Latest Social Media News

Thanks to FanPageKarma, an excellent web app to learn and improve your social media marketing by learning directly from your competitors, has just published a worldwide catalogue of Facebook Fan Pages categorized by sector and country.

For each brand included in the catalogue you can check the existing number of fans, its growth rate and page performance, and compare these with the ones of your own Facebook page.

My comment: This is a great resource to find and collect great examples of effective social media strategies by finding the best performers by country or by specific industry sector. 

Very useful: 8/10

Full catalogue:

http://www.fanpagekarma.com/facebook-catalogue/ 

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More people are running to charity tube to post free videos and watch free videos than posting on you tube. Try posting at charity tube and you will never leave. http://www.africatube.net/ More visitors and more video views. Don't take our word for it, try it. Post one same video on youtube and put it on  http://www.africatube.net/ and return ater five hours and compare the viewers rate and decide for yourself. Create your very own group or forum and control who watch it and invite everyone to watch the video. Above all, post video in English or in any language and viewers can watch video description in their own language. Try it and let us know your experience. Above all it is absolutely free like youtube

Peep Laja, a conversion optimization expert at Markitekt, has an excellent illustrated guide at ConversionXL guiding you through over 20 of the most common mistakes made when designing landing pages. 

For each issue Peep provides a real-world example with a screenshot and relevant commentary at what you should pay attention to.

Instructive. Good curation. 8/10

Full guide: http://conversionxl.com/21-ways-youre-screwing-up-your-landing-pages-and-what-to-do-about-it/#. 

The Business Model Gallery is a growing database of curated business models canvases gathered from a diverse set of companies operating in different sectors.

For each company you can analyze its updated "business canvas" in which you can see at a glance the key value propositions, its partners, revenue streams and all of the other key business building blocks.

Business models can be easily searched, filtered and compared across specific building blocks you are interested in. 

Coming up are also a PDF and PowerPoint export option as well as a dedicated iPad app.

A free trial is available and pro plans start at $9/month and go up all the way to $29/mo according to the number of features you want to use.

My comment: The Business Model Gallery offers a truly excellent gallery of valuable business models which can be extremely useful for anyone studying, researching or working on creating a successful new company.

Furthermore this is a great living example of how, curated collections of best of breed examples, are going to have a go as very useful business services in the coming months and years.

Free for the first three months: http://businessmodelgallery.com/ 

Features: http://businessmodelgallery.com/features/ 

Pricing: http://businessmodelgallery.com/packages/ 

To learn more about the canvas and its 9 building blocks, visit www.businessmodelgeneration.com

I've been using business model tool for years now. This gallery is truly amazing and I believe will be very useful for business architects and managers as they define their own corporate strategy because they will be able to easily compare with what others are doing.

How True! "Every act of journalism is an act of curation" - that is as long as what is being reported is accurate and unbiased!

Giornalisti a scuola di Curation

One of the most popular strategies utilized by those are new to content curation is to create "lists" of resources, articles or tools that are useful for a particular domain and tribe.

In this article by Casudi Di Diego you can find four real-world examples of how crowd-curated lists can be effectively utilized to create value and as a consequence to produce more inbound links, visibility and spontaneous sharing across social media.

Educational. Resourceful. 8/10

Full article: http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2013/09/content-plan-include-numbered-lists/ 

Among the types of content curation that are broadly used, content aggregation has been one of the first and most popular approaches that has naturally sprung up.

Content aggregation itself can be carried out in many different ways, from a completely manual approach to a fully automated one, with many different shades in between.

If you are interested in learning more about these, and about how to aggregate content in the most ethical and professional fashion, I strongly suggest reading these two short articles written by two curation professionals:

The two articles offer clear guidelines, real-world examples and recommendations on how you can make content aggregation provide true additional value to both the content sources used and to the readers alike.

Recommended. 8/10

Original article: http://stevebuttry.wordpress.com/2012/05/16/aggregation-guidelines-link-attribute-add-value/ ;

(Image credit - Sea anemons by Shutterstock)

A useful introduction to the mechanics of "curation"

Thank you for sharing Robin, excellent read and your insights

http://www.rohitbhargava.com/2013/01/10-brilliant-marketing-lessons-from-the-best-of-ces-2013.html

When I wrote about the content linked above about how to disrupt I promised to share examples. Here are 5 examples of disruption in practice:

1. Disrupt At Trade Shows Such As CES
http://www.rohitbhargava.com/2013/01/10-brilliant-marketing-lessons-from-the-best-of-ces-2013.html

That is an excellent article about how cool products in poorly designed booths were ignored at this year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES). Trade Shows are DARWINIAN. Seth Godin had a great explanation for why you buy more booth space than you can afford - because of how it LOOKS.

Design is only HALF the disruption. The other half comes from having the courage to spend money without being able to fully know if there is ROI. One thing the people in empty booths know is it is better to be busy.

2. Whirlpool Teaches To Disrupt
In the same article is a great example of an old brand that gets it. Whirlpool didn't just recreate their graphics they explained their process. Read the great book HOW: Why How You Do Anything Means Everything by Dov Seidman.

Dov explains that in a fast, flat, connected time the only unique thing your company or brand truly "owns" is your business processes. Teaching is an exciting way to disrupt, but never ONLY teach. Make sure you are listening too (see #3).

3. Listen To Disrupt Scoop.it Learns FAST
I love Scoop.it. Two upgrades ago Scoop.it removed some beloved and ingenious features. I led a little revolt complaining about not being included. First victory was how well Guillaume and his team listened and how quickly they pivoted returning our lost features. All was good and then it was time for the next big change.

This time Scoop.it released their changes to a handful of advocates and loyal Scoop.it users. The Scoop.it team listened so well they changed on the fly AND changed their roll out process. Well done Scoop.it and that are listening to disrupt.

4. Gold Miners Use UGC & Wisdom of Crowds To Disrupt

Canada's GoldCorp did the unthinkable in the gold mining business when they made normally secret data with the world. The result? GoldCorp is now Canada's largest mining company after crowd wisdom tuned their data to find more than $3B in "new gold" with very low exploration costs. More than simply applying new eyes GoldCorp's contest prompted creation of new visualizations and content (User Generated Content) showing where and why there was gold in previously un-mined belts.

5. NewsJack The Media To Disrupt

Read David Meerman Scott's New Rules of Marketing and PR and NewsJacking to learn how to play your marketing on top of trends brewing in the media. My favorite example is the casino that garnered millions in free PR when they banned bad girl Lindsay Lohan from their casino.

Curious about my previous article on how to develop disruptive business processes? Learn more: http://scenttrail.blogspot.com/2013/01/5-ways-to-disrupt-your-internet.html