Welcome back from your Fourth of July vacation! While you were boating, grilling, and parading, a lot happened in the world of content marketing. To get you up to speed on the latest stats, surveys, and news, we’ve curated a short digest.

In this post, you will find out:

1. The habits of the top 5% of bloggers
2. The psychological reasons why content goes viral
3. How Facebook decides what to show on your news feed
4. The latest research into millennials and content marketing
5. The results of Hootsuite’s experiment related to online reading habits
6. A more scientific way to determine when to post on Facebook and Twitter

1. How to be in the top 5% of bloggers: New research results

By Sonia Simone on Copyblogger

Andy Crestodina conducted a survey of more than 1,000 bloggers. The results confirmed what many already knew. Good blogging takes a lot of time, but not many people are willing to put in that time.

• 54% of bloggers spend fewer than 2 hours on a typical post.• Just 5.5% of bloggers spend 6+ hours per post.

Summing up the results, Sonia Simone writes:

Most bloggers spend around 2.5 hours writing 800-word posts and publish weekly. They share it on social media (94%) and move on to the next post. Only half check analytics on a regular basis.

How do you fare in comparison to the typical blogger?

2. This is your brain on viral content: What psychology says you’ll click on

By Kelsey Libert on Hubspot

What creates viral content? It’s the question that many content marketers are trying to answer. According to Kelsey Libert, here’s the formula:

1. Mashing up seemingly unrelated data because unexpected connections delights the brain
2. Presenting information in a novel way, using methods like motion graphics, parallax scrolling, or interactive experiences
3. Creating a gap between what your audience currently knows and what your audience wants to know (Think: All those Upworthy headlines on your Facebook feed.)

While Kelsey’s article is informative, I found myself being somewhat skeptical. Why are we obsessed with virality? Should “going viral” be a realistic goal for marketers?

3. How does Facebook decide what to show in my news feed?

By Stuart Dredge on The Guardian

Last week was a tough week for Facebook. The social network revealed that they had manipulated nearly 700,000 users’ news feeds in an attempt to understand whether Facebook could alter users’ emotions.

There have been many responses to the news, many of which have been rather vitriolic. Perhaps the most helpful response is Stuart Dredge’s primer on Facebook news feeds.

Generally speaking, Facebook’s algorithm takes the following factors into account:

1. How often you interact with a friend, page, or public figure
2. How many likes, shares, and comments an individual post has received
3. How you have interacted with that kind of post in the past
4. Whether the post is being hidden and/or reported a lot

As Dredge explains, there are ways to take control of your Facebook news feed. You can change your news feed from “top stories” to “most recent.” To see a reverse-chronological feed of updates, click the downward arrow next to the words “News Feed” at the top left of Facebook’s website.

You can also spend time sorting your friends. You can list some as “close friends” to see more of their updates, and others as “acquaintances” to see fewer.

4. 45% of millennials aren’t compelled by content

By Perry Simpson on Direct Marketing News

Every day, there seems to be a new article about millennials. I guess that’s not surprising, seeing as it is estimated that this demographic will boast a cumulative $1.4 trillion in spending power by 2020.

That’s a lot of dough! And Yahoo! is trying to capitalize on all of that dough. Recently, the company conducted a survey of 15,000 people between the ages of 18 and 34, and they found that:

• Millennials have an average 7.1 devices they use to engage with content• 72% of millennials tend to find themselves lost in a vortex of entertainment• 75% of millennials want to cultivate information and become more intelligent.• 45% of millennials look for financial crisis advice and information.

The study provides five tips to help marketers target millennials:

1. Be native, not deceptive
2. Be an individual and be ready to evolve
3. Deliver on an emotion and know that humor rules
4. Reserve judgment
5. Be part of the community

5. Is anyone actually reading? The results are in!

By David Godsall on Hootsuite

As I’ve stated in a previous blog, there is no correlation between social shares and people actually reading an article. To test this finding, Hootsuite did an experiment.

Hootsuite based its test on the famous high school pop quiz. The teacher asks students to read the whole test before they do anything. Then, there’s a series of questions. The last question states, “Ignore everything else; don’t do anything.”

Well, Hootsuite modified that idea:

• Hootsuite took a post that was popular in the past.• The original post contained 5 marketing tips.• When Hootsuite experimented with the post, the writer added a sixth lesson.• The sixth lesson instructed readers to comment and to refrain from sharing the post on social media.• Of course, people shared the article.

In two weeks, the experiment post was shared 300 times. In Hootsuite’s view, the experiment supports the notion that people share without reading.

But is that a bad thing? David Godsall muses that blind sharing attests to the strength of a company’s brand and to the strength of a company’s relationship to its audience. After all, would you blindly retweet a post from a brand you didn’t know, like, or trust?

6. Curation 101: When should I post on Facebook and Twitter?

By Mark Bajus on the Trapit Blog

There are 24 hours in a day. Of those 24 hours, when should you post on social media?

Believe it or not, posting to Facebook and Twitter isn’t a crapshoot. With 2 free analytics tools, you can take a more scientific approach to your social media curation. Read the post to find out more.

So, there you go. A quick summary of 6 articles from the last week.

Until next Monday,

-Mark

Do you want more information about content marketing and content curation? Subscribe to the Trapit Blog by clicking the button below.

Posted by Henry Notthaft on Thu, Dec 05, 2013 @ 04:04 PM Tweet

When we launched the beta version of Trapit back in 2011, it was with the lofty ambition to create a uniquely personalized web for each and every person. We knew that lurking beyond the shallow social echo chamber, crappy search results, memes, and trends is a vast undiscovered web of high-quality, original content with no way of reaching its intended audience, an audience of people frustrated with the growing lack of personal relevance in the web experience and their inability to connect with good content on the subjects most important or interesting to them.

It wasn’t until we built and started using an early version of Trapit that we realized just how big this undiscovered web really is, and how much of that good stuff we’d been missing. Great content that we didn’t know existed simply because it wasn’t deemed important enough by our social networks – or didn’t show up on the first (or second, fifth, tenth…) page of search results. Since our launch we’ve helped tens of million of people connect with hundreds of millions of pieces of content through our award-winning user experiences on web and mobile. What’s better is that we’ve made a difference in people’s lives, from the troubled patient who discovered an experimental cancer drug trial, to the celebrity chef who is using Trapit discoveries to fight childhood obesity and diabetes, to the teacher whose curriculum leverages Trapit to teach digital literacy and expose students to topical content in support of lesson plans.

Perhaps the most fortuitous trend to emerge from our “free app” experiment is the outpouring of interest we receive from businesses ranging from the titans of media, manufacturing, professional services, retail and technology to visionary start-up companies, all looking to tell their own stories and enhance their own customer experiences through the use of Trapit. Clearly our unique approach to content discovery and distribution struck a nerve with the so-called enterprise, presenting us with a path to create a sustainable and profitable business model. Sometimes it’s easy to forget here in the Silicon Valley, but making money is one of the reasons you start a business after all.

What became abundantly clear from the initial engagements with our new business friends is that enterprise customers demand enterprise-grade solutions, far more capable than our free “consumer” offering. So we rolled up our sleeves and got to work building a new, super version of Trapit we now call the Content Curation Center – chock full of advanced capabilities, customization options and analytics. Our customers love it and Trapit content discoveries now reach an audience of over 100 million people a month through their implementations.

This is all very exciting, and while we are as ambitious as a team can be, we must face the realities of our small size. It is imperative to our success and our ability to provide the ongoing innovation and quality of service our business customers demand that we maintain a rigorous focus. It’s true that in the time we’ve been working on the Content Curation Center, we’ve left the free service untouched, no longer reflective of our latest technology advancements nor our standard of quality. After an extended deliberation and with heavy hearts, we’ve decided to end the availability of our free “consumer” apps for web and iPad effective Wednesday, January 15, 2014.

We sincerely appreciate your patronage and support over the past few years and wish you well in your pursuit of great content.

– Hank, Co-founder and Chief Product Officer

0 Comments Click here to read/write comments Posted by Henry Notthaft on Mon, Aug 12, 2013 @ 01:39 PM Tweet

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Allow me to preface what I’m about to say with this — I absolutely love magazines. They are gorgeous artifacts melding prose and imagery in a way that manages to both captivate and enlighten. In contrast to the more utilitarian daily newsprint, magazines consistently offer the kind of high-quality photography, well-researched long-form writing, and meaningful discourse afforded by a monthly publication schedule. But, I’ll just say it now, magazines as we know them are dead.

The Slow, Painful Death of the Magazine (Issue)

Before the digital revolution brought the public never-ending streams of content, monthly magazines and traditional newspapers were the best way to get quality information. But as we all know, the Internet has changed everything. The Internet has shifted the news and information game from push to pull.

Try as they might, the big media companies can no longer control what gets reported, or how, or where, or when. The Internet has eliminated the primary barrier to publishing — the cost of printing , distributing, and selling something physical. And with so much content on the Web that is fast and easily accessible, online publishers and social media are making magazines (as we once knew them, at least) obsolete.

The all-you-can eat content buffet and our now-constant connectivity has caused us to develop a serious information addiction along with a case of digital ADHD. We want content and we want it right now. And then we’re on to the next thing. Reading an in-depth news article a week or month after-the-fact in a magazine isn’t going to cut it. The traditional magazine news cycle and weekly or monthly publication schedules are simply no longer relevant.

Revolution Not Evolution

Evolutionary adaption is an effective strategy in the face of gradual, continuous change in external pressures. But lets not forget — it’s also the process that killed off the dinosaurs in the face of a rapid, extreme change in the environment. The Publishing industry needs revolution.

It’s no wonder that the “digital edition” (i.e. the almost pixel-perfect digital rendering of print magazines) has not fared so well in the marketplace. In retrospect, how could they succeed? They sacrifice nearly everything to retain the magazine’s visual style and advertising, while retaining the production costs of print. In particular, in August of 2011, WWD reported that Condé Nast’s digital publications cost between $20,000 and $40,000 per month to publish. Compare that to your prototypical blogger-in-a-basement, and you start to see why these cost structures make no sense in the age of the Internet.

Even worse, digital editions also fail to take advantage of any enhancements that the digitization enables. The laws of physics dictate what you can do with print publications. But the digital world has no such constraints – allowing a rich, dynamic, interactive, and engaging visual experience. If the phrase “dead-tree” applies to print publications, then digital editions are “dead-electrons.”

Unsurprisingly, the net result has been low circulation and uptake. Of the 65% of US magazines offering digital editions, those digital editions comprise only 3% of the total circulation. Wired’s first iPad edition sold a respectable 100,000 copies, but fell off to 30,000 shortly thereafter, behaving much more like an app than a magazine. The Daily, after a promising start, shut its doors completely.

You Can’t Expect A Different Outcome by Doing the Same Things

A number of publishers are experimenting with ways to differentiate their offerings and business models in the digital realm, generally variations of the deeply flawed newsstand model. For example, Next Issue is offering an all you can eat subscription from their 75 title-deep catalog for $14.99 per month. Hearst is offering five-day early access to issues through Apple’s Newsstand.

Other publishers are going further by working with mobile-native readers like Flipboard to get reach and readership, at the expense of commoditizing their products as yet-another-stream, by distancing themselves from their audience, and in the words of Andrew Rashbass (CEO of The Economist), by “giving the opportunity to extract value to somebody else in an area that should be your own.”

And perhaps beginning to steer the ship in the right direction, Atlantic Media has created a new, free, digital-first brand (Quartz aka QZ) to focus on “obsessions,” which they expect will gain traction through social media.

Five Steps to Rebirth

Ultimately, these experiments show that none of the publishers have figured out the new world order or how they fit the real-time nature of the Internet. So, how does the publishing industry of the future resolve this tension?

Step 1: Abandon the Issue And Go Native

Periodic issues make perfect sense in the world of print publications — the physical creation and distribution processes are expensive so you want to minimize the number of times you have to make the magazine. However, with the Internet, there are no such costs, and customers are used to paying for an intangible service and for receiving continuous streams of information. Publish your content when its ready, not according to a calendar.

Similarly, the fixed structure of a print magazine is a catastrophic limitation in the digital world. People — your audience — carry and engage with your content on different kinds of devices, from desktop computers with huge screens, to laptops with native HD screen resolutions, to more intimate tablets, to the claustrophobic mobile phone, to black-and-white eInk eReaders. So, your content must adapt to remain compelling (rather than frustrating) on each of these platforms. And the only way to do that is to go native.

Step 2: Curate

Much like museums define the standard for significance in art by way of their curators, magazines have long defined the standard for significance in content within their area of focus by way of their editors. So, leverage this, and allow your editors to curate content from around the web that supports and enhances your own.

I’d love it if, in addition to their original content, GQ published the best articles, blog posts, and videos on men’s style and health interests, film, and sports. The Daily Beast has mastered this with it’s “Cheat Sheet ,” which they’ve billed as “must reads from all over.” There is tremendous value to your audience, here. Do this, and you’ll be my first (and possibly only) stop — you’ll be my routine.

Step 3: Create Your Layout Once — For the Web

On the surface, PDF and other print-like digital media seem like a reasonable solution to dealing with the breadth of devices that one will encounter in the world. But in practice it falls apart. Reading these kinds of media on a small screen is an exercise in pinch-zoom, scrolling, and accidental page-flipping frustration.

Thankfully, the world has another ubiquitous technology that’s able accommodate the diversity of devices, operating systems, and form factors that exist in the modern world — the Web. Or more correctly, HTML5. There’s even a phrase for adapting a single visual identity to different-sized screens by taking advantage of HTML’s native separation of content and layout — “responsive design.”

Use this, and you solve almost all of your layout, design, app, and third-party integration problems all at once. HTML5 is well-supported, dynamic, interactive, and supports touch interfaces, allowing you to re-imagine how your audience interacts and engages with your content. All of the modern mobile platforms support rendering HTML5 elements within a native app.

Step 4: Integrate with the Open Web

I get it. You want to control the experience and your content, and under the newsstand model this makes perfect sense, since access is naturally constrained (and is thus valuable) by the physical limitations. But this model does not translate to digital.

By operating as a walled garden, you exclude yourself from the daily digital consumption habits of the exact people you’re trying to reach. And since information moves freely on the Internet, they can and will go somewhere else. So, rather than controlling the ball and being at the center of the game, you are making a decision to put yourself on the sidelines.

Instead, you must embrace the Internet by putting your content in a branded form on the Web that rivals and goes beyond print – by supplementing your articles with contextual recommendations to additional content from your own archives and the greater web, by making your content easily sharable, and by actively sharing it yourselves through your own branded assets on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and the like. You want each piece of content to become a gateway into your brand and identity.

Step 5: Open Up Your Archives

Your content archives are, perhaps, your greatest treasure and your most valuable asset for directly increasing your relevance and engagement on the Web by providing supporting material and context. Your archives don’t have to be free, but they must be available and they must be searchable.

David G Bradley (the owner of Atlantic Media) told the New York Times during the launch of Quartz that “It’s become very, very clear to me that digital trumps print, and that pure digital without any legacy costs, massively trumps print.” The leaders of the publishing companies clearly understand that their survival depends on the transition from print to digital. However, transitioning from “dead tree” to “dead electron” still leaves you dead. To survive, publishers must become heretics, abandoning the idea of a digital newsstand, embracing the dynamic, open, free-flowing nature of the Web and of mobile, leveraging their editors to curate content from all relevant sources.

-Hank

0 Comments Click here to read/write comments

Employee advocacy programs present great opportunities for employees. They can help employees build their personal brands, establish themselves as thought leaders, and expand their professional networks.

For companies, having employees with ever-expanding networks is invaluable. As employees’ networks expand and as their relationships build, companies can generate more brand awareness and sales opportunities through their employees. So, in the words of social selling expert Jill Rowley, “Always Be Connecting.”

Below, you’ll find a few quick tips and tricks about growing your social network.

1. Be consistent.

Consistency is the cornerstone of professional networking. To build your professional network and grow your relationships, you need to consistently deliver valuable information and present a coherent professional image.

Being consistent is much easier if you create a strategy and calendar for your social media networks.

2. Lead with content – not your product.

On social media, sales pitches are a huge turnoff. They’re akin to going on a date with a guy who has bad breath and pungent body odor. You might tolerate it for a bit, but over time, it overwhelms you.

The remedy to your pitching problem is to lead with educational and entertaining content. A good rule of thumb is the 4-1-1 rule.

3. Use industry hashtags on Twitter.

On Twitter, hashtags help people organize their tweets into topical conversations. Twitter users regularly search for discussions based on hashtags. For instance, if you’re interested in social media, you might do a search for #socialmedia to see what people are saying about the topic.

When you tweet about something related to your industry, try to work 1 or 2 hastags into your 140-character update. That way, you join an ongoing conversation around those hashtags, and you make your tweets more findable. If people like your tweet on the subject of #socialmedia, they will retweet you or follow you.

Here are a few lists of popular hashtags for…

4. Participate in Twitter chats.

Listening is vital on social media. Before jumping into a conversation, you want to understand to whom you’re speaking and how they communicate.

That said, you won’t build your network by being a passive wallflower. You have to hop into conversations. On Twitter, there are multiple opportunities every day. Twitter chats are live events, where people use a hashtag to discuss a specific topic. It’s great if you have a passion for, say, blogging, and you want to find people who share that passion.

There are several lists of Twitter chats on the web, but here’s one of the go-to resources for finding chat topics and schedules.

5. Follow other people’s followers.

When you follow people on Twitter, you pique their interest. They see your name. They do some research on you. And if they find you intriguing, they follow you back.

To find followers, you can always search for specific names using Twitter’s built-in search tools.

But another way to find people to follow is by looking at other people’s followers and then strategically following their followers.

Here’s a step-by-step playbook:

1. Identify a few influencers in your space.
2. Look at their list of followers.
3. Research their followers.
4. Then, follow the ones who interest you.
5. Listen and observe how these people interact with their fellow Twitter users.
6. Jump into a conversation with the newly followed tweeters when you have the chance.

6. Follow up with presenters on webinars.

Webinar presenters often say, “Feel free to reach out with more questions after the webinar.” That’s an open invitation for you to quench your intellectual thirst and to network with the presenters.

Many webinar presenters often give you their Twitter handles and e-mail addresses, making it easy for you to connect with them after the webinar. But, even if they don’t provide you with direct contact information, you know their first name, last name, and company name, which means that you can find them on LinkedIn.

Here’s the thing with this networking tactic: You need to have questions prepared for the presenters. The presenters gave the webinar because they like to teach. So, allow them teach you something. Lead with questions related to the webinar subject matter.

7. Make yourself visible when you browse LinkedIn profiles.

On LinkedIn, you can browse profiles both invisibly and visibly. When you browse profiles visibly, you subtly hint to LinkedIn users that you are interested in them. Active LinkedIn users will check to see who has viewed their profile and may connect with their profile visitors.

LinkedIn makes it easy to see who is perusing your profile. Check your LinkedIn profile views on a weekly basis, and send a connection request to those people who pique your interest.

To check to see who has viewed your profile, click “Profile” in the top navigation bar and pull down to “Who’s Viewed Your Profile.”

Maybe you just graduated from college, or maybe you graduated 20 years ago. LinkedIn can help you find your old classmates. Using the network’s advanced search tools, you can find people who attended a specific school.

84% of B2B decision makers begin their buying process with a referral (Edelman Trust Barometer). LinkedIn makes referrals simple for you. First, you choose a prospect. Next, you see how you are connected to that person. Finally, you ask a mutual connection for a referral.

It’s tempting to keep our online and offline worlds separate. But remember that your offline network is full of potential opportunities to grow your online network.

For example, if you meet someone at a conference and have a good discussion, why not add the person on LinkedIn or follow her on Twitter?

Growing your professional network on social media takes time, but it is an important task for any social seller or employee advocate. These 11 tips and tricks only scratch the surface. What are some of your best tips and tricks for forming new connections online?

Leave a comment below.

Selling in today’s environment is challenging. Buyers are exposed to countless marketing messages, have endless product options, and complete the majority of their research online. To effectively sell in this dynamic and noisy environment, sales teams need to adapt and shift their strategy. They need to seamlessly weave together offline and online interactions, while also standing out from the crowd.

Social selling is just one approach that smart sales teams are taking as they adapt to the modern buyer. In short, social selling is when salespeople build relationships using social networks with the end goal of selling more.

To jump-start their social selling efforts, many companies turn to LinkedIn Sales Navigator, a paid platform that helps sales reps find the right people at the right companies and stay up to date on what’s happening at their accounts. However, it’s not immediately obvious to many LinkedIn users how to harness the power of Sales Navigator. That’s why we’ve put together a short guide.

Before you start flipping through the guide, let’s take a look at one of the most common mistakes sales reps make and how they can remedy it.

A Quintessential Social Selling Mistake

Many sales reps fret over their LinkedIn profiles or writing the perfect connection request to a prospect or customer. While those are important, that’s not where many reps go wrong.

Sadly, many sellers forget to research their buyers and then tailor their engagement to each individual buyer. Sure, they might personalize an interaction by changing a first name or a company name as they go about copying and pasting messages. But they don’t individualize their messages for each buyer.

Remember that social selling is about creating meaningful relationships for the sales rep and the buyer. In other words, a social selling connection is not about pushing a product on the buyer as quickly as possible. The salesperson must create real value for the individual buyer before sales negotiations can begin.

To add value, reps need to first understand their prospects by researching each prospect. They can use the “Recent Activity” feature on LinkedIn’s platform. Or, with Sales Navigator, reps can see their prospects’ recent posts on their homepage and start to better understand their prospects.

By looking at what their prospects share, reps can extract sales intel. They can learn about their prospects’ professional interests, understand their pain points, familiarize themselves with initiatives at the prospects’ companies, and get to know their buyers’ personalities. A template like this one can help you get organized:

As you research buyers, don’t forget: LinkedIn isn’t the only place reps can gather intel. Consider checking other social networks like Twitter, as well. Often times, other social networks will show you a different side of your buyers. LinkedIn tends to be a more buttoned-up network.

Listen First. Engage Second.

Make this your mantra: Listen first. Engage second.

Today, forming individual connections with your buyers is not optional. It’s absolutely required. Tools liked LinkedIn Sales Navigator can help you get started. You just have to know how to use them correctly.

For more information on how you can maximize your investment in LinkedIn Sales Navigator, check out our newest ebook!

Content Marketing Infographic: Giving and receiving with smart curation

Posted by Kelly Montgomery on Mon, Dec 30, 2013 @ 12:54 PM Tweet

Content marketing curation services, much like the holiday season, are all about a cycle of giving and receiving. On the surface of this idea, content with a business-minded approach makes the consumer audience the dedicated receivers, while the curators divvying out select content are the givers. However, this cycle should also be seen in a different light – let’s not forget how the content arrives to the curators in the first place. With sophisticated curation services as the backbone of a company’s marketing arsenal, the curator truly is the initial receiver. The importance of curation shouldn’t solely be based on finding things to share, but also as fuel for inspiration when brainstorming creative ways to add your company’s voice to its respective industry. In other words, use discovered content of others as inspiration to create your own. I used this strategy to create the collaborative infographic, seen below.

I’ll be the first to admit that I am no content marketing genius, but that doesn’t mean I can’t grow to become an influencer in the content marketing industry. It reminds me of my childhood days when I used to collect magazines to plaster collages on my wall. Sure, I didn’t snap the original photographs published in the featured articles, but I became inspired by them to create my own mashup of favorites to display in a perspective that was uniquely my own. This is content curation in a nutshell. Infographics happen to be a fantastic collaborative method for companies that don’t have the time or resources to conduct surveys, or to mine the field for new factual data that serves as a roadmap of its industry. Not being in position as an established expert shouldn’t stop a company from being creative. Building an infographic is a great place to start. Consider these steps using curation as your guide:

• Discover – You are already aware of the universal keywords that make up your industry. With sophisticated curation tools, use keywords to become the receiver of discoverable content.

• Explore – Don’t just skim and share content discovered. Read it! It rolls in fresh on a regular basis, so your company should be using this to its advantage. Soak up any new knowledge that comes through the gates of your industry and take notes.

• Curate – The idea of curation doesn’t necessarily always mean the content you chose to publish. Of all the content you browsed in the previous step, curate your favorite facts. Take notes of what your company feels are the most important blurbs to distribute to your respective audience.

• Create – This is where collaboration comes into play (the collage mashup concept). There really are no limits to how you can present the information collected, but images sure do pop and resonate well in social media outlets. Fun facts are so much more fun when they are displayed in an artsy way. Utilize the creative minds within your company and piece together something unique that catches the eye. Is it shareable? That should be your first question when considering the piece to be finished.

• Share – This is curation, part II. Just like the discovered article your company would curate on its website or through social media, share your unique piece and don’t forget to credit the original contributors of the information discovered.

The bottom line is, curation across the board is about connecting and engaging with an audience. It shouldn’t be boring and it shouldn’t feel tedious. With the right tools, curation can and should be inspiring. Companies should be having fun with it and once this positive outlook has established, successful content marketing becomes a piece of cake.

-Geoff

In case you’ve had any doubt about whether your brand needs to be creating and promoting visual content, we have some pretty astonishing facts for you:

• 90% of the information transmitted to the brain is visual, and those visuals are processed 60,000 times faster than regular old text.
• 28% of companies are creating custom infographics, and the average increase in page visits when an infographic is shown is 12%.
• 55% of brands are creating video for content marketing. Why? Well, viewers spend 100% more time on pages that include video, and about 700 YouTube videos are Tweeted out every minute.

It’s not just infographics, either. A whopping 46.1% of people say that the design of a website is the number one factor that helps them determine the credibility of a brand.

Are you convinced? Good. Now, onto the more difficult part. How do you start working visuals into your marketing and content strategy when you are already stretched thin on budget and resources? The best thing to do is to start now, and start small. You’ll soon see a return on your efforts and creating visual content will become less time-consuming and overwhelming the more you do it. Here are a few ways to get started:

1. Always include images with your social shares

Even if all you have is a stock photo to go along with your blog post, make sure that it is attached to all of your social shares of that post. This is usually done automatically on Facebook and LinkedIn; on Twitter, all it takes is a click of the paperclip “attach” button when you are composing your Tweet, and the resulting post will include an image that shows up in your followers’ feeds. Even if the image is simple, adding it to your Tweets can provide a big payoff.

2. Try your hand at graphics, big or small

While creating infographics might seem overwhelming, you don’t actually need to be a graphic designer to start creating visual content. All you really need is the data (either your own or gathered from around the web), some kind of design tool, and someone who is willing to learn. A basic knowledge of Adobe Creative Suite will get you far, but you can also use free online tools like infogr.am, Piktochart, and Visual.ly to create compelling graphics. If you don’t have the time or patience for a full infographic, start small by creating graphic header images for your blog posts that include the title and a few visual elements. Doing this takes less time, but is still a great way to make your Tweets and other social shares more visual. The more you create this kind of visual content, the easier and quicker it will become.

3. Start using Instagram

We’ve all been hearing about the decline of Facebook recently, but where are users spending their time instead? Instagram is near the top of the list, and it’s a smart move for brands to create a presence on the network. It’s also a great opportunity to have a little fun and interact with your audience. Instagram is the perfect outlet for photos that reflect your company culture. Snap photos of your workspace, happy employees, or fun office events. These posts can also be shared directly to Twitter or Facebook to pack an even bigger visual punch.

4. Invest in video

This one may take more time and money, but the digital marketing world is trending towards video as a key content tool for 2014, and we can see why. The possibilities are endless. Start with whatever seems easiest and ramp up your video content slowly and consistently. Some basic ideas are: describing or demonstrating a product, testimonials from satisfied customers, messages from your executive team, Q&A sessions, fun company events, or video blogs. Try to keep your video quality consistent, and be sure to share the content you create across all of your channels. Instagram allows 15-second video clips, so you can share some teaser clips for longer videos there.

It’s not always easy to change and adapt your content to every trend, but the rise of visual and video content is certainly no passing fad. Just as was the case with social media, brands and companies who do not embrace the move to visual and video content will be left in the wake of those who started early and made the change. Start small, and with some time, patience, and consistency, your brand can join the pack of visual content leaders.

– Kelly

Facts gathered from: Axxon Research, HubSpot, and B2B Infographics

Posted by Gary Griffiths on Tue, Jan 14, 2014 @ 12:56 PM Tweet

I know that all good things must come to an end and I’ve had an incredible ride. I just want to end it on the right note. — Alonzo Mourning on his retirement

Today we’re shutting down Trapit’s free personalized content discovery apps. It’s been an incredible ride for us too, Alonzo. When Hank and I launched our free web app nearly three years ago, we really didn’t know what to expect. And that was the point. Sure, we had a bucket full of patents from SRI, and we’d spent over a year taking code and concepts intended for very targeted US Government Intelligent work and trying to turn it into a much more general –infinitely more scalable – tool. A tool that could “trap” any topic and, from an individual user’s feedback, produce a stream of personalized, relevant content for each user. This was at a time when crowd sourcing was red hot and “collaborative filtering” – the technique of delivering content to you based on popular stories that others “like you” have selected – was ubiquitous. But we challenged this belief – our mantra: “You are not the crowd.” We are all individuals with our own beliefs, tastes, and principles. A popular story is not necessarily relevant to you. So that was our theory – but we really didn’t know if we could pull it off. The challenges were daunting. Daunting from a technology standpoint: could our algorithms – just strings of binary code – really get to know each user as an individual, and deliver to them content on any topic that was relevant to them? As an example, we had about 100,000 people interested in “big data.” So 100,000 people got 100,000 different streams of information on this topic. Sure, there was overlap, but the SGI engineer interested in Hadoop, was seeing a very different “trap” than the Rackspace engineer who wanted to stay current on the latest developments in cloud infrastructure. Combine this with our insistence that Trapit would function in real time, and that new, original content would be delivered to our users within minutes of the publication time. So scale was a huge concern for us. Consider 1M users, each with an average of ten traps. Could we really deliver 10M personalized streams of information – in real time? And could we really trap any topic – from the very specific, like “Alonzo Mourning” – to vague concepts, like “digital culture,” “future TV,” or “relationship advice?” And could we truly boil down the web to a large – but finite – base of sources that produced original, high-quality content?

The point is, these were questions that could not be answered in theory – we needed real people, and lots of them, to try it. And our initial results were, quite frankly, pretty awful. Technology and techniques that looked good in sterile lab conditions were markedly different when exposed to the vagaries of the raucous, wild web. Minimizing duplication, disambiguation, outsmarting SEO, finding the right image in seas of clutter – all these and hundreds more were problems that we encountered as we made incremental improvements to our app as we gradually increased our user base from tens to millions.

But vetting the technology was not the only reason for launching a broad-based consumer app. Hank and I believed from the start that the real value of Trapit would be unlocked by business. Though we had no way of knowing which businesses would benefit most – finance, sales, marketing; publishers, developers, educators – and hundreds more. So we needed to see how Trapit was being used, identifying the usage patterns in order to build our business plan around real market intelligence.

And we did. Last year, in April 2013, we launched our first business application – the Trapit Publisher Suite. In September, we followed up with Trapit’s Content Curation Center (CCC), a comprehensive personalized content discovery, curation, analysis, and delivery application that helps marketers solve the thorny problems of content marketing. Along the way, we offered our API’s to selected customers, allowing great companies like Zeebox to embed Trapit’s unparalleled content curation and recommendation technology into their own apps.

Which brings us to this bittersweet day. We’re a small team. Now that we know Trapit works beyond our initial expectations, it is time to end this incredibly important part of our history and concentrate fully on the market that we’d always hoped would materialize: business users. In making the transition from the free app to our current platform, significant changes were required. Many of the features and capabilities absolutely required for business use – capabilities that put the power of Trapit’s technology into the user’s hands, like advanced filtering, image and headline control, selection and automation of the content delivery, and many, many more – were well beyond the scope and practicality of a free consumer app. But as long as our free app remained in the market, our prospective business customers would be confused. “Why am I paying if I can get it for free?” Or, “I’m using Trapit now, but it doesn’t have the features and functions I need.”

Not surprisingly, I’ve been an avid Trapit user myself. I’ll miss keeping tabs on a wide list of my interests, both personal – like my bacon trap – and topics relevant to Trapit’s business – like my content marketing trap. Like so many of you, I’ll miss my daily email digest and the dynamic updates insuring that the topics important to me would always be current. But on a positive side, many of the users of our free app are getting their companies to embrace Trapit as the ultimate platform for content curation, allowing them to continue use our powerful CCC.

Trust that we understand your disappointment at the loss, and that we sincerely appreciate your loyalty, support, and the kind words we’ve heard from so many of you over this fascinating journey. We could not have done it without you, and we could not be more grateful.

-Gary, Trapit CEO and Co-founder

18 Comments Click here to read/write comments Posted by Gary Griffiths on Tue, Dec 17, 2013 @ 04:06 PM Tweet

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We’re all familiar with Samuel Coleridge’s late-18th century “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” – the tormented sailor punished at sea, a dead albatross around his neck, dying of thirst while surrounded by water. Today, we live in oceans of data, yet struggle to quench our thirst for relevant content.

Recently, I was enjoying some cheese and wine after dinner. As I was about to put English Stilton on a water cracker, a colleague I was traveling with suggested I try the wheat cracker instead. “The Stilton will over-power that biscuit,” she said. “I think you’ll find the heartiness of the whole wheat will better stand up to the pungent blue cheese and sweet fig.” Now, I’m far from a gourmet, so I gladly accepted this well-informed advice. But my culinary ineptitude is hardly the point. What struck me was the breadth and depth and diversity of choices we are exposed to every minute of our lives. From the time we are born until our dying day, we are bombarded by – engulfed in – an overwhelming stream of ideas, choices, and information, from innumerable sources: visual, audible, tactile, and olfactory, and from an ever-increasing number of sources. This ranges from television to the Internet to the rants and ramblings of other human beings to the sounds, signals, salutations, or suggestions that assault our senses throughout all of our waking moments, rewinding and replaying, and we struggle to choose.

We’d like to believe we live in the Age of Information; we really live in the Age of Data. Data is an ocean… vast, deep, impenetrable, and unfathomable. We can easily drown in this ocean of data, swept away by rip currents of dancing cats and singing dogs and “must-buys.” Relevant information is the bounty from this ocean of data – the pearl of relevance from that oyster so obscure in a remote crevice so far beneath the surface. It is that sunken treasure undistinguished from the sands and seaweed and saline that has concealed it for so many centuries. Yet the course our lives take is determined by our ability to distinguish that which is relevant from that which is meaningless – the pearl from the mussel, the gold from the sunken treasure chest, from that rusted iron of a trawler’s hull.

The point is, the explosion of technology over the past decade has made this ocean of data deeper and wider – and treacherously so. I am struck by the observation that 90% of all the world’s content had been created in the past two years. The initial reaction is one of wonder and excitement – so much “content” in such a short time. Yet that observation makes no judgment on the quality or veracity of this content: are we to believe that the great works of countless millennia of human creativity: from Plato to Shakespeare to Da Vinci and Einstein – have been replicated – tenfold – in the past two years? Hardly. These great works of human intellect – from centuries ago and continuing today – will always be precious and desirable. But the ever-increasing quantity of data available today threatens to drown that information which is truly important, meaningful, and relevant – to you. For we each have different passions that swim in these vast oceans. And as these oceans get deeper and the tides higher and currents swifter, it is increasingly difficult to capture from these streams that which is personally relevant. Fact is, technology is not always synonymous with improved quality of our lives. Consider the Concord, which promised a future of supersonic air travel – still unrealized despite its maiden voyage nearly fifty years ago. Just as technology advancements have not materially improved the speed of air travel in our lifetimes, technology’s advancements in the ability to create data have not improved our ability to separate what is banal from what is relevant.

In short, our lives depend on our capacity to recognize and process the increasing streams of data that surround and assail us, and the actions we take based on our assimilation of this data – the art of discerning what is relevant from the vast majority that is personally absurd. And since the course and quality of our lives so depends on how effectively we discern the pearls from the scrap, even incremental improvements to the means have fundamental impact on the ends.

We believe Trapit is much more than an incremental improvement to the way groups and individuals can process data – it’s a tool that is revolutionary in its ability to assist in the filtering of an endlessly expanding flood of data. Curation is key in this hunt for content that matters to you or your audience. You can learn more about how Trapit can help evaporate this ocean and why you should be curating here.

-Gary

1 Comments Click here to read/write comments Posted by Gary Griffiths on Tue, Sep 10, 2013 @ 04:55 PM Tweet

Information guides our lives. We make decisions based on consuming content received from many sources – from media in all forms, from conversation, from observation of our surroundings. Having the wrong content can be disastrous – consider the Iraq “WMD” fiasco. Timing is obviously critical – learning that the Bay Bridge was scheduled to close an hour after sitting in a horrific traffic jam is not of much value. And relevance is crucial – a shoe sale in New York City is of little import to consumers in San Francisco. In a recent LinkedIn survey of over 800 B2B marketers, 72% listed relevance as the most important aspect of successful content, as relevance correlates directly to audience engagement.

Content is the currency in which every marketer trades. We buy based on awareness – on understanding a product’s value – which is communicated by content in multiple forms. Getting the right content to a product’s audience – to inform, to influence behavior, generate new leads, to demonstrate thought leadership – all depends on delivering relevant content to the right audience at the appropriate place- when they are most likely to need it.

But we live in a tsunami of content – a tsunami that has grown too massive for humans to filter and recognize meaningful patterns. And current search technology, hampered by Search Engine Optimization (SEO), is at crossed purposed with finding unique, high-quality content. With so much content entering your customers’ inboxes, mobile devices, and social media feeds constantly, how can a marketer insure their brand rises above the clutter and stands out?

Today we are announcing the Trapit Content Curation Center, a powerful but intuitive, easily deployed, and affordable application that helps marketers do just that: provide a steady stream of unique, relevant, and timely content to their target audience on the devices they are most likely to consume it.

Our Content Curation Center is based on powerful Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning technology designed to cut through the clutter and extract only that content that is relevant and timely.

This same LinkedIn in study noted that the three most daunting challenges faced by marketers are 1) having the time, bandwidth and budget to create compelling content 2) difficulty in finding truly engaging content, and 3) finding or producing enough relevant content. Our Content Curation Center breaks through these roadblocks, tapping into Trapit’s massive library of original, high-quality content, discovering only that which is relevant to a specific product or brand. And, since it is important that your original content is infused in this stream, the Content Curation Center allows the addition of your own sources to the library.

But even if this relevant content, in sufficient quantity, was available, how can it be delivered – in an efficient and timely manner – to your customers? According to the LinkedIn survey, 31% of the marketers surveyed cited the delivery of content as their biggest challenge. The Content Curation Center navigates these hurdles as well, making it easy to deliver content – automatically – to social media feeds, or newsletters, email, your web site, mobile devices, or even integrated as a relevant content stream in other applications.

The Content Curation Center is all about choice, providing a wide range of options to allow the marketer control over the discovery and delivery of content relevant to their brand. For example, as noted above, new sources – either from the Internet or private sources sitting behind a company’s firewalls – can easily be added to Trapit’s digital library. And sources can be removed as well. The Content Curation Center provides a wide and powerful set of filters – filters that can prevent certain topics or companies – perhaps a competitor – from ending up in your stream. Filters that can limit content to specific areas. Or filters to determine the frequency of content delivery. And the level of redundancy in the content. Most importantly, Trapit allows the marketer to determine the level of automation in the distribution of content. For example, at Trapit we use the Content Creation Center to power over 200 Twitter feeds on topics ranging from food (@TheFoodieTrap) to fitness (@TheYogaTrap) to medicine (@ConcussionTrap). Once these topics were created and trained by our curators, we allow them to run fully automatically, posting content relevant to these topics at a frequency specified by the curator. It could be once a day or four-times-an hour – just another setting in our application. On the other hand, if the marketer would like to be more active in that process, the Content Curation Center offers “assisted curation,” giving control over which content is distributed – or not.

We’re excited to be releasing the Trapit Content Curation Center today. We are certain it is the most comprehensive application for content marketing available, and that our customers will save time and money while delivering content that is unique, relevant, and timely.

You can learn more about our Content Curation Center here:

https://trap.it/marketers

-Gary

0 Comments Click here to read/write comments Posted by Gary Griffiths on Tue, Aug 13, 2013 @ 01:43 PM Tweet

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Humans are social animals. We’re wired for interactions with others. Our nature is to converse – to live in close proximity with other people. We thirst for the explicit approval of those around us – we are driven to conform, to be accepted. Anyone who’s completed Sociology 101 will tell you about the the fear of being ridiculed by the crowd – to be singled out as being “weird” or abnormal. Ask any military intelligence expert, or a prison warden, and they will attest to the effectiveness of separating an adversary from the community. Solitary confinement is indeed an efficient means of crushing the human spirit.

So given our native proclivity for immersion with others of our kind, there is little surprise in the popularity and explosive growth of social networks. In fact, some would argue that by tapping into the anonymity of being “social” on the Internet, these societies are even more popular than “real” life – those who are awkward in personal interaction can shine behind the shield of technology. And credit the technological geniuses for recognizing this basic human need and connecting the bits to the bytes to provide such a powerful medium for sharing thoughts and ideas and, hopefully, receiving some gratification. So yeah, social networks are hot – and important. We crave followers, re-tweets, likes, big Klout scores – the marks of acceptance by our virtual society. We want to be respected, admired, viewed as an integral part of the social fabric.

It is no surprise that businesses are exploiting the massive streams of commentary and sentiment on social networks and continually creating new ways to harness and exploit this rich medium. But as popular – and powerful – as the need for social acceptance is in both physical and virtual contexts, there is a downside. Consider, for example, trends. Let’s take Twitter. At this very moment, the top trending items on Twitter are: JJ Cale (sorry, wasn’t a fan), Korean War (hmm, that is intriguing), “asktommyrobinson” (well, I probably won’t), “5HFridayFollowSpree” (it’s Saturday already), and the always popular “O2Lfollowparty” (no idea, and hey, I’m no Luddite. I have three Twitter accounts). If you are a business leader – maybe a marketing professional looking to capture sentiment that may be able to help your business, there is not a lot to glean from this.

My point is that what is trending, or that which society – the net society in this case – considers important, may not be all that meaningful to your business. The “wisdom of the crowds” may be a bit of an oxymoron – unless your company is desperately anxious for the latest news on that “O2L Follow Party.” What is “hot” is often determined by personalities – by influential people who have large followings. Lady Gaga, for example, has nearly 40M followers on Twitter. Almost anything she tweets will have a massive ripple effect. Her most recent tweet (“We could be caught, were both convicted criminals of thought.” – Sex Dreams) was retweeted over 28,000 times and favorited by more than 13,000 people. So because of her massive following, Lady Gaga will set trends. Whether she tweets about music or fields where she has little expertise, say business, sports, or technology, her words will still be viewed by many as gems of knowledge and, yes, as trend-setters.

Our society is increasingly obsessed with brevity – the 140-character mentality – in which headlines matter and where long-form stories are most frequently left untouched. This can lead to a business blindly following trends embraced by the masses, threatening mass ignorance at a minimum or, worse, the real danger of using this medium to manipulate and control. The manipulation may, for example, come in the guise of one brand manipulating public sentiment about a competitor. In short, there is a very dark side of this echo chamber.

At Trapit, we love social networks. We love Facebook, and Twitter, and partner with both. In fact, Trapit runs over 200 topical accounts on Twitter – from @TheAppleTrap to @TheBigDataTrap or @TheSCOTUSTrap for fans of the Supreme Court, or @FutureTVTrap – and many, many more. For all of these Twitter topics, Trapit’s AI technology is tapping into the life-stream of the web, analyzing the millions of stories flowing through it, and sending the most relevant stories to the right Twitter accounts – whether it’s rumors about a new iPhone release or the latest on the high court’s position on gay marriage. Automatically. No human intervention required.

So why is this important? We believe that as much as your team may live, work, and even adore social networks, that your company is unique. Your business has a passion for information about topics that matter to your company, and especially to your customers. Even if the “crowd “ does not. No matter how broad or how obscure the topics that influence your business are, Trapit will discover them and deliver them to you. And as you dive deeper into those topics, it will learn more about your business objectives – what is relevant to your success – and deliver more of it. Because at the end of the day, while your company needs to understand the pulse of social networks, your business is not the crowd.

-Gary

0 Comments Click here to read/write comments Posted by Gary Griffiths on Thu, Jul 11, 2013 @ 12:01 PM Tweet

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The savvy marketing professional may remember April 23rd, 1985 – the day that The Coca-Cola Company announced that it was changing its venerable Coke formula that allegedly hadn’t been altered since 1886. The public outcry in response was so visceral and severe that Coca-Cola was forced to reverse their decision. Remarkably, this issue even hit the courts: consumer groups actually challenged Coca-Cola’s right to control this brand, arguing that the original Coke was so imbedded in the culture that it was now part of the public domain.

So like Coca-Cola, companies spend significant time, energy, and expense developing their brand, defining their message, and establishing their identity to the public. But a lot has changed since 1985. So now in the course of brand-building, businesses create digital assets, including websites, blogs and of course social media, in an attempt to create a conversation about their brand.

But community conversations have a dark side. Digital and social assets become stale as the irrepressible flood of new content pushes messages further and further away from the top story, the latest post, or list of trending tweets. As this happens, control of the conversation that these companies worked to create shifts away from the entity and perhaps toward competitors. But even at the bottom of the pile, these assets can have value — a well-crafted message is timeless.

The challenge, then, lies in resurfacing these assets when and where they support and enhance the desired brand image, and thereby hopefully shaping the conversation.

The Impact of the Digital Revolution

It was not long ago that advertising, pushed to consumers in print and television, was the primary mechanism for propagating a message to the public. But with the emergence of the Internet, consumption has increasingly been replaced by creation, and push has given ground to pull.

This transition was no accident. Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and hundreds more, are built for sharing content. Combined, blogs and social media dominate content on the Internet. At their root, blogs and social media represent a democratization of content and publishing, where a brand’s story is conveyed, but not necessarily by the company that owns the brand. Rather, the story is often told by consumers sharing what they like – or don’t like – about a particular company or brand.

The goal has shifted from passive saturation to active engagement and the brand campaign cycle has shortened dramatically. Whereas a print campaign might last for three months with a reach of 10 million consumers, a story on TechCrunch leaves the front page within six hours. As a result, the digital revolution has necessitated that successful brand management becomes an ongoing, active and extremely dynamic process.

A Brand’s Invisible Web

The shortened brand campaign cycle is a reflection of the shortened news and information cycle precipitated by the Internet. Content is now published, through news organization, blogs, and social media, in a steady and never-ending stream. But individuals can only pay attention to so much at once. Yesterday’s content is quickly forgotten for whatever is at the top of the stack today, only to be buried by what comes next.

This creates an “invisible web” of content — the content that still lives on the Internet but is hidden from view by virtue of being off of the front page and out of the limelight. A brand’s invisible web, then, consists of the sum of brand-relevant content on the web, both positive and negative, past and present. The invisible web for a brand is a 360-degree, archival view that represents the history of engagement and conversation about the brand in the public sphere, which can either be exploited by the brand owner, or by its competitors.

The challenge, then, is clear: whoever controls the invisible web controls the brand message.

Automated Curation & Personalization

The paradox facing brands today is that if they have executed their marketing strategy effectively, they have established a vibrant, ongoing conversation about their brand in the marketplace. However, by virtue of achieving that result, the amount of content about the brand that exists on the Internet makes it virtually impossible for a person – or even a small team – to manage this content flood.

Applying automated content discovery technology lets computers do what humans cannot — continuously scan the web for content related to a brand, allowing an entity to make full use of the invisible web. By tapping into the wealth of content that is relevant to a specific brand, a company has the opportunity to become an influencer – a thought leader – rather than just a shill for their own products and services.

Advanced content discovery tools like Trapit provide brand managers with the ability to automatically curate content relevant to their products or categories, reviving beneficial content from the invisible web and delivering it to the community when that content is most important.

Curate your brand’s content. If you don’t, someone else may do it for you.

-Gary

0 Comments Click here to read/write comments Posted by Gary Griffiths on Tue, Jul 02, 2013 @ 11:51 AM Tweet

You may remember the legend of John Henry – the post-Civil War railroad worker who put his muscle and sinew-powered hammer against that new-fangled technology: the steam hammer. Or maybe “The Matrix,” where the world as we know it was turned into something looking like Detroit – victim of “the Robot War.” And then there’s “Rocky IV,” which though never nominated for an Academy Award, but did have some pretty cool scenes of Rocky working out like John Henry in the snow, while the evil Ivan Drago pumped iron and chemicals in a laboratory with more wires and electronics than a bad Frankenstein movie.

In each of these stories – and there are hundreds more – the theme is the same: when will these pathetic lumps of flesh and bone – i.e., humans – be replaced by the superior strength, speed, and intelligence that can be delivered by the technology of machines?

In the early years of the 21st Century, US intelligence agencies spent years crawling through billions of bits of data in what would be the forensics of 9/11. Their conclusion: had this data been processed – and patterns recognized – in seconds, not years, 9/11 theoretically could have been prevented.

There’s not much debate that when it comes to crunching massive amounts of data, a computer will clean a human’s clock -all day long. And when it comes to drinking oceans of data, consider this: it is estimated that 90% of all the world’s content has been created in the past two years. From Fred Flintstone painting on cave walls to Plato and Shakespeare and Tolstoy and Emily Dickenson and George Lucas, all of these brilliant folks and thousands more in between account for only about 10% of the world’s content. Now, that is a statement of volume.

Machines have the ability to sift through massive amounts of data at light speed, recognizing patterns and ultimately delivering to you the content you want, so trying to use a human in the process is as outdated as asking old John Henry and his hammer to knock down Yosemite’s Half Dome, right? Well, maybe, but not so fast. Apart from the still nascent science of neural computing, machines today are binary. They are great at breaking information into elemental bits – ones and zeros – and crunching through streams of these bits really quickly, making comparisons, recognizing patterns which can eventually lead to recommendations. But despite the science fiction of “Terminator” and Schwarzenegger and Skynet, computers can’t think – at least not yet. Consider the battles between spammers and anti-spam filters, or the whole concept behind “Search Engine Optimization” – SEO – that really isn’t about optimizing your search at all, but rather about fooling machines into delivering you content that somebody else wants you to see. Machines can be fooled by rather simple structural elements of the non-digital language – for example, it would be easy to envision a story about a bird watchers club in Maryland getting delivered to a fan of The Baltimore Orioles – a mistake a human would not likely make.

Point is, while maybe Schwarzenegger may come back from the future some day as a killer android, that’s not today. Machines are awesome – manhas created remarkable technology that has improved our standards of living, dramatically increased leisure time, and enabled the Kardashians to become international icons. But, science fiction notwithstanding, machines are the tools of mankind – not the other way around. At Trapit, we love technology, we live on the Internet, and we’ve built our business around “Artificial Intelligence” and “Machine Learning.” In fact, remember that 9/11 project a couple of paragraphs ago? Well, from that, Trapit was derived! And so was Apple’s Siri! But we understand enough about machines to know that they are not ready – yet – to fully take on the task of curating content – of storytelling. For while machines do a wonderful job of quickly crunching billions and billions of bits of data, they don’t really understand nuance yet, or fully appreciate context, and semantics, even though great strides are being made in these areas.

In our Trapit business application, we offer the option of “assisted curation” to our customers – that is, allowing a human to intervene in the last mile, making the final decision on which of the stories recommended by Trapit will actually be posted. For any topic Trapit can provide an accurate pool of content to choose from, from millions of articles are selected dozens (try that on your own). But perhaps one article’s take is a little bit too bullish on a competitor. Or a blog post focuses on a region where you don’t do business. There could be hundreds of reasons that relevant content doesn’t quite fit. But Trapit can do the heavy lifting, saving time and money, while leaving subtleties of storytelling—selecting the best of the best content to capture your unique message—up to you.

So Skynet – what’s the beef, man? We come in peace – we’re not looking for a fight. Can’t we all just be friends?

Gary Griffiths
Trapit CEO and Co-founder

0 Comments Click here to read/write comments

User: Gary Charles
Title: Chief Development Officer of G Social Media
Twitter: @gsocialmedia
FavoriteTrap: Robots

Q. Tell me a little about what you do for a living?

Our company builds social media strategies and packages, along with 6-12 month effective and practical implementation plans. I am the Chief Development Officer of G Social Media. I began about 15 years ago with internet marketing and grew through the evolution to social networking, then to media and more.

Q. What do you like to do in your free time? On a typical weekend what might we find you doing?

I am usually heavily involved in the Asheville community in one way or another. This includes local events, foodie meetings, dancing and more. Since I am based in Western North Carolina, I do a local project called AskAsheville, and it is very successful.

Q. What sorts of topics do you tend to seek information on?

I usually focus on web, technology, marketing and media. I then share the best of what I find with others.

I barely ever use a search engine anymore. I use curation type sites such as Trapit, Scoop.it and Pinterest, sometimes Digg, to generate and explore great content.

Q. How did you find out about Trapit and what do you like most about it?

I found out about Trapit because I opened a link on Twitter and it was curated through Trapit. I quickly made an account, learned the platform pretty easily and now use it as one of my top 3 places to be.

I really like the fact that I can see all of my Traps on one page, allowing me to balance my information and education.

I love the content that is delivered to my Traps! And that it is so easy to share. I am looking forward to my personal Trapit page that I can link to from my website and share on other social platform.

Q. What sorts of traps are you making? Have you found anything particularly useful/interesting/unexpected?

Of the many traps that I have, I find myself watching and sharing “Robots” a lot. I even use a hashtag named #iloverobots when I share sometimes. Besides that, I have Traps on social media, social networking, and women in business (which I support all around). Also Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, etcetera, all of them are beneficial to me and my audience.

Whether summer is a busy or a slow time of year for your business, one fact remains the same: it’s all about fun! This summer, try experimenting with the following approaches to engaging your audience during the summer months.

1. Have Fun with Holidays and Seasonal Activities

Use an upcoming holiday or seasonal activity to engage with your audience. Choose the holiday or seasonal activity that is relevant to your brand and aligns with your audience’s interests.

Here are a few ideas:

July

• National Blueberry Month
• 7/13: World Cup Final
• 7/13-7/14: Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game and Homerun Derby
• 7/23 Hot Dog Day

August

• Water Quality Month
• 8/3 National Watermelon Day
• 8/5: Work Like a Dog Day
• 8/13 Filet Mignon Day
• 8/15: Relaxation Day
• 8/22: Hug Your Boss Day

So, let’s say that you work for the local humane society. You might want to do something for “Work Like a Dog Day.” You could:

1. Create a blog that details the day in the life of one of the dogs in your shelter
2. Design a “Work Like a Dog” meme using a picture of an adorable dog with its tongue hanging out
3. Make a YouTube video of your dogs playing catch

And don’t think that B2B marketers can’t get in on the summertime fun. Marketo, for example, has done a great job of capitalizing on the World Cup hype. Brands are projected to spend nearly $75 million on advertising, sponsorships, and social media campaigns, and Marketo has been there to compare their efforts. Check out the World Cup of Marketing.

Still struggling to think of fun, summery ideas? Here are a few more:

• Beer and Cheese Pairing Suggestions
• Grilled Pizza Recipes
• Unique Summertime Destinations
• How to Make a Watermelon Margarita
• Tips for Building a Backyard Waterslide

2. Play with New Social Networks

It’s summer! You need to have some fun, too! Why not utilize a new social network to engage with your audience? Take advantage of some down time and experiment with with other social networks such as Instagram or Pinterest. Additionally, you could explore some of the up-and-coming networks for 2014 such as Nextdoor, Medium, and Mobli.

Not sure where to begin? Here are a few resources:

Instagram

Pinterest

Medium

In short…

This summer, remember to dazzle and engage with your audience by using unique content and trying out new social networks. In the meantime, leave a comment with examples of your favorite summertime marketing campaigns!

Thanks for reading and happy summer!

-Sean

Image credit: Raffaele Camardella on Flickr

Henry Nothhaft, Jr., CEO of Trapit, shares his views on how social selling will evolve in 2017. In the upcoming days, we will continue to publish predictions about the future of B2B sales and social selling in 2017. Enjoy!

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With the exception of a few visionary early-adopters, 2016 marked the first time many enterprise sales organizations formally acknowledged social selling as a transformative new paradigm – one that could produce meaningful customer engagement with the power to impact every stage of the customer journey. They encouraged their reps to get active on social and update those LinkedIn profiles. They invited a social selling guru/hype-person to their sales kick off meetings. Some even made six-figure investments in formalized training.

All of this effort and expense – only to find themselves a few months down the road with no clue how to measure adoption or impact at any level beyond water cooler anecdotes. In other words, zero ROI and zero impact. The lesson here is that transformative social selling success cannot be achieved on an ad hoc or informal basis.

In 2017, leading companies will upgrade social selling from hobby to formal strategic program. These winners will acknowledge social selling as one of the year’s top five priorities, perform strategic planning, and take a holistic approach to enablement that sees close alignment between sales and marketing teams. The very best organizations will tightly integrate program, training, and platform.

Program – well documented and broadly communicated expectations and guidelines that define the organization’s specific approach to social selling, and a formal marketing plan that supports these efforts.

Training – on-going education and dialogue concerning best practices and success stories.

Platform – an approachable technology platform that provides an infrastructure to organize and support the program end-to-end. The right platform enables and empowers sellers of all levels of digital competence to achieve best practices, provides marketing and sales leadership a set of tools to support and measure these efforts, and easily integrates with other systems of record within the sales and marketing technology stack, such as marketing automation and CRM. As a result, sales teams can make a direct correlation between social selling efforts and KPIs like leads generated and revenue.

It’s time to ditch random acts of social and take social selling seriously. Are you ready?

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