiat imports are those cars or really fast frogs? :).

The seeds our discontent started around 1968 or 1969. America and the world tried to eat itself as fast as possible in the late sixties as dreams died. As one dream died hard another was born in a valley in California. Where once avocados bloomed silicon and integrated circuits came to create new dreams.

There is a problem.

The problem with the mobile connected and social world is taming the shrew is increasingly impossible. Fitting our collective consciousness into predetermined boxes is impossible. As we "users" take over the means of production the cult of the amateur displaces "pros from Dover".

If you are quiet you can hear it. The sound of a thousand gatekeepers having to find real jobs. The idea someone will pre-digest my news, information, products or anything is absurd on its face. In an interesting post by Scoop.it CEO Guillaume Decugis (Should Social Nets Curate Their Content Or Should Their Users) the conclusion was THEY CAN'T.

No one can curate the fire hose of content coming at us. The strength of the hose is destroying old ways. Better to create tools such as Soop.it. Tools placing more power in the hands of consumers will rule our SoLoMo future. Consumers complain about being "overwhelmed by choice" and Schwartz's book Paradox of Choice would agree. Too much choice is bad.

I do and don't agree. If experience is the new luxury good then all marketing is personal. If all marketing is personal then those being marketed to are different too. Think about it. How many commercials will you sit through now?

Between DVR, streaming and using the MUTE button (something I do more and more now) PUSH advertising is dead man walking.

You can't push an idea into our collective consciousness and hope for anything other than moderate and short lived response. Not enough response to create a return on a push investment.

Marketers see the death of PUSH in their numbers and it scares them. When production was sufficient magic, when were so amazed at the mere presence of a product or brand, PUSH and more money worked.

When choice is infinite we buy from those we LOVE.

When experience is the product then experience is what will be shared. All marketing is personal. If you are selling anything prepare to share, curate and find things marketers only used in the aggregate (stories, emotions, love). In a world of ubiquitous mobile and social connection in real time brands who tell, curate and create the awesome experience and help tell the story of their brand, product or service via social media WIN.

Faith Popcorn couldn't have been more right when she so presciently said, "People don't BUY brands they JOIN them". I would modify the marketing master's statement to, "People don BUY brands they LOVE them".

Great related Infographic from a new startup getHaggle.com

Note: Heart graphic is from Social Media's Magic Loops on Atlantic BT Blog
Picture at the top of the post is Jeremy Sadler and me on top of Mt. Monarch, Colorado during Martin's Ride To Cure Cancer, summer 2010

Not Crazy, Just In A Hurry...You In?

Story of Cancer Store Launch

2013-06-07T00:19:00.001-04:00

Check out our Selling Out For Cancer Store

Context is valuable. If, for example, you didn't spend 6 months of your life creating your first e-commerce store in 1999 you can't fully understand why creating a store in four sleepless nights is beyond awesome. Is everything perfect on the Story of Cancer store? Not nearly, but it isn't all bad either.

Keith Haring TV Man Watch
RARE SEL (Playboy) Watch For Sale
Along with everything else I own, just about :).

I researched MagentoGo, Volusion and Shopify. Since I've already used Magento at Atlantic BT (a leader in Magento development in North Carolina) AND MagentoGo offered a 30 day free trial instead of only 14 days Magento won. Magento is an ecommerce platform. You fill in the blanks and MagentoGo creates the store.

To create an ecom store with almost 100 products to sell in in 4 days is astounding. The just under 100 "products" is stuff I've accumulated over 30 years of collecting. There will eventually be more than 400 items for sale, just about everything I own :).

I've already written the Why I'm Selling Out For Cancer Research post, but I discovered three unexpected benefits:

Got back in touch with e-commerce roots.
Remembered the stories that went with 30 years of collecting books, art and music.
Realized every business should have a store now.

Why should your B2B business have a hard goods store? Creating a store is so EASY, the SEO benefits so HUGE and the branding so significant that not carving out a little time to create a store is a missed opportunity for every B2B business, for anyone.

Stores POP with the magic elixir of User Generated Content (UGC) and social shares. Google LOVES UGC and social shares. Stores also teach valuable lessons about taxonomy, keywords and how to form your message to connect with THEM.

Stores help you remove the wall between YOU and THEM. Stores provide a new dimension to your brand. If you recommend books or discuss what SEO SOUNDS LIKE with links to Spotify you are disrupting in an authoritative way (Google and your customers will love that too).

Even a 10 item SWAG store helps its creators know about what creating an online store is really like. One of my most popular ScentTrails answers the question of if you need an Internet marketing degree or not. NO because there is not way a classroom can teach lessons I just re-learned over the last four sleepless days. The best way to become an Internet marketer is to grab some mane and sink spurs (lol).

Appreciate everyone's ongoing support. Every dollar raised by selling everything I own (keeping the computer I'm writing on and my car and that is about it) goes to the Story of Cancer Foundation, my 501c3 nonprofit to create www.CureCancerStarter.org the first crowdsourcing platform for cancer research and other "tech cures cancer" ideas.

Together we cure cancer in our lifetime. We cure cancer when we believe we can. I'm a believer, what about you? You in? Have fun shopping through my life and hope you will join our journey and help cure cancer.

Be sure to SHOP the Story of Cancer Store this weekend. Many things have an inventory of 1 and will be sold first come, first served :).M

Marty

----
Martin W. Smith
Founder, Story of Cancer Foundation
Founder, CureCancerStarter.org

Selling Out To Help Cure Cancer

2013-06-02T13:30:00.000-04:00

What's Our Goal?

Video Tour of 118 Brookview Street in Durham, NC **** SOLD ****

MLS Listing

Our goal is to raise $50,000 as fast as possible (lol).

All funds raised go to The Story of Cancer Foundation (my 501c3 nonprofit) to continue development of CureCancerStarter.org and other "Tech Cures Cancer" projects.

Are Donations Tax Deductible?

The Story of Cancer Foundation's 501c3 application is in, but the government can take up to a year to approve. Anyone interested in taking a tax deduction should leave contact information so we can let them know when the Story of Cancer Foundation's application is approved.

How Does The Sale Work

My house at 118 Brookview is being sold by Stephanie Lane. See the LISTING. The house is titled in my name, so despite whoever buying it being a HUGE help to the Story of Cancer Foundation there won't be a tax deduction for buying the house.

We are working on details of how to process payments and make shipments for STUFF. Furniture we wont be shipping (pick up at my house in Durham), so I've created a Pinterest board to show furniture and will follow with others soon.

Over the next few days we will be moving everything out to similar boards all inked from this page. We should have PayPal and PayPal for major credit cards installed in the first part of next week too. We will be using Square for pieces picked up here in Durham.We will also be glad to take checks (hopefully not of the rubber variety :).

Donations Instead of Prices

We aren't going to "price" things as much as suggest a donation. Feel free to offer more or less. We also won't play auctioneer. First come, first served.

Offers below suggested donations for major things like furniture and bicycles will need to be considered. Offers above suggested donations will be immediately accepted. Offers below suggested donations on smaller things will be accepted (most likely).

What's For Sale

Furniture Pinterest Board
If you see something you like email me at: MartinSellingZoe(at)aol w/ "Sale" in subject.

Over 200 well cared for records (of the old school vinyl variety).

Over 300 CDs with many box sets.

Over 300 books including about 50 art books.

Art Collection (including Shepard Fairey, Lucy Davis and Ernest Fraiser).

Swatch and Watch Collection (including Keith Haring SEL Watch &; a rare Basquiat watch).

Bicycles including the Specialized Robaix I rode across America in the summer of 2010 (will be glad to sign and have a great picture of the bike on the cover of Duke Notes).

Kitchen Stuff (I don't cook so keep expectations LOW here :).

Lawn, Garden and Tools (I don't do much of this either so again keep expectations low).

Cure Cancer Starter SWAG - People keep asking for Cure Cancer Starter shirts (I wear one almost everyday) so we will have some SWAG to help supporters share the word.

Volunteers ROCK

We need LOTS of help with marketing plans, running our launch event, creating content and a variety of other "mission critical" jobs. If your life has been touched by cancer and you would like to give back we sure could use your help.

Please email: MartinSellingZoe(at)aol and include "Volunteer" in the subject.

Why I’m Selling Everything

I'm "Selling Out For Cancer" because:

Need the cash for Cure Cancer Starter.
Don’t want my siblings to have to deal with my STUFF :).

Cash For Cure Cancer Starter

As I shared on my Startups Scoop.it, there is a time in every starutp when a founder must make a tough call. A call to "burn the boats" and go all in. For me, the Story of Cancer Foundation and CureCnacerStarter.org that time is NOW.

I've bet everything on the kindness of strangers before and NEVER been disappointed. Strangers have literally saved my life more than once. Something will work out, it always does. One thing you learn FAST after hearing "cancer" and your name in the same sentence is LIFE is so much more FUN and EASIER than imagined before such news (lol).

Life may be easier, but three truths attached to every software development project I've ever worked on:

Development always takes longer than you think.
Development always costs more than you think.
You never get everything you want.

The Story of Cancer’s first project, CureCancerStarter.org (landing page with a video of me sharing the mission is up now), is going to be COOL (beta designs from AtlanticBT.com are incredible). We should launch in a matter of weeks (end of July).

The first crowdfunding platform dedicated to cancer research and working with leading cancer research centers is going to help cure cancer even though many of the cancer survivors and donors who will use Cure Cancer Starter aren't scientists (including me).

I’m using my Atlantic BT salary (and Atlantic BT's amazing matching grant) to fund CureCancerStarter.org and cash is getting tight, so time to sell everything :). Time to go all in.

My Brother Drew and Sister Caroline

I don't want this next piece of why I'm selling out to sound morbid or depressed (or depressing). I am NEITHER morbid or depressed (TIRED yes, depressed no). As I explained to my sister when I set up the foundation last Christmas, I'm not depressed just in a hurry :).

I'm doing good, but I've had 3 rounds of chemo it is important to be realistic. Recently I decided, with my great UNC Lineberger oncologists Dr. Hank van Deventer's agreement, we've reached a point of diminishing returns on chemo. Chemo SUCKS so we are playing it as it lays now.

The GREAT news is Drew’s and Caroline’s genes have been sequenced by the Duke Cancer Institute and they KNOW they will not get the Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL) my father (Duncan) and I have. I’m glad my sister, brother and mother (Elizabeth Martin) were included in Duke’s study and even more glad they won't battle this cancer. Chances are good (about 1 in 3) they will battle some cancer, so we need to CURE CANCER!

My goal is for my sister and brother to have to do NOTHING other than have a little party in a nice setting AND to continue the Story of Cancer Foundation and CureCancerStarter.org's work. 100% of my estate goes to the foundation so what we build NOW will continue even when I'm somewhere else :).

Getting from NOW to then will require the help of strangers...again.

If you are interested in helping stay tuned as we load up books, CDs, watches and more furniture. If you want to volunteer to help, please do so (don't have to be in Durham to help thanks to the crazy Inter-web :).

Cherish you family, friends and LIFE. I already owe so many THANKS it is hard to keep track. To those who are about to help THANKS and YOU ROCK :). To friends who've already helped so MUCH, THANKS and you know you ROCK :). Marty

Not Crazy, Just In A Hurry

Google Plus Hangouts On Air Tips

2013-06-01T09:12:00.000-04:00

Hangouts Are Cool, But TOUGH

At recent meetup that was being thrown live to the web via a Google hangout with people from different locations someone tweeted that G+ Hangouts are NOT enterprise ready. That may be true but boy are Google Hangouts COOL content.

Google Hangouts On Air are such great content it makes sense to learn how to create one OR to do what I do - HIRE Nikol Murphy and her team at Talking Moose Media to run hangouts for you. Nikol's hangouts run on time and she has such deep G+ expertise she can put out any fire before you even know about it.

Why Are Hangouts On Air Cool?

Added WHY G+ Hangouts are a MUST for any Internet marketing team on Martin W. Smith on G+.

If you want to DIY here are Nikol's notes on creating a great G+ Hangout On Air:

How to from 1talkingmoose

Why Paperli Rocks

2013-05-29T11:42:00.003-04:00

I had no idea. When I wrote 5 Magical Do More With Less Curation Tools on a Saturday I didn't know the post would hit such a nerve. 5 Magical Do More With Less has a potential audience over 1M now thanks to Retweets. I got to know the great Paper.li (@SmallRivers) team after the post and they ROCK.

Recently there was an either / or controversy about Scoop.it and Paper.li. Either or thinking can hurt Internet marketing. Better to think Scoop.it AND Paper.li since each has distinct uses and advantages. I've weighed in several times on my love for Scoop.it (Why Scoop.it Rocks).

Today's post is about why Paper.li rocks.

Paper.li Rocks Because

Paper.li uses your Twitter following and other input feeds you specify to create a daily "newspaper". There is a powerful algorithm inside Paper.li's magic. A million inputs get sifted down to a handful of gold nuggets. Attempting to do this kind of curation manually would take hours and be half as good.

I use Paper.li to...

Inform my content marketing.
Create community.
Do Online Reputation Management (ORM).
Competitive alerts.

Inform My Content Marketing

I start the day reading my papers (lol). ScentTrail Daily and Atlantic BT Daily help me know more about relevant content first thing in the morning. I may Scoop, email or blog about content from my two daily Paper.lis. When we launch the first crowdfunding platform dedicated to cancer research, CureCancerStarter.org, I hope to work with the Paper.li team to crate a "Cure Cancer Daily".

Cure Cancer Starter has GREAT resources already such as our partners at the UNC Lineberger Cancer Center, The Duke Cancer Institute, The Roswell Park Cancer Institute, the University of Wisconsin Carbone Cancer Center and The City of Hope. Can't wait to see what Paper.li's magic algorithm makes out of such great inputs.

Create Community

"Poeple don't BUY brands they JOIN them," said marketing guru Faith Popcorn. Has Faith's statement ever been more true than in our connected, social and mobile times? Community forms when there is consistent communication. Members can't feel left out. Left out is gone.

Paper.li helps share information with little cost (in time or cash) to content creators and curators. Since YOU tune your paper's source and it is easy to manually add content using Paper.li's helpful browser tool your "daily" is the communication you would create if you only had the time. Members feel they know you and are part of a community. All of this magic for so little effort makes Paper.li one of my favorite curation and creation tools.

ORM

You, your company and brands are only as good as your ability to respond. Responding to a comment, praise or criticism that happens in the north forty (i.e. an obscure blog or location) shows you GET IT. If there is a more dramatic demonstration of a company's or brand's Internet marketing chops I don't know it.

When you manage the whole board you win. When you let comments happen without acknowledgement or response you increase the chances for BAD comments while simultaneously decreasing chances for good comments. The value of PRESENCE can't be overstated and Paper.li helps because you can add "searches with YOUR NAME or BRAND" into your feed.

I use several Online Reputation Management tools and Paper.li is my favorite because it is so EASY and unobtrusive. NOTE: My single warning is if you are using Paper.li for ORM be sure to check it since you don't want unfair criticism to be published for long. Paper.li's editing tools make it easy to remove any content.

I wouldn't simply REMOVE content that is critical since that is akin to putting your head in the sand. I would move the comment to a place where we can respond in a helpful and meaningful way. Everyone isn't going to love you all the time. Don't be defensive or attach ego to your response. Find ways to help even when someone is being mean and your Internet marketing wins (and you have a better life too).

Learn from critics. Never dismiss them (and know that I am saying do as I say not as I do since we can all work on this LISTENING to hard truth better :).

Competitive Alerts

I've been writing about The Commons and its parts: The Ask, The Give and The Share a lot lately. It is CLEAR we lucky few Internet marketers must compete differently. We must compete collaboratively. When we tend our business garden so all may benefit we are competing in new ways. We HELP each other because we are stronger together than apart.

We compete but do so with an honest sense of fairness and knowledge of our strengths and weaknesses matched against our competitors. We know we become better by competitive challenge and quest. Our hero's journey includes people, companies and brands we may have thought of as enemies before. Now those "enemies" are sources to be learned from and worked with.

For "collaborative competition" reasons I DON'T remove competitor mentions from our Paper.lis. If applause is called for I applaud. If a note is needed I note (on our blogs or other social nets) and if an idea needs a respectful and appreciative response I do so.

We aren't alone in this "new" approach to collaborative competition. More and more competitors are "getting it" and reaching across the Rubicon. Sometime a competitor slams us in the old way or damns us by faint praise.

I don't respond to such menial tactics as they would create a battle where none truly exists. The other indicator that the future is with collaboration is how small and petty such attacks look in a connected, social and mobile world happening in real-time. There are so many places to learn, summarize and determine TRUTH reacting to a competitors misplaced rant is swinging at a pitch in the dirt.

Summary

Paper.li is a powerful "do more with less" curation tool. Internet marketers should use Paper.li to build community, protect their reputation and become an authority about their business vertical or segment. Competing collaboratively wins more hearts and minds than stupid battles with competitors that no one cares about (except those involved in the battle) and using Paper.li to help create authority and strategic vision is highly recommended. What is the cost for such magic?

Paper.li is a SaaS using a freemium model. You can create a daily today for FREE or upgrade to premium for a small charge (premium removes ads from your daily). We lucky few Internet marketers must resist the "either or" trap and always think in terms of AND: Scoopit and Paper.li, Paper.li and Topsy. Do all of these things and you too will know why Paper.li ROCKS.

Stay In Touch, Share Your Ideas

If you have ideas and want to help develop ScentTrail Marketing leave a comment or do one of these:

Follow @ScentTrail

Email: MartinSellingZoe(at)aol

Follow Digital Revolutions on Scoop.it

Join ScentTrail Marketing (on the upper left)
Martin W. Smith on

Other People's Content WINS - VIDEO

2013-05-25T12:49:00.002-04:00

OPC Rules Because...

Internet marketing isn't about YOU anymore. Internet marketing and branding is about the US your marketing creates. When your website welcomes input from me, my FOMs (Friends of Martin), the army of brand sherpas you must recruit to help, feeds and other sources of OPC you win.

In a post Panda and Penguin world, Internet marketing MUST create likes, links and shares. When Google changed their algorithm, iterative changes named Panda and Penguin, they elevated quality content to KING and curation of OPC to Queen.

In short, marketing must create LOVE. Love requires painting with a BIG brush, being kind and generous and thinking and acting in non-proprietary ways. Love is PURPOSE driven.

OPC Because:

You can't create as much content as you need.
If you create too much content you talk to yourself about yourself.
Must CURATE content as well as create.
Google wants AUTHORITY.
Authority is created by being collaborative and generous.
You want your website to be an authority.

OPC Defined

I owe Tim McDonald, Community Manager at the Huffington Post, and Ally Greer, Community Manager At Scoop.it, a debt. Tim and Ally included me in their #CMGRhangout hangout yesterday. How Community Saves The World (video embedded at the bottom of this post) was our topic.

Tim helped refine the idea of OPC (Other People's Content). Tim created a distinction between User Generated Content (UGC) as content from existing members of a community and content from non-members or Other People's Content.

Great distinction because it helps Community Managers and Internet marketers realize they need to curate content from within and without.

OPC Sources

Curation is the art and science of discovering and sharing patterns where others only see noise. You want Google and potential community members to view your website as a HUB, as an AUTHORITY. Achieving AUTHORITY status requires throwing a large net and looking for OPC in all kinds places such as:

Embracing OPC means "platforming" your website. Platforms vs. Websites is one of the more popular posts on ScentTrail Marketing. The "platforms vs. websites" idea is easily summarized with numbers. Here are page counts in Google using site:URL.com from September 2011 (when I wrote the post) and now.

Site: Etsy.com returns 50,000,000 pages (2011)
Site: RedEnvelope.com returns 7,000 pages
Amazon 500,000,000
September, 2011

2013
Site: Etsy.com 71,800,000 (+143%)
Site: RedEnvelope.com 22,000 (+314%)
Site: Amazon.com 268,000,000 (- 46%)
May 25th, 2013

Etsy.com (platform) is CRUSHING RedEnvelope.com (closed loop, not very social) in the online gift space. Etsy.com has such an exponential lead RedEnvelope.com's fate is sealed (short of some major RETHINK and DISRUPTION by the team managing RedEnvelope.com). RedEnvelope.com, once a cutting edge gift website, shows dangers of not keeping up, not changing fast enough.

Once a downward spiral like RedEnvelope's is started it is hard to stop.

"But their page count is way up," you may think. I look at RedEnvelope.com's numbers differently. They moved from 7,000 to 22,000 when they needed to move from 7,000 to a million. Redenvelope.com won't be with us much longer (sad as their website was one of my "steal froms" for my first website FoundObjects.com in 1999).

Amazon is way down in page count probably due to Google's Panda and Penguin updates. Amazon plays fast and loose with duplicate content penalties. Looks like Google caught up and crushed half of the algorithm-created pages Amazon was creating.

These "bot" pages (created with algorithms from existing pages) add little value to the web. Amazon is SMART. They may have trimmed their page count back to show their willingness to embrace the new SEO. If your website is proprietary, talking to itself mostly about itself and not a platform open to OPC you are in TROUBLE.

Pagespread, the number of pages in Google, doesn't help if they are junk pages (pages without shares and likes). Junk pages will be thrown out at least and penalized at most. Your website needs to find, curate and add value to Other People's Content from a variety of sources.

You don't want to have a competitor realize how well platforms crush websites (read SEO Rollups). YOU want to be FIRST on your block to have a platform capable of curating and generating increasing amounts of quality OPC (Other People's Content) and UGC (User Generated Content).

How Community Saves The World Hangout with Tim McDonald, Ally Greer, Jonathan Brewer (starts at 6:00 point due to tech problems):

.
Find links to ideas discussed in this video on Martin W. Smith on G+.

Follow @AllyGreer's great Community Managers feed on Scoop.it.

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SEO Rollups - A Secret Internet Marketing Strategy

2013-05-24T07:56:00.001-04:00

Friends who run a business intelligence (#BI) company asked me to take a look at their website. Their current site is "closed loop".

Closed loop sites are sealed speaking mostly to themselves about themselves. Since selling and marketing require a relationship with others built on conversations talking to yourself about yourself won't pay bills.

Big Boys Don't Cry

One would think large, well branded players in the competitive red ocean of business intelligence would know how to create SEO rollups. They don't (for the most part). Rollups are a website's ability to "platform a space".

When you "platform a space" you play by Google's new post-Panda and Penguin algorithm rules. Google changed their algorithm to "see" and eliminate false relevance. Ever notice how, for a while there about three years ago, almost every website at the top of Google's Search Results Pages (SERPs) was a "link farm"?

Link farms don't make anything, sell anything (other than traffic) and they became a blight on Google's prime directive - send searchers to relevant webpages. Link farms arbitrage traffic adding an extra click to most searchers use of Google. Google's engineer Navneet Panda sped up Google's reading and indexing of websites.

Suddenly Google could see how messy our rooms (websites) have become.

Our rooms became messy because SEO became MEAN and END. We divorced consumer engagement for sexier SEO. We attended conferences, read books and got sucked into the SEO Industrial Complex. The SEO Industrial Complex became a colossus growing more unmanageable daily. An army of vendors depended on the SEO Industrial Complex.

When mortgages and kids' college educations were on the line people got SEO STUCK. Every minute Google let the game they created become about something other than creating awesome and increasingly relevant content.

SEO Rollups

When every website in a keyword vertical is closed loop (or semi-closed loop) there is an opportunity to "platform". Platforming has several pillars including:

User Generated Content is solicited, rewarded and encouraged.
There is a gamification layer rewarding specific desired behaviors.
Social shares, likes and links are requested and rewarded.
Leaderboards monitor and create competition (in specific behaviors).
Users can create and maintain publicly viewable profiles.
Users can follow, interact with and reward each other.
A class of 1% are identified and given jobs to help create and monitor UGC.
Platforms become "hubs" increasingly and exponentially fast.

There are more dimensions to "rolling up" a keyword grouping, but you get the idea. In a business vertical made up of mostly closed loop websites THE FIRST Internet marketing team to open their website, ask for help and create a sherpa army of brand advocates to help them scale Everest WINS.

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SEO and Content Marketing For Startups

2013-05-20T07:39:00.001-04:00

3 Free Google Tools

Passion drives startups. Passion is an important fuel, but selling someone something is important too. Google provides three FREE tools every startup should know and use: Keyword Tool (in Adwords), Google Analytics and Google Trends.

Google Adwords

"Our new widget will blow the widget business up," I can hear an entrepreneurial team thinking. Attempts to scare a market into submission rarely work. Seduction almost always works. Keywords are instruments of seduction.

Google's keyword tool inside of adwords shows monthly global and local search demand. I like to compare search demand with documents returned (something you can get by simply doing a search on the keyword and noting how many documents Google finds). Dividing demand by return provides a valuable "efficiency" ratio.

Efficiency means are we likely to get a return if we invest in content for a keyword or key phrase. If a keyword is a "read ocean" of competition where sharks are so hungry they eat each other best to NOTE the situation and avoid creating content directed at those keys.

Many websites fight amongst themselves for nothing. When you factor DEMAND in you are less likely to get into meaningless turf wars, wars you fight with competitors where no customer cares. Efficiency can also show "blue oceans" or keywords that have more searches and less competition. Blue oceans are the holy grail of keyword research.

Everything you learn is valuable. Knowing where red oceans are helps focus a startup's content marketing to ROI. Knowing how existing customers speak (and so think) about the market can help a smart startup change the keywords, demand and thinking of an entire business vertical.

Google Analytics

How is your website performing? What is happening when customers search for and arrive at a startup's website? Google Analytics tags a startup's web pages providing valuable information about what pages are working or not. Startups should look to build their list of subscribers FIRST. Many startups pitch their service first and building a list is a distant second thought. Good luck with that.

Few things startups create are so immediately needed they can be sold immediately. Startups have a limited track record and may not be fully understood. Better to lower the bar and ask visitors to join an email list as the PRIMARY Call To Action.

Once in your list use PERSONAS and SEGMENTS to organize email "drip campaigns" to help develop a relationship, make offers and make the sale. Search traffic floats on the wind. When a visitor joins your email marketing chances for conversion go up.

Google Analytics will help you know if keywords you are targeting bring converting traffic. Startups should create 5 to 7 Key Performance Indicators such as Unique Traffic, Time On Site and Pages Viewed to gauge website performance. I like to use those "basic" metrics to create more advanced metrics too.

I like to know my conversion % (visits / goals completed), my conversion by pages (pageviews / goals completed) and know my 80 / 20 points. 20% of most web traffic controls 80% of everything (clicks, conversions, money), so knowing where those 80 / 20 points are is important.

If your website has 100 pages, 20 will be the most important. Knowing which 20 is a KEY piece of startup information. You can speculate on WHY until the cows come home. Better to TEST assumptions and beat your control. DON'T try to rehabilitate laggard pages. Double down on your winners instead as time spent with winners teaches you more faster than attempting to rehabilitate laggards.

I can't tell you exactly what your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) should be because they vary by vertical and marketing goals. Watch some KPIs daily and trend critical KPIs weekly, monthly and quarterly.

Google Trends

Google Trends creates overviews of traffic by keyword and keyword phrase. When I saw this graph for "content curation" I created a "Curation Contest":

Google Trends can show how one phrase or keyword compares to another (in demand over time). Use Google Trends to shape startup marketing and tune language.

Made To Stick

Highly recommend all startups buy a copy of Made To Stick by the Heath Brothers. There is art and science involved in communicating new ideas. Learning how to dress a NEW idea inside of trusted clothes is art. Watching the metrics to know if your marketing is doing its job is science. The Heather brothers cover art and science in ways sure to help startups succeed.

Technical SEO

Sartups need to understand "technical SEO" too. Search engine spiders use keywords and social signals to "know" and categorize a web page. If that sentence makes it sound like your startup needs the approval of others via social signals it was on purpose. You do!

Creating content to achieve social shares is another blog post for another time, but here are a few simple rules to follow when pluming your content:

Title is most important meta data so be sure to use keywords in your titles.
Each page title should be UNIQUE.
Put most important keywords that are not your name to the left (name you should get so put to far right).
Write SPECIFIC and try to avoid I, Me, And, This, That and other phrases spiders can't understand (see my note on SEO writing).
Use Keywords in your copy, but don't STUFF.
Make sure title, body coy and alt text for images are aligned but not spammy (don't repeat over and over).
Make sure your navigation is keyword dense (because those links do get used over and over).
Only use one H1 (heading) tag, and do use H2 subheads too (you can have more than one).

I could literally write another 10,000 words on technical SEO, but those tips will get you started. Startups have different SEO needs than established companies. Many startups, especially in the mobile space think they don't need SEO and content marketing. Many startups fail too. If you want to be a successful startup your chances increase if you know a little bit about content marketing and SEO

SEO and the Wiki-ization of Marketing

2013-05-18T05:29:00.002-04:00

The New SEO

Google had to do something. They were drowning in User Generated Content (UGC) as Eric Schmidt shared at the Techonomy Conference in 2010 when he so famously said:

Every 2 days we create as much content as from the down of man until the year 2003.
former Google CEO Eric Schmidt

How one would know such a thing is impenetrably complex, but Schmidt's statement sounds true. Schmidt went on to identify the culprit - UGC from social networks.

Panda To The Rescue

Google's brilliant engineer Navneet Panda solved Google's drowning with a new and much faster machine learning algorithm. Google's Panda and Penguin algorithm changes have done nothing short of shift Internet marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to a new and as yet unrecognizable place.

This "New SEO" with its stress on engagement and claims supported by social signals creates an Internet marketing makeover - the Wiki-ization of marketing.

The Wiki-ization of Marketing has many important dimensions including:

Claims NOT supported by social signals should not be made.
Marketers must LISTEN at least as well as they talk.
Authenticity and sharing rule.
A strong (i.e. high Klout scores) tribe of supporters is a must.
When "the mob" repeats something it is TRUE.
Not repeated claims are FALSE.
False claims do more damage than good.
User Generated Content has never been more important.
Creating a "multi-author" ecosystem is important.

This last bullet, the need for multiple authors and UGC, may seem remote. A comment is a social signal. A Facebook share is a social signal. A GPlus share is a social signal. A review is a social signal of the first order. Marketers must play for, reward and request confirming social signals.

The New Ask

Marketers ask for things. We ask for attention and money. This "new ask" is less LOOK AT ME and more "help us to help you". When marketers LISTEN and curate customer and brand advocate language, ideas and comments marketing becomes aligned to the web. This "alignment" is the wiki-ization of marketing. Our conversations must be supported or we marketers are better off not having them.

"We can say whatever we want," is a natural marketing Type A reaction. No you can't. Google considers unsupported claims SPAM. Spam enough unsupported claims and you could be docked (i.e. lose listings and traffic). Content unsupported by social signals is another form of SPAM in this new wiki-ization of marketing.

The new ask is seeking the magic 1% willing to contribute, advocate and share. The 1:10:89 Rule says 1% of your website's visitors will contribute UGC, 10% will vote on content created by the 1% and 89% ride for free. Internet marketing is about the 11% of visitors willing to contribute.

Increasing engagement so MORE than 11% contribute is an important marketing mission. Panda's stress on website heuristics, those previously plebeian metrics such as average time on a website, pages viewed and the number of return visitors become paramount when engagement is prized.

It's not hard to see why the Google wants engagement. When customers spend time on your website after a search Google gets warm and fuzzy. They spent LESS MONEY to accomplish their prime directive - RELEVANCE. Google's algorithm must do the impossible and path random web searches to their appropriate and relevant destination by picking relevance from an infinite group of web pages (billions and billions of pages and more every second of every day as Schmidt noted).

The New Give

Marketing's "wiki-ization" changes the GIVE too. Where once we marketers "gave" products in exchange for money now we must give CONTENT in exchange for ATTENTION before money changes hands. There is a good reason content marketing is all the rage. In a connected social and mobile search marketing time digital content is arguably the most important content any marketing team creates.

Imagine your company's new widget or service WITHOUT a mention on your website or someone's website. What would be the half life of such a widget? I'm speaking at Product Camp RTP tomorrow and will argue that a "digital good" starts earlier (than any other product or service), is the cheapest form of marketing since "early and ugly" online marketing insures much needed advocacy and creates the tribe of supporters required to be successful.

The New Give kills "lecture marketing". Push marketing is all but over. Push marketing, the relentless barnstorming of interrupting broadcast media, can't afford its own weight. Even if you HAD the money for such absurd marketing spending money on such foolishness as one sided interruptions would do more HARM than GOOD.

Time and the Wiki-ization of Marketing

Father Time is something every marketer FORGETS. Time is part of Google's algorithm. Your website is expected to grow. Growth is modeled. Grow at 5x your modeled rate and your website looks like it is spamming. Google will send a human editor to discover what is going on. .

Nonprofits who hold an annual gala can be hurt in the gala's first year because so much traffic coming so quick looks suspicious. ASK for social support BEFORE the gala, DURING the gala and AFTER the gala. Think of social support, those LIKES and SHARES your content generates, as an asbestos blanket putting out potential "spam" fires.

When you know your website is about to violate past modeled performance such as when having an event or gala create #hashtags and curate social support. "Call attention to who tweeted, sharing the best social media content and thank contributors. When your content meets THEIR content balance results.

If your content and claims get out ahead of your social support don't panic. It pays to have a substantial network of highly influential supporters. Being able to contact and explain an evolving situation to a tribe of influential advocates can act as an asbestos blanket too.

Benefits from creating and maintaining a tribe of brand advocates, something requiring careful planning, don't stop with SEO. In a crisis your company, brands and services is best defended BY SOMEONE ELSE. When a supportive tribe of unpaid advocates stands up and sets records straight PR crises can be successfully reined in.

Marketing's New Social Reality

Hearing remnants of the "Social media marketing has no ROI," meme so prevalent a few years ago now sounds dangerous. All marketing is social now. Market without social signals and you are spamming. Market without a supportive tribe of brand advocates invites danger. When danger comes if YOU defend yourself you are spamming.

Marketers must get past social media marketing's need for ROI explanation. Once Google changed their algorithm based on Navneet Panda's machine learning Internet marketing became inextricably social. Denying social's primacy now eliminates your company, product and service from search marketing.

In an era when any company's DIGITAL content is arguably more important than actual goods and services not understanding how completely social media marketing impacts everything can be fatal and unrecoverable. On the positive side, understanding how SOCIAL your marketing must be or become can create competitive advantage.

The next time someone snorts at a meeting, folds their arms and plays, "Devil's Advocate" about social media marketing tell them about the wiki-zation of marketing. After sharing this story about marketing's undeniably SOCIAL present if they persist and are in positions of power above you RUN.

Leaving the building immediately may feel impetuous, but each day you exist in an environment whose primary marketing tactic is denial personal branding is damaged. Blog about the truth as you experience it, make sure you are use #GPlus and play for social signals whether your management team understands the wiki-ization of marketing or not and your personal brand will thrive.

Post Publication Note
As if to prove the point about G+ a great tribe of Internet marketers broke out an awesome conversation about SEO and the Wiki-ization of Marketing well before sunrise on a Saturday morning. Join the conversation on Martin W. Smith on G+. Thanks to the great marketers who were up early with me this Saturday :).M

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Internet Marketing A Hero's Journey

2013-05-15T11:28:00.000-04:00

Is Your Marketing A Hero's Journey

I am the hero of my life. You are the hero of yours. Marketers who speak to us as if THEY should be the hero of our lives miss the mark. In our social and connected times any company's ability to form a quest and include their "tribe" will win.

These points hit home reading my friend entrepreneur Byron White's Creative Content Marketing: Making Your Customer The Hero post on his Writer's Network site:

A successful content marketing campaign for your SMB should, in effect, make your business an adventure and your customer the hero of that adventure!

How To Make Customers Heroes

"Experiences," said Will Dean the CEO of Tough Mudder recently, "are the new luxury goods". In a social connected mobile era customers crave experiences especially experiences that promote the "I am the hero of my life" idea. Tough Mudder and Spartan Races testify to how much today's customers crave challenge and love having "luxury" experiences that help tell their HERO story.

Ways To Make Your Customers Heroes Online

Gamification (nothing like social kudos to reinforce a heroic journey).
Curate and Use UGC (User Generated Content).
Contests (who has the best Tough Mudder Pinterest board etc...).
Leaderboards (part of gamification, but a constant reminder that a game is going on NOW).

Online's disadvantage is it isn't tactile. Tough Mudder, a race run through mud and electric shocks, will win as an "in the world" experience. Internet marketing teams can close the gap between real life touch and feel experience and the virtual world with some simple tips.

Website Design Tips To Promote Experiences

Copy that uses all five senses.
Images that provide a sense of touch, taste, sound, smell and sight.
Content from other "like me" supporters.
Simple, clear navigation (confusion destroys the illusion of a "hero reality").

Making Customers Hero Examples

REI.comREI uses specific language to speak to "hero" and "comfort" simultaneously in the copy for their Perception Sit On Top Kyak (words in yellow are heroic or comfort based):

Share the fun with a friend! Now with comfortable padded seats, the Perception Tribe 13.5 tandem sit-on-top kayak offers plenty of room for 2 paddlers and the gear you need to make a memorable day.

Ample storage and a speedy ride creates a popular choice for large kayakers; open cockpit is user-friendly, even for beginners
3-seat configuration offers room for 2 adults and a small child or 4-legged friend; middle seat is positioned to accommodate a solo paddler
Versatile design performs well on flatwater and slow-moving rivers, but don't hesitate to take the Tribe 13.5 into surf

Another way to read REI's copy is older, less in shape Kyakers this is the one for you. To write that copy straight out would diminish the heroic side of the product. Don't do that :).

Woot.com
Woot is the master storyteller online. Here is the copy for their Hisense 40K360 40" TV:

Andrew?

Everything's more exciting on television. Even you!

Andrew awoke at 7am, as he always did, poured himself a bowl of cereal, and turned on the television to check the weather. The only problem was that when he dialed in the number for the weather channel, what he saw was not the forecast but himself, staring back.
He clicked around. The news was the news, the kids channel was cartoons, the cooking channel showed a woman putting fruit into a blender. Only the weather channel served as a reflection.

"What the deuce," mumbled both Andrews. He leaned in for a closer look. It was like a mirror, except for a few minor differences. On the screen, he had a few gray hairs, a minor scar on his left cheek, an extra wrinkle below his right eye. His pajamas and the room behind him, exactly the same.

Andrew felt a cold feeling run up his spine. "I gotta get out of here," said he and his reflection. He backed out of the room slowly, towards the door out of his apartment. Without turning from the screen, he reached behind and turned the knob, waited a moment, and then slipped out.
Where he went from there isn't important.

Because this isn't a write-up about Andrew. It's a write-up about his television, which was a Hisense 40" 1080p LED HDTV, and it worked great, aside from the minor quirk outlined above, and honestly we don't foresee this happening with the one you buy.

###
Share your examples of heroic copy, presentation or gamification and we will curate them in.

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Inbound Marketing Soup To Nuts - Infographic

2013-05-14T19:25:00.000-04:00

Don't Forget Segments, Personas and LUCK

Love this tidy, serious infographic. Pity the poor fool that runs right out thinking this is how "inbound marketing" really works. Inbound marketing would work this way if the only thing important was a series of interlinked tasks.

Tasking your way to greatness doesn't work. Tasks are important, but inspiration and art play a large role too. All content is NOT equal. In time you will learn how to headline your content to promote engagement (people reading and sharing it).

There is no silver "one size kills all" bullet for how to headline or what content to choose. What gets accountants excited could be very different than what makes doctors read and share content. Upstream from this infographic there are two very important content marketing ideas:

Develop Segments and Personas.
Research What is Working for others.

Segments are financial groups such as VIPs, "multi-buyers" or all buyers from North Carolina. Segments are important to maximize Return On Investment (ROI). Personas are archetypes that define groups of customers much like characters in a book or play stand for more than just their character. Gatsby is an example of the sin of greed and the feckless attempt to change the past. Moby Dick's Ismael is the archetype of destructive obsession and modern man's war with nature.

Modern man's war with content is in overdrive.

One final issue with Hubspot's detailed Infographic is there is no room for response. Your inbound marketing's best leads may come from questions and conversations prompted by your content. Be sensitive to the 1:10:89 rule too (1% of visitors will contribute, 10% will vote on the 1% and 89% of your traffic ride for free), listen carefully and respond.

Align keywords, personas and content then listen carefully to make magical inbound marketing happen.

The Inbound Marketing Process Infographic

From: IMPACT Branding & Design

Mother's Day Pinterest Contest: Men vs Women

2013-05-10T21:34:00.000-04:00

Follow King of Pinterest or Queen of Pinterest to PIN!

Google Plus Lessons With Mark Traphagen

2013-05-09T09:35:00.000-04:00

Learning Google Plus From A Master

Mark Traphagen, Director Digital Outreach for Virante, is a friend, fellow Durham, NC resident, fellow cancer survivor and possibly the biggest Google Plus guru on the planet.

When Mark created a G+ training class with my friend Phil Buckley (@1918) I couldn't resist spending the day with a friend who also just happens to be an amazing teacher / expert.

Mark was started using G+ on the 3rd day of its existence when you had to have an invitation. Note his "vanity URL" on Google Plus. You can't get one of those they are granted by the Google Gods.

Mark's Most popular Google Plus posts ever.

Finite and Infinite Games by James P. Carse

The Gift by Lewis Hyde

Google Plus The Misunderstood Social Net

Google Plus has 500M accounts, 343M active users. One reason for G+ growth is Android. Every Android phone comes with G+ as default. Personalization of search is another reason G+ is growing. Social search inserts content from friends higher than "static" rank merits. Grey avatar = someone in your G+ circles or someone you've had interactions with (on Google).

Mark's 41,000 G+ followers translates to 240,000 people in 6 degrees of separation and, once Google uses Mark as a signal, possibly millions. This is Barabasi's "rich get richer" concept writ large explored in Linked: How Everything To Everything Else.

Brilliant point: Virante's "Not Provided" is upwards of 70% because of Mark's influence on their traffic (they are all signed into Google Plus and so part of "not provided" in Google Anaytics). Atlanticbt.com runs around 50% "not provided" (i.e. people who are logged into Google Plus). As Mark becomes his own "search engine" since his 41,000 followers are seeing HIS content more than MINE (if I am NOT in your circles).

Translation is every business is a publisher and MUST build their following since building a following is a way around "not provided" not to mention the benefits of Google's stamp of approval on YOU and the content you touch. Effectively MARK is now a subset of Google. His searchers are influencing more and more, faster and faster.

Google Plus Signin going to be a BIG DEAL (agree). Google Plus will have 45 different CTAs (Call To Action) buttons marketers can use. We are making sure to use G+ Signin for StoryofCancer.org.

Google Plus influenced "dual results" for Virante's "Remove 'em" tool. Mark's articles and friends who also have influence on G+ ranked so almost the entier "remove backlinks" page became Virante.

Google Authorship = when you see an author's photo next to a search result then they are using Google authorship tags. Example of Google author tag:

link rel="author" href="https://plus.google.com/107022061436866576067"/

The long URL is Mark's profile on Google Plus.

YouTube becoming increasingly integrated into Google Plus. Influence building on G+ being reflected on YouTube and vice versa. The Genius of Google Plus is making their platform the "social layer that ties all things Google together".

Google authorship also protects your content from scrappers and spammers. "Author Rank" is not yet here, but Google plans to use an author's rank as a search Klout score. Again, Mark becomes a signal. If his content is trusted he earns increasing amounts of RANK (or Klout) and extends his network out into friends of friends. VERY important for semantic web.

TIP: Link to your Slideshare account from your Google Plus profile and authorship transfers over to your slide decks (great tip).

Communities can rank in search. Same principles apply: create content, drive backlinks in and your community will show up in SEO.

Personal G+ Profiles 101

My Google Plus Martin W. Smith profile.When you create business pages on your personal profile you can hand them off, but make sure your PERSONAL profile is YOU. Every brand page must be created by a person. That page can be shared and its administration changed, but a person must create a brand page.

Creating A Brand Page
Mark is the creator of the Virante Google Plus brand page, but you never see Mark's information. The difference between page owners and assigned admins is 1. ability to transfer ownership and 2. ability to assign admins.

Google wall - shows posts from your circles. "Public" = SEO best. When you post to a circle it is viewable in search results BUT only to THAT circle. People freak out when they see a "private" post in SERPs, but only people seeing those results are IN THE CIRCLE.

Pages shows pages you've created AND pages you are an admin for / on. Create a page with Create A Page button on right.

Most important brand page right now is creating a page for a local business as this feeds local search. Each local brick and mortar needs its own page. "Pages are people too," meaning G+ pages can follow anyone just as PEOPLE can follow anyone. Use this carefully because when you come in as a brand it is a different "follow" than when you do so as a person.

Mark creates a sense of the real person behind the brand page by saying, "hi, I am Mark from Virante" when he is circling or talking from his brand pages. Mark goes out as "Virante" to be helpful and engage in communities and people will circle. Follower count for Virante's brand page has gone way up as a result of Mark's careful use of the tool.

Explorer tab shows what is trending on Google Plus now.

Search Box on Google Plus
Default shows posts mentioning whatever you've typed into search. Use the pull down filter to change what is shown. Search shows any "public" post on Google plus. Filter dropdown such as filtering "your circles" content. Adds a powerful dimension to search.

Mark is explaining how to select someone from your circles and limit the post to whoever is identified by using +MarkTraphagen or +PhilBuckley or one of your named circles. Other options to include in status: pictures (camera icon), Video (moves directly into YouTube channel), Calendar and link.

TIP: Create a circle called BOOKMARKS (names of circles not visible to anyone else) then share things you want to keep for later into that circle.

How To Create An Effective Google Plus Posts
First URL inserted creates an automatic embedded link. When you use the Link icon to embed link too. Some people (me included) like to put photos up and then add a story since adding photos in this way looks better than when embedding via a link (true for Facebook too).

TIP: Links after the first one inside of status DO NOT TRANSFER juice. Only one link passes Google-Juice (authority). I do put in several links into a post, but only one will get juice.

TIP: Authority COMES to you and you pass AUTHORITY on via +1 and links. Links are much more valuable than +1. Matt Cuts says +1 is a "weak signal". LINKS RULE. That doesn't mean +1 has NO value. Shares are also valuable (counts as a link).

Tip: Google Plus treats first few words in a post = title tag SO make keyword dense. May mean flipping sentences around to get keywords at the front such as: How To Create Google Authorship is better Google Authorship: How To Guide

Formatting posts:
*bold* note asterisks must be touching the front and back element or doesn't work.
_phrase_ = italics
-Strikethrough (only use when Mark edits after a post has been published, neutral in SEO)

TIP: Possible to place pages into circles. Just created a "bookmark" circle. You can create an empty circle (this changed recently).

TIP: Shared Circles
Share Circles creates a LIST that others can instantly add. Include yourself in some Shared Circles since you prompt the share of yourself when anyone adds that circle. This is a powerful feature similar to LISTS in Twitter or on Klout. The added benefit is when someone uses your SHARED CIRCLES to instantly follow (making it easier for them to follow the 20 (or whatever) people you included but you can position yourself by adding yourself to a "social media gurus" shared circle. Mark keeps his shared circles small AND he +mentions those in his shared circles so they know they are part of the circle (there is no notification otherwise).

TIP: Use Google Plus Ripples to check out what content is being shared and by who. GREAT competitive intelligence tool. Put in URL and you can see who shared the post.

TIP: Ripples Bookmarket - find a cool ripples bokmarklet just drag the text to your browser bar and you have an instant Ripples Bookmarklet (cool).

TIP: Tune your circles with Settings and Show MORE or LESS. Most important in your "notify" circle (keep small or becomes overwhelming). Mark arranges circles by how often he wants to see posts using the circles filter. Can also use MUTE to remove notifications from people who are overusing +mentions.

Communities:
Public communities get spammed so Mark empowers moderators who can eliminate spam. Can create private locked down (no view in search) and public/private where people can see the community in search and ask to join. Private/public the community shows in search NOT the posts.

Communities don't require Google Plus profiles. Naming communities is important. THINK KEYWORDS. Remember most important keys to the left. Profiles, pages and communities can have duplicate names.

TRUE: In Internet marketing smaller and more targeted is more valuable than general and all over the place. So when creating Google Plus communities don't create the 500th SEO community. Create SEO For Eskimos or something that is out in the tail so meaningful to some but not so general you will never rank for it.

NOTE: Brands would be advised to create communities on their names so others won't outrank them on their own names. Google may remove (c) material, but safer is better than sorry.

TIP: You can build authority for Google Plus INSIDE and OUTSIDE of Google plus.

TIP: CircleCount.com Is A Cool Tool, shows growth of Google Plus following and how your account is growing.

Tip: Google Plus Profile - NEED TO REDO THIS WITH KEYWORDS.

Get REAL - IM Lessons From Top Consulting Firms

2013-05-06T22:41:00.002-04:00

Top Consulting Firms Get It

Top consulting firms can be a great source of information. McKinsey, BCG and Bain all share great information and insight. Today I took a quick run through the top 20 consulting firms websites with surprising results.

General Findings of Top Consulting Firms Websites

More visual, less copy.
More real, less canned.
More conversational, less "corporate speak".
More social, less lecture.
More walk, less talk re: Internet marketing.

The first test of any B2B website's marketing is ITSELF. Wasn't long ago when top consulting firms talked the right game even as they walked an old game. Not so much anymore. Look at these top consulting websites:

McKinsey

BCG

Bain

Booze

Not hard to see how rapidly these battleships are changing course.

Boring canned photography is DOWN in favor of spontaneity and more candid REAL look and feel designs. These firms are RELAXING and that is saying something since many of these top consulting firms started as accounting firms where "relax" wasn't on the menu.

Conversations and authenticity require relaxing some. Perfection's tyranny is where these firms lived. Problem is the audience (us in other words) can see behind the curtain now making any curtain a poor shield, a bad smoke screen.

In Unzipped Isaac Mizrahi places a transparent screen between models and audience. Mizrahi's bold statement is apropos. Internet marketing takes place behind a similar transparent screen. What marketers do is seen, consumed and fed back to us.

We may not look as good, but we are twice as busy so everything levels out in the end :). If top consulting firms GET and are incorporating REALNESS and transparency in their marketing shouldn't your website? A: Yes.

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3 Internet Marketing Secrets

2013-05-03T12:04:00.000-04:00

3 IM Secrets

Internet marketing is mercurial, strange, confusing and fun. Stay with Internet marketing long enough and you learn secrets. Like most secrets Internet marketing secrets aren't all that "secret". Like flowers on a spring day these secrets are present, amazing and easy for all to see.

Strange how so few notice Internet marketing's hidden truths. Here are 3 Internet marketing secrets learned the hard way, the only way secrets can be learned.

Internet Marketing Secret #1:
IM Isn't What You Think It Is

Perhaps the biggest secret to Internet marketing is it isn't about what you think. Internet marketing is really the ability to LISTEN and form a cross-functional team capable of creating greatness. Creating a team is hard because every skill such as web design, email marketing, PPC expertise and storytelling are HOT.

Keys to keeping your great Internet marketing team together also aren't what you think. Once someone has the skills to be a leader in their skill set they aren't motivated by money. These talented people can get money anytime and anywhere. Read DRIVE by Pink and pay particular attention to the section on intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivators.

Any Internet marketing team capable of creating GREATNESS and the cash that accompanies that will needs lots of FUN, GAMES and CHALLENGE. Great Internet marketers don't work for money they work to build things and see them go LIVE. They work for each other. If this sounds a little like being in the army you aren't far off.

Internet Marketing Secret #2:
Source of Greatness Isn't What You Think It Is

No matter how great an Internet marketer you are you won't bat more than .400. This means YOU and even YOUR TEAM are NOT the main source of greatness. .600 of your website's greatness will come from your visitors, customers and advocates. This is the hardest thing to convince Type A Internet marketers about.

You are NOT the issue, nor will YOU be the source of your greatest accomplishments. This means you MUST encourage, reward and cherish User Generated Content. You must have reviews on anything and everything (Bazaar Voice is my favor tool here) and your team needs to LEARN to listen more than they talk.

Yous see the rub right? The rub is you have the best of the best or you are creating the best of the best and ego is typically attached. You need ego, but then you need to ZEN OUT the ego so you get enough to be motivated and competitive but not so much as to not listen and realize your best bet is on THEM not each other.

Statistically the source of greatness is much more likely to come from THEM than YOU, so learn to encourage the right amount of ego and then teach the ZEN of listening, learning and watching.

Internet Marketing Secret #3:
Save The World

Always amazed how how LITTLE people think of what they do. Each time I'm teaching or attending a content marketing conference people tell me how BORING their content options are.

"We maintain HVAC," said a man at a recent conference, "and that is boring". HVAC is boring only IF you have it. If you life in North Carolina and it is August and your AC goes out your HVAC guy is a superhero (lol).

If you can't tell your "Save The World" story align your product, brand, company or service with someone who can and whose mission is parallel. If my HVAC boring guy created a partnership with CharityWater.org he would be able to tell his story by proxy.

CharityWater.org is a great cause and my "boring HVAC" guy could share how important water is to AC. He could write content about how to SAVE water with your home HVAC system. He could write about why he decided to partner with CharityWater.org.

If you can't tell your "Save The World" story find a partner who can and ride on their coattails. THINKING and acting BIG while connecting your company, brand, product and service to the positive impact it has on customers and the world is a CSF (Critical Success Factor) for great Internet marketing.

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SEO Writing - Avoid STOP Words

2013-05-01T20:54:00.002-04:00

Writing For Robots

I couldn't contain myself. Sitting in a "lunch and learn" an "expert" who knew just enough about Internet marketing to be dangerous was teaching a room of people the wrong things.

"If you write more than 100 words no one will read them," the expert proclaimed. I was beside myself because there is one very important "person" who will read every word - search engine robots.

Understanding Stop Words

Stop words can't be understood by search engine robots. Words such as "you", "they", "a", "the" and "I" don't mean anything to search engine robots. My friend Phil Buckley (you), the Cure Cancer Starter development team at Atlantic BT (they) and Martin Smith (I) have meaning.

But there's a problem.

If you talk about yourself in the third person people will talk (and not in good ways :). You can't eliminate "stop words", but you can make your writing "spider friendly". For example, normally I would edit the two sentenced joined with a stop word that preceded this one into two sentences.

You cant eliminate stop words. You can make your writing more spider friendly.

This edit eliminates a stop word. Shorter sentences also sound and read faster. People don't "read" websites. They scan them. Scanners need short sentences, short paragraphs, bullet points and images to break up the web's monotony.

Write Organic, Edit For Bots

I don't edit as I write. Writing requires rhythm. Editing while I write destroys rhythm. Write as your story comes. Edit for bots and to increase engagement. Eliminating stop words, shortening sentences and paragraphs benefit bots and humans.

I was taught to count the stop words and put them in the numerator below total words. Post Google's Panda and Penguin algorithm changes don't count your stop words. Do keep in mind you write for HUMANS and BOTS. One audience wants to be entertained the other informed. Do both and your SEO writing wins traffic, hearts and minds.

Web readers appreciate your writing like Hemingway instead of Faulkner. Punch your words out in short sentences and never let a group of stop words buy you a drink.

Related ScentTrail Marketing Posts

SEO Writing Tips 1 - 5

SEO Writing Tips 6 - 10

Just scooped a great SEO Writing infographic to BI Revolution.

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Google Authorship MATTERS The JeffAlytics Study

2013-04-29T12:59:00.002-04:00

Amazing Google Authorship Study

Jeff Sauer proves, beyond any doubt, the value of Google Authorship tags in his comprehensive and intelligent study for JeffAlytics.com. I'm not going to recreate the study here, but share my admiration and respect for Jeff's work and discuss content marketing strategy implications.

If you aren't using Google Authorship tags yet start doing so TODAY. Owners of agency websites might fear branding their authors - DON'T. Branding your authors is one intelligent conclusion from Jeff's study.

As an author Google's desire to gather their work and understand and value it as a group is something I applaud. Like most writers I have posts all over the web. When I guest blog for my friend Bill Ross who runs LinchpinSEO he creates benefits from himself and me by using Google author tags.

The right tags benefit Bill because it connects my guest blog post to everything I've written, currently over 600,000 words on almost a thousand posts across more than ten websites and blogs.

Learn Google Authorship

Calling all content marketers. You must understand Google author tagging and ranking. Confused about the difference between Google Authorship and Author Rank? You aren't alone. The best person I know to help explain Google Authorship is Mark Traphagen. Here is how Virante tagged Mark's article about the difference between authorship and author rank in their code for the article:

rel="author" href="https://plus.google.com/107022061436866576067"/>

Here is where you can find Mark:

Mark on Google Plus

Mark at Virante (where Mark works as Director Digital Outreach)

Mark on Twitter (@MarkTraphagen)

Google Authorship Strategy

The smart move is to rapidly move to brand your content creators using Google author tags that tie to your author's Google Plus page. If your writers and content creators don't have G+ pages have them create one right away.

As authors create rank that moves with them content marketers may want to change some aspects of their content marketing strategy such as:

Guests posts from authors with solid rank in your business vertical.
Brand your content creators by:

Providing a master page with links to all of an author's posts.
Requesting reviews and rolling up review scores to an author's master page.
If author tags are missing from posts not on your website, request them.

Support your content author's work no matter where it appears with social and links.

This last bullet may seem strange. Why should you build up work that isn't on your website? Google's author tag has a clear prejudice in the favor of content creators and authors. When you help build up an author's rank, an author with posts on your website or blog, you help yourself IF you have Google author tags in place. You help yourself because your posts are now tied to all of the posts the author has written. You get more "commons revolution" juice when you use author tags and support your content collaborators' work no matter where it appears.

If there was any question that every company is in the publishing business now reading this post, anything by Mark and the excellent study on JeffAlytics.com proves that all companies are publishers now. Thinking like a "publisher" means finding ways to benefit from an author's work no matter where it appears.

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Birth of the Internet Marketing COOL

2013-04-26T14:32:00.001-04:00

Cool Internet Spotters

Cool blooms, goes viral and is left as yesterday's LOVE fast in our connected Internet marketing mobile times. Birth of the Internet Marketing cool is about finding, curating and sharing what's next. Join us and share your "cool" or "about to be cool" findings:

Birth of the Cool on Scoop.it

Birth of the Cool on Pinterest

Become A COOL Internet Spotter

When you share cool content, people, ideas, memes, books, movies, anything you become a Cool Internet Spotter. Cool Internet Spotters earn respect, thanks, points and fame (more on this idea soon). When you see something COOL online share it and we will too.

If you think you have the RIGHT STUFF to be a Cool Internet Spotter, email me at MaritnSellingZoe(at)aol and use subject "cool Internet Spotter" and include your Pinterest board link and I will add you.

Have a great weekend and spot, curate or create some cool stuff.

Yoko Ono And Me

2013-04-24T21:14:00.000-04:00

Smiling With Yoko Ono

Some days are easy to remember. They become beautiful sore thumbs sticking out, reminding you of another time, another place. Every time I hear the beautiful alliteration of a name that means "ocean child" a memory triggers a smile.

Life is so strangely serendipitous.

In another life my ex Janet, who like Yoko is tiny, knocked Yoko Ono down on the streets of New York.

Clobbering Yoko

It would be a TMZ moment if Janet simply knocked an artist we both admire down. No that isn't the most amazing part of that perfect moment. When Janet ran headlong into Yoko Ono she was on the phone with me discussing how perfect Yoko would be to work with as part of FoundObjects.com's (now RIP sadly) group of artists making cool museum store gives such as like Jenny Holzer's LED's and Lucky Chairs by Sally Davis.

Live is so strangely fragile.

Had I known then what is clear now I would have hugged Janet when she returned home for a very long time, a hug to last decades. Prior to hearing my name and "cancer" in the same sentence taking special moments for granted was common. Not so much anymore :).

Yoko's Smile Project

Yoko is an important fluxus artist. Her installations and art are inspirational. Add in her life and Yoko is a powerful force, a force who already brings a secret smile to me each time I hear "ocean child". Today Yoko will share her special magical energy with millions as we smile and love each other. Can SMILING Cure Cancer? A: YES!

Thanks Yoko!

Here is how Yoko describes her Smiles Project:

The app, released last week, is available worldwide for iPhone. Photos can also be uploaded via Twitter and Instagram using the #smilesfilm hashtag. (Reuters)

Dear Friends,

I told you to smile when you are feeling down.
However, there are steps you should know.

First you go to the mirror and smile to the mirror in anyway you can.
You probably will not feel any different.
Smile a few times that way.

If that is not enough, smile a few times every morning when you see the mirror.
That won’t do much, either, right?
Because there is a way to smile and change not only your mood, but make your body healthy and young, and change your life for the better!

1) Smile just by twisting the ends of your mouth up.
That doesn’t get you anywhere, I bet.
But that’s a start.

2) Smile with your eyes and mouth.
That’s better.
Your smile will make somebody feel good, maybe.

Add a little giggle, and they will either think you’re crazy or like you for it.

3) If you really want to smile so it will make yourself feel good as well - you have to smile from your heart and your lungs.

Don’t worry, if you are ending the smile with a quiet sound like ummm.

4) The next step will make you feel still better.
Smile from your solar plexus.
This has an added benefit of making your solar plexus healthier, and active.

5) The next step is to smile right down from your stomach.
When you do this, make sure to breathe deeply and pull your stomach muscles in as you smile.

6) The next step – yes, there are more steps! – you should smile from your knees.
Again, just pull your knees in – as you pull your stomach in.
At the same time you use your lungs, heart and solar plexus.

You’ll see that by then, you are smiling with your whole body.
You won’t forget to smile with your eyes and mouth at the same time.
It will happen anyway.

That’s how you will get the true benefit of smiling.
How about giving a smile to others?
Should we forget that?

Don’t worry.
They’ll notice your smile.
Only, this time, you’ll feel good, too.
Very, very good!

I love you!

Yoko's website: http://imaginepeace.com/

Stay In Touch, Share Your Ideas

If you have ideas and want to help develop ScentTrail Marketing leave a comment or do one of these:

Follow @ScentTrail

Email: MartinSellingZoe(at)aol

Follow Digital Revolutions on Scoop.it

Join ScentTrail Marketing (on the upper left)

Martin W. Smith on

5 Tips To Safely Add Fun To Your Marketing

2013-04-23T17:42:00.003-04:00

Fun Works But...

Few Internet marketers would argue. Fun is more engaging, exciting and likely to convert than whatever is fun's opposite number. The problem is FUN is an "eye of the beholder" marketing problem. Your fun may be my misery. This post shares tips to safely add fun to your Internet marketing.

Why is "safely" in the title?

What Isn't Safe About Fun

Presumption and hubris are dragons every Internet marketer fights. As Internet marketers we are museum curators. Our jobs require passion and beliefs, but our egos can't write checks we can't cash. Great curators such as Jan Gordon (@JanLGordon), Brian Yanish (@MarketingHits) and Alley Greer (@AlleyGreer) are empaths.

Empaths FEEL audience acceptance and trends. Great curation is simultaneously an expression and a mirror. Great curators know their audience so well they can take risks others couldn't. Practicing the art of empathy brings us to our first Fun Marketing Tip:

Create Fun Marketing Tip #1:
Personas

I agree with Joseph Campbell. We are all on the same "Hero's Journey", but your path may be different. Demographics aren't the only thing to think about when creating personas. Add in a healthy sense of each personas psychographics, those things they LOVE and ASPIRE to and your personas will be more helpful and well rounded.

Resource Tip: Best book I've read on creating personas is David Rose's Managing Content Marketing.

Create Fun Marketing Tip #2:
Test, Test and Test Some More

Fun is live ammunition. Before you roll something you think is TOO FUN to your entire list test with a representative cross section (people from each persona). You may find some of your personas get the FUN while it leaves others cold.

No worries, use your FUN MARKETING with the groups who enjoy it and keep testing new ideas with the groups who didn't "get it". Your marketing should be relevant to your personas. Don't try and shove something one group loves down another group's throat because this kind of Big Brother marketing never works and does damage. FUN doesn't have to be universal. Test and use The Fun where it works.

Resource Tip: Optimizely is a great A/B testing tool.

Create Fun Marketing Tip #3:
Don't Try To "Go Viral"

Want something NOT to go viral? When you design "viral marketing" campaigns you fail at inception. Marketing is an intersection between your values, products and services and your customers' aspirations. The chance of you arranging your marketing, sun, moon and starts in "viral" order is zero.

Viral blows with the wind. What is viral today will be tomorrow's yawn. Sure some can play this game. You and your marketing CAN NOT because those who do are dedicated to thinking in viral terms 24/7/365. You don't think about viral marketing nearly as much, so your "let's create viral marketing" efforts will fail.

This is NOT to say your marketing can't go viral. The best chance you have for "viral" transmission of your ideas, products, services, values and brands is to be "true to your school". Create marketing aligned to your values and your customer's aspirations. This posts from Atlantic BT's blog can help you find your Unique Value Proposition and align marketing to your customer's "brand ideals":

How Unique Greatness Meets Customer Aspirations (Atlantic BT blog)

Alignment is key. Without alignment your marketing has no chance to go viral. When your marketing is aligned to YOUR values, the aspirations and desires of your customers advocacy will happen. The cool thing about social advocacy is you never know where it will go or end.

Social advocacy may take your marketing further than you imagined or increase conversions with your best customers. Don't try to create viral marketing. Be GREAT at being YOU and listen carefully, consistently and well to customer aspirations and needs and your marketing will go as "viral" as you need.

Create Fun Marketing Tip #4:
Find Fun Out THERE

The safest place to find "FUN MARKETING" isn't in your office. If your business is like most your customers suggest "fun marketing" daily. If that feedback is trapped in your call center or you are tone deaf in social learn to listen and build on your customers' ideas and suggestions.

I realize most of the readers of ScentTrail Marketing are Type A marketers who LOVE to create stuff. I would never tell you NOT to create, but I would advise that, at least when trying to riff humor or fun, listening and building on customer feedback, ideas and input is the safest path.

Create Fun Marketing Tip #5:
Have Fun Yourself

In a previous life I worked where the environment should have been FUN but it was a salt mine. You can't create FUN MARKETING if you aren't having fun. One of my favorite Fun Marketing truisms comes from my Ben and Jerry's cycling jersey. Square in the middle of the back it says, "If it isn't FUN why do it".

Not everything we do everyday is FUN, but anything can feel FUN with the right spirit and attitude. This reminds me of a favorite Zen parable:

A Zen master and a student have just finished a great meal. Sitting feeling content and at peace the student asks the master, "Master what is Zen". The master takes a long pause as Zen masters do and answers, "Wash the dishes".

Fun Marketing may be as impossible to create as viral marketing. In other words, if you set out to create fun marketing you are much LESS likely to do so. If you create a fun and supportive environment your customers will know since customers always know. Fun is the most contagious thing on the planet, so live in the moment, listen carefully and have fun. Life is too short to do anything else.

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5 Tips To Avoid Epic Customer Service FAILS

2013-04-20T10:54:00.000-04:00

State Farm's Epic Fail

The night before I spoke at the Digital Marketing For Business Conference two young men broke into my home, scared my cat half to death, rifled through everything and stole my 60" Sony plasma TV. Luckily I was staying in Raleigh Monday night so I didn't have to drive back and forth before speaking on Tuesday.

I called the Durham police and they were amazing. Tate came out and did the CSI thing even finding a print. Next I called State Farm and EPIC FAIL. My local agent's office all but LAUGHED when I explained someone stole my $4,000 TV bringing us to How To Avoid Epic Customer Service Fails Tip #1:

Avoid Epic Customer Service Fails Tip #1:
First Impressions Matter

Over the years I've paid State Farm more than $20,000 in premiums. I hit a deer years ago, but have had NO OTHER claims on the cash I've paid to insure my home and car. Insurance companies make money on your money. That is why Warren Buffet loves insurance companies (he owns Geico). Insurance companies are cash machines.

With my single State Farm claim I've dropped $20,000 (give or take) directly on their bottom line. When I called to share the traumatic story of having my house burglarized the agent all but LAUGHED at the prospect of my making a claim for a television. HE LAUGHED.

I make it a rule NOT to fire social media bullets until three strikes. State Farm's second strike was when I called back two days later hoping for a different result (the definition of insanity I know :) I heard this, "Well it will be up to the insurance adjusters".

The third strike was I had to get off the phone to take another call and NO CALL BACK. EPIC FAIL State Farm especially with your $100M ad campaign where people you insure are magically transported out of harms way and into the loving arms of their State Farm agent. Not so much for me as I was transported into the uncaring arms of your "insurance adjusters". Not as good a ad.

Avoid Epic Customer Service Fails Tip #2:
Websites Matter

My local State Farm agent doesn't have a website. He has a pate inside the State Farm website. That is my agent's 4th strike. I don't care if you are a local rep for a bigger company you MUST and let me emphasize MUST have a website and it must come up when I search your agency name in Google.

By NOT having a website my agent is flirting with disaster. He is also making me complain to the source. Why do that. I've had a relationship with this man's office for more than ten years, so provide a way for me to talk to easily talk with YOU.

I wish I had this agent in the chair across from me right now because I would explain how vastly the world is different. I realize this agent is nearing retirement and already has more money than GOD, but being indifferent and continuing to cash my check just doesn't play so strikes four and five.

Avoid Epic Customer Service Fails Tip #3:
People Matter

The State Farm person, the employee of my local agent, who answered the phone needs training NOW. His laconic delivery is not what you want to hear during a trauma. The voice on the phone needs to be empathetic and have a sense of urgency and confidence.

This fool works for State Farm and not for ME. I understand, but what is State Farm but a commons where I give them CASH in exchange for security and confidence in the face of trauma. Irony and curt replies is not a voice or an attitude you want to hear when TRAUMA takes over you life (so strike six).

Avoid Epic Customer Service Fails Tip #4:
Social Media Matters

Since my agent is my age and very old school I know his office doesn't use social media. Strike #8 since he won't even know I've just written 1,000 words on his agency (which I am NOT naming yet). Social media is the ultimate TESTING ground for epic failure.

If your company thinks social media is a game and there is no ROI you may be right, but what if you aren't. I think social media is the most important business revolution since the computer. If you and your company treat social media poorly your competitors or customers will use it to beat you senseless. The irony of your not knowing why business is failing since you aren't on social media is too perfect.

Social media matters. Don't get caught up in BS, have a twitter account and be reachable by email. NEVER and I mean NEVER delegate such mission critical things as websites and social media to your company's mothership.

Avoid Epic Customer Fails Tip #5:
Walking Your Talk Matters

Here is my memo to State Farm. You have BIG COURAGE to spend $100M in advertising (at least) on TV (duh talk about not GETTING IT) claiming you are the insurance equivalent of God's embrace when you are really a distributed network of independent business people all of whom can mess up as bad ad my agent just did.

My suggestion is SPEND LESS on TV and more on TRAINING. I realize the mothership must show the local agents they are earning their cut, but State Farm (and this applies to McDonald's and any franchise operation) your greatest vulnerability now isn't mindshare. Your great brand vulnerability in a socially connected time is how you execute.

You can't centralize GREATNESS. Greatness must happen at the local level and so GREATNESS depends on training and feedback loops. I strongly suggest all BIG companies with franchises use a social media rollup tool called Expion. Expion creates the feel of local while providing the mothership the command and control they need.

Don't believe this ad...

Hope State Farm comes back in the later rounds and helps me since all of my money is going to the Story of Cancer Foundation so there is NO WAY I can afford to replace the TV without help from the insurance company I've been paying diligently for just this kind of help.

ScentTrail Marketing

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Share the fun with a friend! Now with comfortable padded seats, the Perception Tribe 13.5 tandem sit-on-top kayak offers plenty of room for 2 paddlers and the gear you need to make a memorable day.

Stay In Touch, Share Your Ideas

Internet Marketing Secret #1:
IM Isn't What You Think It Is

Internet Marketing Secret #2:
Source of Greatness Isn't What You Think It Is

Internet Marketing Secret #3:
Save The World

Create Fun Marketing Tip #1:
Personas

Create Fun Marketing Tip #2:
Test, Test and Test Some More

Create Fun Marketing Tip #3:
Don't Try To "Go Viral"

Create Fun Marketing Tip #4:
Find Fun Out THERE

Create Fun Marketing Tip #5:
Have Fun Yourself

Avoid Epic Customer Service Fails Tip #1:
First Impressions Matter

Avoid Epic Customer Service Fails Tip #2:
Websites Matter

Avoid Epic Customer Service Fails Tip #3:
People Matter

Avoid Epic Customer Service Fails Tip #4:
Social Media Matters

Avoid Epic Customer Fails Tip #5:
Walking Your Talk Matters