You hear that content is king and the latest curations applications and tools allow you to take advantage of the content kings to manage your daily diet of news and information. With the large volumes of content being produced today by everyone from the major networks, businesses and local bloggers and enthusiasts, individuals have a huge amount of content to curate and share with others. RSS readers where the early innovators in curating the constant firehouse of information into our shotglass attention span but they were cumbersome and text heavy.
A few years ago I wrote about how aggregators like NetVibes and Pageflakes were allowing us to create mash up pages in minutes. These tools are great for listening stations and but lack the intelligence that the new generation of curation tools offer. These tools are also driving clicks like never before. These curation tools are helping us fill Facebook and Twitter streams, driving significant traffic volume, making corporate brands take notice. I’ve even noticed how Delicious has updated their interface since the last update a few months ago with the release of stacks.
Scoop.it is a nice tool to gather and distribute content from around the Web based on your interests and passions. Scoop.it creates a page with previews and links to content you “scoop”and has good community tools for following other curators. Most of these sites have the ability to “Re” post content another user has already flagged. Scoop.it has some great B2B curators in specific vertical markets and found it to be good resource to gather industry-specific content.
Marty Smith's "Business Intelligence Revolution" on Scoop.it
Paper.li seems to be the most used of the content curation tools among people I follow on Twitter and probably has the most traffic of any This site has really done the best job of attracting uses and generating links. The aspect of publishing a daily paper based off your articles of interest and giving recognition for the source as a key contributors via Twitter is both annoying and brilliant. Even though I don’t want a daily paper for myself I find myself clicking through to friends papers and enjoying the clean interface. And if you use Paper.li change your title to differentiate the daily tweets other than the typical tweets of “The YOUR NAME HERE Daily is out…”
Phil Buckley's "The 1918 Daily Amalgamation" on Paper.ly
Pinterest is the latest media story as it started popping into the list of sites driving the most traffic on the internet last month. For the most part the initial growth was driven by women using it as a virtual scrapbook for visual items of interest such as clothes, interior design and food. Pintrest is one part bookmarking and one part image gallery with a clean interface that allows you to create a more engaging curation. You can only “pin” images to a board, but the link is preserved to allow for the click thereby driving traffic to the source site. Also other community members can post comments similar to Facebook wall posts threads. Pinterest is different from traditional bookmarking sites like Delicious, Digg and StumbleUpon in that it pins an image, movie or other media object with link to page. However the ability to visually scan designs and rich media content is very nice.
My wife @MCDezigns showed Zite to me and we both love it. Zite not only has the best content for what I’m interested in reading it also has great one-click bookmarking, easy social sharing with flexibility using multiple accounts. I recently downloaded the iPhone app and use it everyday to quickly scan articles of interest and either read or bookmark them to read later in the day. Zite has simple thumbs up/down approval tool similar to Pandora to customize your content. The stream will even draw from your social stream with lesser presence than Flipboard. Zite has a large library of Sections to choose from and they have groomed their content well in terms of quality and frequency.
Flipboard definetly captured everyones attention when iPads first came out. Using simple swipe navigation it offers a great magazine of news and social media content. For social media content I like how photos are previewed in larger sizes and it’s easier to view photos than on your Facebook wall or Twitter stream as well as photos sites like Instagram. The latest release allows for multiple accounts so that you can share on iPad for multiple users as well as new iPhone version.
The latest entry tinto the curation space is Google Currents. Matching the new Google interface design it works best with Google+ but has sharing and bookmarking integration. No doubt that curation and clicks resulting from Google Current users are are going to factor into how the Google ranking juice is made. Currents has a library of major content sites as well as the ability to pull from any RSS feed in your Google Reader. There is also a trending list of links that you can browse that is similar to search results you would see in the “News” result of a Google Search. The clean interface and design is similar to Flipboard and Zite with the ability to simply swipe between pages and topics. What I think Google should have done was skip the redesign of Google Reader and instead migrated it into Currents with a website interface.
The last three tools listed here are only avaiable as a tablet or smartphone app. Scoop.it, Paper.ly and Pinterest all offer websites to create your pages and manage your account. These tools have bookmarklets and other simple tools to tag a page and categorize the content.
What’s your content curation tool of choice?
We’re halfway through the National Football League (NFL) season and this is the time of year that I love. Temperature is cooling down, leaves are changing, Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas are the holidays and the NFL season is in full swing. There’s a reason why NFL football is the number one sport in the United States, well-done marketing! Everything you need to know about marketing can be learned from watching and studying the NFL.
The NFL devised the draft in 1935 to acquire the top college players and have held a draft every year since 1936. Since then it has become a prime time television event and the model for other leagues to acquire talent. Even though there are several rounds, the first round and top dozen picks get more media attention and millions of dollars for the picks than some companies in a single year.
Official NFL jerseys sell from $80-150 depending on the team and player. Watch or attend any game and you see a large portion of the fans wearing them. Go to any sports bar on a Sunday and you’ll see even more. In addition to jerseys, team logos appear on just about every product and each one pays a licensing fee to the NFL for the right to use or risk serious lawsuit from a team of high price lawyers and copyright infringement from the feds.
Ads are everywhere but the uniform and the field. The NFL knows that if they slap logos on the teams and the field of play it cheapens the game and could create backlash among fans. Yet we see ads everywhere else and placed without all the tackiness of NASCAR and European Soccer that slap ads anywhere on the vehicle and athlete possible.
The Superbowl, do I really need to explain this? It’s the most watch sporting event on the planet, every year. Commercials cost a million dollars and can give you exposure for to launch a company.
Humans love routines and a consistent time and date makes it easy to build a regular routine around a sporting event. The majority of the NFL games are played on Sunday and usually at 1 pm local time. Even with Monday Night Football and the second-half Thursday night games, most fans get their fix starting at 1 pm on Sunday. For the uber-fan you have primetime games on Sunday and Monday and the occasional Thursday night game.
Instant replay was once a TV feature has now become part of the rules. This year we see automatic review of scoring plays to eliminate error. While I’m not a fan of instant replay as it slows the game down and takes out the human element, it is an analytical process that helps ensure accuracy.
When Hank Williams shouted Obama is a Nazi on Fox News ESPN cut the cord before the NFL had to step in. ESPN knew that the NFL does not need Hank Williams to sell MNF and realized his time had come. Smart move and thank you!
Early on the NFL realized that players tweeting during games would be a distraction and issued a social media policy banning tweets and social media messages starting 90 minutes before the game and lasting until after the game finishes. Instad of waiting for an incident the NFL realized that a clear, concise policy was the best way to keep the attention on the field for players and staff.
Only a half dozen players, coaches and contributors to the game get elected into the NFL Hall of Fame every year making it an honor and priveledge that most players aspire to. Instead of flooding the Hall with great players, it’s reservered for the best of the best. Wonder what it means to the inductees? Watch any induction ceremony and you’ll see a full range of emotions.
More water cooler chatter on Monday mornings is about football and specifically NFL football than any other topic on a regular basis. How many times have you heard, “did you watch the game?” on Monday morning?
With mobile usage and traffic growing by huge numbers recently there is a rush to create mobile friendly versions of your website. But it does not end there, what about a iPhone or iPad app? What about other smartphones: Droid, Blackberry, etc? Just thinking about it can make your head spin!
I’ve had many discussions with my peers and others about what the best choice is and always come back to the same answer. It’s contingent on your customers both current and present. Here are the questions I find myself asking those seeking advice on mobile marketing.
Apple’s announcement yesterday disappointed some that wanted to see a new iPhone design, the iPhone 5. Had the iPhone 5 been announced there would have been throngs of innovators, early adopters and first droppers lined up to buy the device on the first day, shattering sales records and making news. But that did not happen and as a result Apple’s stock dropped 5% even though they are delivering another quality product. The new iPhone 4S was announced with some major improvements:Last week during the first Monday Night Football game I watched the ad for The Johnny Cash Project on ESPN. I was blown away for two reasons.
How’s your bounce rate? If it is consistently high (over 70%), then you need to analyze why visitors are leaving your site so quickly. This infographic looks at certain areas that may be driving your site visitors away from your site instead of diving deeper. One area to look at in your analytics are the entry and exit pages. These pages give clues to how users enter and leave your site.
++ Click Image to Enlarge ++
Source: What Makes Someone Leave A Website?
Budweiser announced that it is redesigning its cans. The bow tie Budweiser logo will be emphasized along with the red color. I wonder if this will attract new customers? Sure there will be interest when the new design is seen on cans and swag, but will it last?
Overall the beer market has shrunk the past year. People have stayed home and drank less during the recession. Budweiser is now owned by InBev a Belgium brewer. U.S.-based sales for Budweiser dropped 7.3% in 2010, while sales for Bud Light dropped 2%, according to Beer Marketer’s Insights.
Still Bud and Bud Light are the top two beers sold in the US. A can redesign changes the packaging but how does it fit into Budweiser’s overall marketing strategy?
Bud has built the brand with aggressive advertising and promotion at national and local levels. NFL and other major sport ads provided the air cover that kept the brand fresh cool and present in consumers minds. From the talking frogs to the Wassup? guys, Bud has spent more than any other advertisers on the most expensive advertising event, the SuperBowl.
At the local level Bud has partnered with leading distributors and provided co-op dollars to sponsor local events and venues. By working with local bars and restaurants Bud and Bud Light have pushed special pricing to win sales based on price. Even the local delivery trucks have Bud splashed across the vehicle. A new brand requires some time to gel with fans while a throwback one could lead to immediate acceptance and appreciation.
Will the new design just give short term buzz and excitement about the brand yet long term sales will continue to decline? Bud has a long heritage that it could reach into. Bringing back Bud Man or some of the traditional designs could give it a more authentic nostalgic connection with consumers. A retro design could tie in to digital media as it would allow for customers and fans to share in their memories and what they love the brand’s heritage. Similar to how we’ve caught up with all our old high school friends on Facebook. I don’t think consumers will talk online much about the new can.
I think part of Budweiser’s redesign strategy is to attract younger customers in their 20s and 30s. Yet the younger beer drinking public may see right through Bud’s gimmick and stick with their hipster brands like PBR or be craft beer connoisseurs. Is this Bud for you or for the rapidly changing younger generations?
I love discovering WordPress plugins that work and help with marketing your website. My first WordPress plugin post listed 3 awesome plugins for search engine optimization (SEO), link tracking and personalization. This time I’ve found 3 more awesome wordpress plugins for keywords, site performance and social share.
Keyword Statistics helps optimize your WordPress blog for search engines. It can automatically generate meta informations (like keywords and description for example) needed for the SEO of your blog. What I like about this plugin is that it scans your content on the page or post for keyword density and updates it every few seconds. The most common keywords are presented in lists of single words and optionally 2- and 3-word phrases.
Keyword Statistics WordPress Plugin
Keyword Statistics also will generate meta tags and page titles for a single page or the whole site. It features options for canonical URLs, 404 pages, robots, no follow, and the ability to turn on/off the setting so they don’t interfere with other plugins. The way I use it is to research the keywords and then write the meta tags using WordPress SEO plugin.
Page Speed Report dashboard widget
W3 Total Cache bills itself as the most complete WordPress performance framework that can improve site performance and user experience via caching: browser, page, object, database, minify and content delivery network support. W3 Total Cache improves the user experience of your site by improving your server performance, caching every aspect of your site, reducing the download times and providing transparent content delivery network (CDN) integration. With page load speed now a factor in search engine rankings this plugin is invaluable. The dashboard widget gives you a quick analysis of your page speed report listing areas for improvement. The dashboard report clicks to a detailed report with specific areas to improve load speed and performance. From there you can make the adjustments to your site to improve performance. W3 Total Cache promises at least 10x improvement in overall site performance. As you can see from my report above, I still have some work to do to improve performance, and now I know exactly what items to tweak.
I’ve tried most of the social share WordPress plugins and have finally settled on AddThis for a couple of reasons. First they have all of the networks with the ability to customize the buttons and the order they appear on the page. All you have to do is list the account codes in the order you want them to appear. They list what services perform best on their services directory page. Sign up for a free AddThis.com account to see how your visitors are sharing your content: which services they’re using for sharing, which content is shared the most, and more. The dashboard widget allows you to view stats for current day, past week and past month.
AddThis dashboard widget shows social sharing stats
I’ve also found AddThis to work well on iPhone while testing for my site. Some of the other social share plugins performed poorly in this area so that was a big factor in using this plugin. Other features include bit.ly and Google Analytics integration.
