Why Content Curtation Rocks SEO
The slide deck from @Scoop.it about how content curation impacts SEO is an excellent SEO & content curation primer (embedded in the post), but let’s do a deeper dive to understand how content curation ROCKS SEO and every site's Uber-Goal of creating sustainable online community.

This Curagami post creates an interesting comparison between Oprah and Amazon. One knows how to create online community one doesn't. Both have great tips to share.

The web + mobile + social means we are all about to be game developers. Those environments are so GAME FRIENDLY and game content so engaging in or out of the organization becoming game developers is in all our futures.

Over Planning Can KILL Your Content Marketing
We see a lot of experts, gurus and people who should know better sharing yesterday's advice. We've read thousands of words about the importance of goal setting, planning and objectives for content marketing.

People talk about creating content marketing calendars and planning everything to within an inch of your life. Good luck with that. Might have worked 3 years ago, but today's social / mobile / connected world means you need to become a NOWIST.

This Curagami post embeds the influential Joy Ito TED talk about becoming a Nowist by pulling from the network to meet demand. Your content needs to do the same.

AND You need to digitally listen. We riff a few paragraphs about what it means to digitally listen such as FOLLOWING those who follow you, Retweeting and curating content from your customers and brand advocates.

Next time you read 1,000 words on planning your "content calendar" STOP and read this Curagami post so you don't over plan your content marketing.

Marty Note
Wait long enough, or in my case live long enough, and it gets to be YOUR TURN (lol). I loved this Justin Gray post on Forbes explaining that MARKETING is the last thing an online play needs.

Couldn't agree more.

I was trained in a different kind of marketing than we practice now at our startup Curagami. I was trained to invade Russia in the winter. THEN messages were few enough and far enough between capturing territory and holding it was possible.

Not so much anymore.

These days capturing hearts, minds and loyalty is the game and everything is happening all at once all the time. The skills needed to play this game, as Justin so astutely notes, are different. Here is an excellent summary of those skills from his Forbes post:

• Content creators. In an era of shrinking attention spans, the ability to craft compelling stories into engaging online content is key. That’s why marketers need the same skills as a journalist: ideation, writing and editing.

• Analysts. Marketers need to know how to extract insights from data and use it to make meaningful decisions. They also need to create models to collect data and feedback easily.

• Designers. Modern marketers must have an eye for aesthetics and be able to capitalize on trends in real time. Look for candidates who can create high-quality, consumer-facing assets at a rapid pace.

• Planners. Marketers engineer a brand’s interface with the buyer, including when, how and where they’re interacting. That means creating workflows and campaigns based on buyers’ behaviors while paying attention to other messages and campaigns.

AGREE and not just because I'm benefiting from such an analysis. I imagine EVEN if I was still working for one of the largest Consumer Products companies as I did a lifetime ago (P&G, M&M/Mars) we wouldn't be invading Russia in the winter anymore.

UNLESS, we were invading with a tribe of brand Sherpas, telling the story as we went and watching our analytics and pivoting based on what we learn in near real time.

Thinking Different = Hardest Thing
Web marketing is different, powerful and transforming. If you can adopt these 5 "Secrets" and shift thinking accordingly you can win BIG online:

* Hedge and Diversify.
* Over and Under.
* Card count & DOUBLE DOWN.
* Become a NOWIST.
* Hit 4 out of 10 = Hall of Fame.

New SEO's invisible Giant uses magician tricks such as Google's floating filter bubbles, social media's disappearing act & friends you never knew you had.

Wow, what a day for Invisible Giants. After my Haiku Deck account went down taking the fastest "views" deck we've ever created into the void we received a dramatic lesson in almost every "Invisible Giant" idea discussed.

TIME and the growing importance of "near real time" response was absent. Not anymore (lol). Wrote up what happened today as an example of "Invisible Giant" values and just how our online marketing world is turns on a different axis now.

There is a new invisible giant using 5 "tricks" so the "new seo" is getting harder and harder to see and understand. This Haiku Deck and Curatti blog post is about how to see the invisible giant. How to win hearts and minds online.

Why New SEO So Hard To See
* Google Float & Filter Bubbles.
* Social Media Marketing's Disappearing Act.

* Friends of Friends Marketing.

* Multi-channel Marketing.

* Web's "Fabric" Like Space/Time.

Adding a Curatti blog post at midnight tonight too.

Jeff Fromm in a great post for TBJ makes Curagami's tactical marketing is dead argument beautifully. Social Media Marketing is dead & here's what's next.

The New New Marketing
There was a time before the web when "digital marketing" was somethign you did with your fingers. Then everything changed. Change came fast and furious thanks to Moore's Law - Integrated circuit POWER goes up exponentially even as costs plummet.

Once our digital world got to a certain point, let's call that point X, acceleration accelerates. Mobile throws gasoline on the social fire and gets answered by social media marketing with rocket fuel on the fire.

The resulting explosion in a kingdom called BRANDING in a land far, far away once upon a time...

Read the Curagami Story and worry less :). M

After Google's algorithm changes content is KING, context QUEEN. Online merchants who "match the hatch" of content to customers create advantage. Winning this advantage takes courage.

Courage because when one revolution happens things get crazy. When three revolutions are happening simultaneously its time to get in the basement with water and a year's supply of canned goods.

Instead of doing that we suggest reading about how content, commerce and social media can contribute to one another on CrowdFunde our startup dedicated to helping websites, brands and companies tap wisdom of crowds.

Choosing between Facebook and LinkedIn might not be an easy choice. You probably know both platforms as a user. Let's try to analyze those two systems in order for you to decide which one to use.

Why Contagious? You could read Jonah Berger’s Contagious: Why Things Catch On as an update to Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make A Big Difference, but I wouldn’t (lol). 

Berger’s assertion that Gladwell is mostly wrong seems moot. The Tipping Point is philosophy. Berger’s book is ditch digging psychology based on his empirical research at Wharton.

Berger shares 3 key ideas to create viral marketing:

• Find or Create Inner Remarkability.
• Leverage Game Mechanics.
• Make People Feel Like Insiders.

This Curatti.com post shares my favorite examples for each of Berger's Contagious traits including Red Bull for "Inner Remarkability", Scoop.it for leveraging game mechanics and Rue La La for making people feel like insiders.

Online video picked up speed in 2013 and will continue to gain significant momentum in 2014. A simple Google search taps into a pile of data that underscores the importance of video in marketing collateral.

Intermediate/ Digest...

-- >  73% of B2B marketers say they will focus on video as a content marketing solution in 2014. In an industry saturated with whitepapers and e-books, the rise of online videos has come as a relief for B2B marketers, providing them with a new and exciting platform to market their products and services.

-- >  Choose HTML5 over Flash. Here’s why:

-- >  Optimizing and uploading videos on sites such as YouTube and Vimeo, and embedding them on your website, boosts your search rank standing.

-- >  Some of the popular video distribution websites include:

     * TubeMogul

     * OneLoad

     * Vimeo

     * Viddler

Marty
Video's Unique Stone Skipping via Widgetization
Videos skip across the surface of the web thanks to easy SHARES via links and embed codes. Be sure to HOST some of your own videos since the only people you are making rich by using Vimeo or YouTube is THEM.

When you host your videos make sure you offer the same easy ratings (thumbs up or down), views feedback metrics and easy link or embed options made popular by YouTube and Vimeo.

This "stone skipping" nature of video makes it HIGHLY VIRAL. Video engagement can be HIGH too (if the video doesn't drive visitors away which many do). Keep your videos short and "Daisy Chain" them together  like TV episodes (hanging threads at the end with the promise of resolution in the next video on into infinity :). M

Today, around the world more people have mobile phone subscriptions than have access to electricity and safe drinkable water. Today, almost a third of the world's population uses the internet (a 528.1% growth since 2000!

So what are we doing with all the time we spend online, and how do we know all that time is being spent in useful ways?

For many of us, the internet is among the first things we experience after we wake; in fact, 75% of users are online before 9 a.m. Over 75% of people in the US own a laptop, 53% a smart phone, and 31% a tablet. Email is the most common action performed by people on their laptops, while search is the top action for mobile phone and tablet users. 72% of people like to play games on their tablets while 70% use their mobile phones for social media. Where do we use these devices? 72% of people use their mobile phones while traveling, and 64% use them in restaurants and coffee shops. As for tablets, 88% of people use their devices in the living room, 79% in the bedroom.

Find more statistics and data at the infographic or article link.

A massive survey of internet users reveals trends in social media usage across numerous platforms, ages, races, genders, population density and more...

The Pew Research Center has released the results of a comprehensive survey, conducted over several years to evaluate which demographics were using social media, and on which platforms. Which social networking sites emerged on top?

Of the online adults surveyed at the end of 2012:

67% use Facebook20% use LinkedIn16% use Twitter15% use Pinterest13% use Instagram6% use Tumblr 

Find more statistics, findings and takeaways on how Americans appear to be using social media, based on this recent study.