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It surprises some people when I tell them that I rarely open my laptop when I’m at home during my off-hours. Yes, I work in the tech industry, but that doesn’t mean I want to be glued to my computer screen at all times. Instead I prefer to leave work at work and relax while watching House of Cards or go out to a brewpub with friends. However, this doesn’t mean I’m disconnected. I look up curiosities, browse Instagram, or play games on my iPhone all the time, and will gladly do the same kind of spontaneous browsing on an iPad. I know I’m not the only one with these kind of tech habits, so it’s a mystery why more brands and publishers aren’t taking advantage by creating valuable native apps for iPad.

Brands have already figured out (for the most part) that they need to be seen where users and consumers are looking. That’s why we are bombarded with advertisements in print, on TV, on Facebook, and on smartphones. But with the continuous rise of the tablet, 34% of American adults now own one, desktop usage is going down. What that means is that more and more the place where brands need to be seen is on tablets, and specifically, the iPad. So the short answer is yes, your company really does need an iPad app.

As my own personal experience confirms, laptops increasingly mean “work” and mobile devices increasingly mean “fun.” And it’s easy to see why. Anyone who has experienced the iPad in all its glory knows that it’s an enjoyable, leisurely experience. Your chosen apps personalize your iPad to your own interests and tastes, and you can lay back and let yourself get lost in content from your favorite apps and the often-beautiful designs. Brands and publishers, especially those in the lifestyle and entertainment sectors, should want to get into this space, but it requires more than just a carefully-crafted ad.

The best apps are those that inform the user about something they are genuinely interested in. If your brand can become a trusted source for whatever you specialize in, users will keep coming back for more. A great example of a brand moving into the iPad sphere is RCI’s Endless Vacation. It used to just be just a custom-published magazine for RCI, the largest timeshare vacation group in the world, but now it’s an interactive iPad app that can inspire users to travel while they peruse content on their iPads. They are taking advantage of where they know consumers are spending their time.

Another example you’ve probably heard about (they’ve pushed it in TV ads) is the Lowe’s app. Before you go to a home improvement store like Lowe’s, you need to know what you are looking for. The brand’s app is keying into that by giving consumers important information on products and saving the products that they have previously purchased so that they will know what to buy in the future. Notably, Lowe’s biggest competitor, Home Depot, has no such app. If I’m choosing between the two stores and am an avid iPad user, I know which one I’m going to pick. If Home Depot wanted to get in on the game, they could build a similar app and go one step further by including valuable DIY and home improvement content to inform and inspire consumers even more.

Whether brands like it or not, tablet and iPad usage is on the upswing and that trajectory will probably not change anytime soon. Brands will just have to adapt to survive, and that means bringing valuable content to where users want it. And with tablets now accounting for more web traffic than smartphones, building a quality native app is unquestionably a smart move.

-Kelly

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Co-editor of the 18th-Century French Encyclopedia, rebel against conventional narrative style, renowned critique of art and drama, predecessor of complexity theory, and advocate of feminine sexuality, Denis Diderot is one of my personal heroes. This Enlightenment polymath devoted much of his philosophical energy to championing Empiricism – the school of thought that holds that knowledge is rooted in observations we accumulate in life – over the then prevailing school of Rationalism – which holds that knowledge is rooted in hard-wired, logical patterns of thought we are born with. Rationalists build clean, coherent theories and search for data to support their conclusions; empiricists trade elegance for complexity, allowing observations to lead them astray into discovery, unearthing knowledge they didn’t know they were looking for when starting their quest.

To illustrate his preference for inquisitive empiricism, Diderot repurposes one of Aesop’s fables in his Thoughts on the Interpretation of Nature, published in 1754. The fable tells of a father, on his death bed, who advises his children that there is treasure buried in his field, but that he does not remember where. The children dig and scourge the field to find the treasure, but to no avail. The following year, they continue their search but with sharper tools, convinced the treasure must be buried deeper in the ground. Eventually, one of them sees some shining fragments and realizes he may have discovered a mine. So the children shift tactics. They give up looking for treasure to focus their efforts on exploiting the mine, which yields plenty. For Diderot, the children start as rationalists obsessed with solving a particular problem which was likely unsolvable and ended as empiricists, who “come to make discoveries more important than the solution itself.”

These debates between rationalism and empiricism still take place today, although in slightly different forms to match different stakes and discussions. And, with a bit of imaginative license, we can draw analogies between these two approaches to knowledge and the use of contemporary technologies.

Consider, for example, the distinction between search and discovery as tools for finding and curating content on the internet. Search tools provide exact character matches between the input entity one searches for and the collection of content one searches on; input “horse,” and the engine will scan content to find the word “horse” and return pages that contain that word as the result set. Multiple organizations are hard at work to refine these tools to intuit the intention of the searcher when conducting the search. The assumption is that, through our habitual use of search engines like Google or Yahoo, we’ve started to develop our own niche language for how we think queries are structured. For example, when an expecting mother is looking for a stroller for her son, she does not transcribe her literal question (“where can I find the best stroller for my son?”) but rather inputs a truncated phrase to mimic how she expects the search engine functions to get the results she wants (“best strollers”). If the engine is right, search can be powerful, extensive and precise. But the extent of the result set is always limited to what the searcher thinks he or she is looking at the outset. Search is the tool to help the children in the fable dig through the field to find the buried treasure.

Discovery, by contrast, extends the parameters of our initial inquiry to unearth content we may not know we’re looking for when we start. Words are not absolute, independent units with their own intrinsic meanings, but relative, dependent units whose meanings blossom in context. For each word, therefore, there are multiple related words that create clusters of meaning that index a topic, theme or context. To return to the example of “horse,” we might situate horse within the cluster of words related to the practice riding (tack, bit, saddle), the cluster of words related to similar species (donkey, zebra), the cluster of words related to sociology and demographics (aristocrat, noblemen, polo). Someone initially searching for “horse” may be interested in any one of these clusters. While a curating engine needs further information to discern the intended cluster, it can use subsequent activity to provide more accurate and relevant results going forward. Once given the cue to find content in a particular cluster, a discovery engine can return vastly different results than search: our horse-lover may start an inquiry with the word “horse” and end up finding a fascinating body of knowledge about Lully’s 17th-century ballets. To return to our fable, discovery is the tool that helps the children find the plentiful mine, riches greater than the treasure they originally sought.

The applications for content marketing are powerful. In today’s world, branding strategies have shifted from inundating repetition of single images and refrains to distributing varied content through vehicles that best align with individuals’ particular habits, interests and preferences. Like words, people’s interests are not discrete and absolute; they are tied into an integrated whole, each topic a Lilly pad connected to others by a root system of analogies, associations and experiences. Simply put, Trapit’s discovery engine enables content marketers to enrich their corpuses, filling them not only with precisely defined content indexed by search, but also with the vast body of related topics that extend horizons, providing consumers the novelty they want to retain loyalty to a trusted brand.

So often in life, it’s when we’re not intently focused on searching for something that we open ourselves up to discover the beautiful surprises that end up providing us the most meaning and happiness. A woman went shopping for shoes, and came home with her favorite dress (forget the shoes); Proust took a bit of a cookie and found one of the greatest novels of the 20th century; a man started a conversation with a woman on a plane and ended up marrying her, the love of his life. Knowledge we don’t yet know we’re looking for is out there to be discovered in the endless, dormant mines of the web.

– Kathryn Hume

Kathryn Hume leads marketing for the Risk Practice Group at Intapp, Inc, a software company that provides business operations technology to law firms. She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from Stanford University and focuses on the intersection between law, the humanities and new technologies.

The call begins.

You exchange some pleasantries. “How’s your day going? What’s the weather like? What do you know about content curation?”

Then, the sales representative launches into her demo spiel. Product feature after product feature. Product function after product function. Client logo after client logo.

Your demo is like a whirling carnival ride. When your 30 minutes are up, you hang up the phone, and you feel dizzy, disoriented, and a tad bit nauseous. You wonder, What just happened? What did I see? Did I even ask any questions?

It’s easy to be whisked away during your product demos, but we’re here to help. Use the checklist below to take control of your content curation demos and to ensure that you are learning everything you need to know.

Why Do You Need Content Curation?

Before you begin the product demo, take a few minutes to think about why you want to use content curation in the first place. What do you hope to accomplish by sharing content across multiple channels?

Your answer can be focused externally. For instance, you may want to demonstrate thought leadership on social media channels. On the flip side, your answer may be focused internally. You may, for example, want to educate your employees.

In Trapit’s content curation workbook, we list a few possible objectives:

Demonstrate thought leadership

Establish brand identity

Engage followers and start conversations online

Create a community around a specific topic

Educate your employees

Increase traffic to your site

Other

Use This Checklist during the Demo

Once you have an idea of what you hope to accomplish, you’ll be better prepared to judge the content curation platform. Here’s a checklist to help you along the way.

Click here to download a printable PDF file.

Did We Miss Something Critical?

Now you can feel confident that you’re getting your time’s worth during your live demos.

What are your criteria for evaluating a content curation demo – or any live software demo? I’d love to hear your thoughts. Leave a comment below.

-Mark

To start engaging your audience with content curation…

Request a 15-minute demo of Trapit right now!

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Most of us have been to the public library. Certainly, in our academic lives, we went to the library to gather relevant information, allowing us to do our assignments. I remember having to do a paper about Christopher Columbus back in the days when I did not have the luxury of sitting home and surfing the web to find the facts and figures needed to complete my assignment.

I went to the library. Once there, I used the Dewey Decimal System – the card catalogue – to find the books that I needed to “check out” for my paper. I went to the section where the pertinent books were housed, and then I began the tedious process of my own curation. Without the magic of Internet discovery or search, I needed to physically leaf through volumes to find that which was relevant to the task at hand.

I like the metaphor of the library as it relates to content curation. Let’s take a step back and look at the history of how libraries came to be and, equally important, the role of the librarian. Librarians have actually been around since 8th century BC, when the “keeper of the books” had to oversee the thousands of tablets that contained relevant and important data. These early-day librarians were responsible to oversee the thousands of stored tablets containing content. These tablets were tagged, indexed, and arranged in logical order. The role of librarians has certainly evolved, but as we look back, isn’t it true that librarians were the first curators of content?

Today, more than ever, we need to find relevant content. 90% of all the worlds content that has been created in the past two years – thanks to the Internet and the ability it has given us all to be not only content consumers, but content creators. But now that we have this digital oasis filled with reams of information, it is a very difficult task to search for what we really need, accessible when we need it.

Marketers are creating content management strategies. They are focused on content marketing to become the authority in their industry, improve their brand equity, increase their following, drive more leads, and keep up with their competitors. Their strategies blend both created and curated content in order for them to keep up with the need to reach out to their audiences multiple times per day across multiple channels with compelling and relevant stories. When considering curation, marketers need to find the most efficient, economic approach, while ensuring they are receiving content that is pertinent and relevant. Many times the sources for this curated content are really not known and marketers are forced to, through trial and error, search for what they need. This is not efficient, nor does it render the intended results.

We understood this issue and have responded by building a digital library of original, quality content– a place where marketers can discover and curate the sources of information that they need to complete their assignments. As digital “librarians,” we take the time and focused attention to find the right sources, review them for quality, originality, and appropriateness, then we index, tag, and arrange them in logical order (thank you Mr. Dewey!). Only now, the content is not on shelves, but in that proverbial “cloud.” Sound familiar?

The library in the sky – the curator of the 21st century – brought to you through the inspiration of the scribes of ancient times.

– Pat

By now, it’s cliché to say this, but it bears repeating.

People buy from people.

Sure, we live in an age where we can Washio our clothes, Sprig our lunches, and TaskRabbit our errands – with minimal human interaction.

But even in today’s digital age, human-to-human interaction still matters, especially on social media. It is not enough for the brand to have a social media presence. A company’s employees must do so, as well.

• 77% of buyers say that they are more likely to buy from a company whose CEO, the human face of a company, uses social media.
• 82% of buyers trust a company more if its CEO is on social media.
• 78% of salespeople who using social media outsell their peers.

If done correctly, social media can be a powerful tool, but in order for it to work, a company’s employees must have a trustworthy and authentic presence on social media.

Employees have to know who they are as professionals, and they have to convey their individual professional brands in all their interactions.

Here’s how you can get started…

Step 1: Identify personality traits that you like about yourself

In order to create an effecitve social media presence, you have to know who you are. The good news is that there are many ways to figure this out.

Option 1: Tests

If you’ve taken the majority of BuzzFeed’s quizzes, you may enjoy taking a test that tells you about yourself. Here are a few free tests you can try:

• The Keirsey Temperament Sorter – Based on Carl Jung’s work, the Keirsey Temperament Sorter divides humans into distinct temperament types: rational, idealist, artisan, guardian. Each of those types is divided into four variants.
• The Myers-Briggs Type indicator – At one time or another, you probably took this test. Take it again thinking specificially about your workplace personality. What do you find?
• The 5 Big Personality Traits – This test will tell you whether you’re open to new experiences, conscientious, extraverted, agreeable, and neurotic (think: nervous).

Option 2: Personal Reflection

Maybe you are not a quiz taker. No problem. Here’s another way to get started (adapted from Kate Wendleton’s Through the Brick Wall):

Step 1: Write down 15 enjoyable accomplishments in your life. It can be from any time in your life. It can be winning a spelling bee in fifth grade or being promoted at your last job.

Step 2: It may take you a few days to come up with a list of accomplishments. Once you have your list, pick out the seven stories that speak to you most strongly.

Step 3: Jot down the skills and personality traits that you demonstrated in each circumstance. As you go through the list, you should notice some overlap in the qualities that you like about yourself.

Here’s an example

I recently finished my PhD. As you can imagine, that is an accomplishment I am proud of. Now, the question is: What does this accomplishment mean for my personal and professional brand?

During the course of my doctoral studies, there were many days when I wanted to throw in the towel, move to Spain, and open an ice cream shop on the beach. But, I stuck with my program because I have grit and determination. Grit is part of my professional brand, and it is something that I want to convey online.

Similarly, carrying out doctoral studies requires a healthy dose of rationality and skepticism. You have to question every assumption – even your own. When I share links on social media, I want my brainy side to show through. So, I will stay away from the Buzzfeed and Upworthy articles, and instead, I will share data-driven articles like this one from Hubspot: How Fast Is Your Blog Growing? How to Run a Regression Analysis.

Step 2: Interview the people who know you the best.

Once you have done some self-exploration, it is time to run your brand past some people. Speak to the people who are closest to you. They can be family, friends, or peers.

Ask your network what they think your best traits are. Ask them what they think your values are.

You might find that their opinions align closely with your own, or you might find that their opinions are the polar opposite.

If your view of your self aligns with those of others, congratulations! You are great at introspection, and you are conveying your true self to others.

If your view of your self does not align with that of others, don’t worry! It’s not the end of the world. You simply have more reflection to do. Are you not being honest with yourself about who you are? Or are you struggling to convey your individual professional brand to others in words and/or deeds?

Step 3: Think about how your personality fits with your company’s brand.

I’m assuming that you have a job, and I’m assuming that you want to keep it.

Whether we like it or not, our actions on social media are reflections of the companies we work for.

Employers know this. If you are part of a larger company, your legal department likely requires you to include “opinions are my own” verbiage on your Twitter bio.

Such verbiage might seem like a downer, especially if being opinionated or outspoken is part of your personal brand. But such verbiage does not have to be problematic. I’d encourage you to think of ways that your personal brand and your company’s brand do intersect.

For example, if you are opinionated and outspoken, you don’t have to change that part of yourself. Instead, think about topics that you can discuss openly on social media. If you are a graphic designer for a software company, you can opine freely on typography, but you may want to shy away from political issues.

If you don’t know anything about your company’s branding, speak to your marketing team. They should be able to share the business’s core values with you.

Step 4: Brainstorm ways that you can showcase your personal brand online.

Give yourself a pat on the back. You’ve done the heavy-lifting. You’ve figured out who you are, and you’ve figured out how your personality jibes with your company’s brand.

Now, you have to figure out how you will showcase your personality on social media. There’s no right or wrong way to do this.

Here are a few ideas to get you started:

• If you’re artsy, you can play with your profile picture and cover photo on Twitter and LinkedIn. You can show off your understanding of color theory, typography, and photography.
• If you consider yourself to be a helpful person, you can answer questions for people on social media. If you don’t know the answers, you can point the people to a webpage with the answer, or you can point them to someone in your organization who may know the answer.
• If you’re a rational person, you can curate third-party articles that challenge long-held assumptions about your industry.
• If you’re a teacher at heart, share the tips and tricks of your trade. Social media users are always looking for a way to improve their processes.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg.

There are countless ways to express your personal and professional brand on social media. In the next post on the Trapit blog, we delve deeper into the topic.

Enjoy!

Mark

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When Google Reader was on its death bed this past summer, I couldn’t help but speculate as to why the decision was being made to shut down the RSS news platform. One of the prominent arguments I came across was that RSS always suffered from lack of consumer appeal.I agree to a certain extent. It’s not that the standard user simply isn’t capable of grasping how RSS works, but I do recognize the struggle exists for standard users to make the most out of their RSS experience. My stance has little to do with any reader services that queue up the content, nor the subscriber functionality of RSS. The problem resides in the fact that not enough websites out there have been doing enough with their RSS capabilities. In order for the future of RSS to hum like a well-oiled machine in an overcrowded internet, the sources of content must become more robust, more niche and more versatile. The web is a free democracy – RSS must mirror this concept and empower readers with more choices when it comes to the content subscriptions that auto-filter into our daily digest of information we consider valuable.

RSS Food for Thought – The Buffet Analogy

Website owners should take notes next time they walk into a buffet (bear with me). When I enter a buffet, my stomach wants it all – everything. Contrarily, my heart desires something lighter and more healthy. Despite these conflicts of interest, I know ultimately that I am in a position to choose the most well-rounded plate that’ll satisfy the taste-budding opinions inside me that are constantly butting heads. I deliberate carefully. I look around and appreciate how the square footage of the buffet is broken down (much like websites) into subsections, by genres–italian, seafood, salad bar, sweets, etc. If you are like me, you make one stop per trip to the seafood section and you leave with shrimp and shrimp only, approximately five panko pieces. I know the salmon is there, it stares at me wondering if today is the day my palate makes that connection. But I’m here for the shrimp, and the buffet respects that. It’s why I return, unbothered, unfettered. Maybe tomorrow, salmon.

Websites must do the same. Allow your readers to subscribe to the things they desire consuming routinely. Recognize that a consumer’s stomach can only expand so far, so why force feed them? Imagine if said-buffet instead unloaded a dump truck of food on your table, forcing you to sift through it all to fill your plate. You’d probably choose a different buffet. In order to compete in this smartphone-crazed world where attention spans are rapidly shrinking, RSS functionality must become a diverse content buffet that allows readers the versatility to subscribe to either large chunks or tiny slivers of content. With all the multitasking we do on a daily basis (Facebooking, Twitter-skimming, Insta-gazing) how much room do we have left in the tank to read quality content when our mind settles down at the night’s end? RSS should be that cornerstone can’t-miss feature in the world of content that will bring readers what they want, when they want it.

Dissecting RSS: Empower the Contributors that make your Website Superb

Sure, “All News” or “All Articles” feeds are fantastic and important to have available for subscription, but let’s be real here. As readers, occasionally certain writers or writing styles come across as annoying, while others can hook, line and sink our return. Twitter gives you the option to mute someone’s retweets and empowers users with the choice to only follow an original voice. Websites should do the same for each and every contributor, syncing a RSS feed to each individual, even if they merely appear seldomly as featured guests. Whether a reader is subscribing to one writer, or a handful, RSS connectivity in this manner will bring readers back to the website when they feel like it and the content flow will never feel overwhelming, because they will remain in control. Who knows, they may pick up a piece of salmon along the way.

Broad categorical feeds are great, but niche keyword topics are golden

Sports, technology, news, health, science, fitness – the list goes on. These are great general feeds to have featured in a RSS section of a website, but are they really robust enough for readers to narrow in and get the most out of your website’s content? I consider myself a tech nerd, but have very little interest when it comes to the economics of the tech world. Those type of articles would keep me from ever subscribing. However, if I could pull a feed that dissected further into the tech section, I’d jump on the “smart tech,” “drones,” and “apple” feeds. And odds are, I may even jump from my RSS queue back into the general realm of the website to explore further, perhaps pick up some new interests along the way. Having the freedom to subscribe to my can’t-miss interests is key and brings a sense of organization when I’ve grown tired of web surfing for the day.

A website that simply “gets it”

Bloomberg View, an editorial division of what we know as Bloomberg News, is the cookie-cutter example of how a website should manage its RSS connectivity for its consumers. Tabs at the top of the page begin with a section where you can view all the content in a clean flow, queueing the articles chronologically for those wanting to browse the latest. The other two tabs are my favorite. The “contributors” section lists all the people who are posting content to the website. Inside, you can find the contributor’s bio, relevant keywords that provide a glimpse of what that writer is likely addressing in their editorials, and most importantly, a RSS feed clear as day at the top of the bio. Skip a tab over to the right, it gets even better. Inside the “topics” section, you’ll find a list of nearly 100 topics that take website categories to a new level. Climate Change, Oil, Olympics, Energy, Gadgets, China are the ones I’m currently subscribed to from the site. With a mixture of breadth, and narrowed specifics, Bloomberg View recognizes that niche topics of interest are fantastic candidates to sync with RSS.

—

When Google Reader etched its name in a tombstone, tech critics questioned if this truly meant RSS was perishing after all. My rebuttal is simple: Nas said the same thing about hip-hop music being dead and look what happened. He made another album. And another. Content, just like music, will never die, so long as readers are still lingering around with open eyes and cat-like curiosity. With new data continuing its exponential rise on the internet, websites have to recognize that RSS functionality must become more sophisticated if they expect to hold onto the unique interests of its diverse readership. Most of us can’t seem to read anything longer than 140 characters these days, but when our brains settle down and we’re done tapping and finger-swiping, RSS must be that pipeline for all the go-to information. Get it done, internet.

– Geoff

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The explosive growth of content – on the Internet and behind corporate firewalls – combined with inadequate search tools – create a wasteland of stagnant information

Humans seek knowledge – they are inquisitive, curious. Less than two short decades ago, sources to that knowledge were mostly stationary. If a person knew what they wanted – perhaps they would visit a library, and use a centuries-old cataloging system to find what they were looking for.

Or they may go to a newsstand to buy a magazine. If one was satisfied with random, unstructured streams of data, they might turn on a television, or a radio. Maybe this serendipity was satisfying – random data that filled a need – or touched an emotion. But more often, it probably was not.

Content was jealously guarded by writers, poets, publishers, and businesses, available to the masses only with permission, and the curious were often frustrated.

Then the Internet happened. And data became ultimately accessible. Ubiquitous. This was a milestone for curiosity.

New technologies fueled the Internet’s explosive growth, and the emergence of a wild array of increasingly powerful devices insured that if they chose, people could remain stationary, as the content they needed was suddenly mobile.

But if there was dark lining in that silver cloud of computing, it is that the once-consumers of content became creators of content, spawning an almost uncontrollable flood of data. Some of it original, of high quality, but the majority derivative, repurposed, unnecessary – or simply bad. It is said that 90% of all the world’s content has been created in the past two years – but hardly the stuff of the writers, pundits and poets of the past millennia comprising the other 10%.

So vast is this ocean of data that content is once again stationary. Buried beneath the depths of pages of a Google search, never to surface, or trapped behind the impregnable dungeons of corporate databases. And people, if they are to mind what they need, must again be mobile – actively seeking with outdated tools ill-equipped to stem the tsunami tides of content overload. And content is again jealously guarded – by Google, who insures that only content that pays the right price will surface – or by enterprise networks of a complexity that almost insures the ignominy of content. Others may seek the serendipity of social networks; often entertaining, but in random streams of mostly recycled links, it is hardly an efficient means of finding the information needed to power a business.

With Trapit, content for businesses is again accessible.

And moreover, it is personal – tailoring relevant, accurate, actionable content to the individual – or to specified groups of individuals, once again satisfying curiosity. Trapit’s powerful enterprise platform and the cloud-based SaaS application it powers is comprehensive; an end-to-end solution that spans Trapit’s patented content discovery algorithms to its Webbie award-winning user interface and user experience. All of this wrapped around an extraordinary and easy-to-use suite of tools that adjust filters on Trapit’s dicover engine, manage a vast source library, and the distribution of content to a wide variety of devices or applications. Uniquely, the enterprise can control the sources of information, tapping into Trapit’s base of over 100,000 sources of original, high quality content, but also unlocking, with Trapitthe barriers that have kept valuable corporate content largely inaccessible. Trapit learns more about the content preferences of a user with each use, and offers a rich menu of options for sharing information across social networks, or saving key content for consumption later.

Trapit for Enterprise has several uses in the enterprise. It can be an internal tool to automatically keep sales teams up-to-date on the status of their prospects or customers. Or a power Content Marketing application building thought leadership while keeping editorial and content curation expenses low.

So don’t let the information you need remain stationary – and stagnant. Try Trapit.

Gary Griffiths
Trapit CEO and Co-founder

Image via Andrey Kuzmin.

Optimally curated content can be a wonderful thing. You’ve got your original content that you create, a tremendously important asset that you want to highlight every chance you get. Augmenting that, you have curated content that you’re sharing, building trust and further establishing and legitimizing your own thought leadership in the field. And it’s this balanced combination of the two that enables you to reap the best of the benefits from both worlds: your audience seeing that you’ve got both your finger on the pulse of your industry and the tools, resources and know-how to blaze a path through that wilderness.

But sharing curated stories and writing your own content isn’t the full story; the key to success is what you curate and how it supports your own, original contributions. You have a lot of options for what content you want to share, and the better you get at content discovery, the better you can inform your audience as it relates to the value you provide. And that’s what curating for context is all about.

The articles you share can serve many purposes, including:

• educating your audience about a widespread problem in your field,
• showing them a project or applied use case that leads some of them towards success,
• sharing a breakthrough or innovation that positively affects them, or
• showcasing a product that may offer a solution to some of their problems,

but at the end of the day, you’re not just after clicks, you’re after conversions, or people who come to you for a product-or-service that you provide. And the best way to do that is to share articles that don’t just highlight an interesting problem, project, innovation or product in your field, but ones that highlight problems, projects, innovations or products that you offer a solution for.

That’s what thought-leadership is all about. It’s not just for sharing tidbits from a widespread conversation, but for framing that conversation around your strengths and offerings. Because when you put out your own original content — sometimes with a call to action as well — you want to maximize your audience’s response, and that’s only going to happen if your audience is well informed about both what you do and why that’s important to them. So don’t just curate for interesting stories alone, frame that conversation around your assets and capabilities, and give your audience the context they need so they can be confident choosing you for their solutions.

-Ethan

Did you know that you can start a Trap with a URL?

If you find an interesting article or blog post on a topic you’d like to start a trap on, just copy the URL in your browser, click “new trap” in the upper right hand corner of your Trap.it account, paste in your URL, and click “create trap.” It’s that easy.

Using a URL to start a trap works best when the article or post is fairly specific to the topic you want.

This is because Trap.it uses the page you’ve provided the link for to determine keywords to use for your trap. The presence of words is crucial and specificity is key, so make sure you choose URLs for articles/posts that are specific to the topic you’d like to start a trap on and contain text (articles/posts that contain only images or videos don’t give keywords to work with).

For example, I’ve chosen to start my bounce music trap using an article on Big Freedia taken from the LA times Pop & Hiss music blog. I was reading the blog in the general blog view but made sure to click through to the Big Freedia post to get to the URL that is specific to this post, rather than the general URL for the entire blog (ie I used http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/music_blog/2011/07/big-freedia.html instead of http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/music_blog/).

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If I’d used the URL for the entire music blog my trap would have been too general because it would have pulled keywords from the entire blog. Providing the more specific URL means I wont get articles about Harry and the Potters or Coldplay in my Bounce Trap.

If I was interested in creating a more general trap (say a music trap) I would probably start that trap with keywords rather than a URL to make sure that my trap was general enough. Because if I started a music trap using the URL for the entire LA Times music blog Trap.it would pull some rather specific keywords (Coldplay, Big Freedia, Harry and the Potters…) that would narrow the focus of my very general trap too much. Starting a music trap with the keyword “music,” on the other hand, would start my trap very general and allow me to narrow its focus as needed through training.

Speaking of training, remember to train your traps no matter how you form them. Language is a complicated thing and just because my original Big Freedia article prominently mentions the Echoplex doesn’t mean I want more information on that venue. Like articles and posts that are relevant to your trap and dislike the ones that aren’t to refine the focus of your trap.

-Laura

The sales world has undergone a dramatic shift. Buyers are in control, and they are using online channels to interact with brands. As a result, traditional “smile and dial” tactics are dying.

To engage the modern buyer, sales organizations have become increasingly more digitally minded. And to become more digitally minded, sales organizations have become more reliant on technology.

The rise of the digital buyer has led to the explosion of sales applications and platforms. And with that explosion comes a slew of data. Whereas yesterday’s CROs and VPs of Sales relied heavily on anecdotal evidence, today’s sales leaders can supplement anecdotes with data, making it possible for sales leader to make more accurate decisions.

But how do you do that? How do you make better decisions that will help your sales team engage the digital buyer? The answer: Develop a collection of complementary sales software applications – commonly called the “Sales Technology Stack.”

The 6 Pillars of the Modern Sales Stack

Salespeople have a lot on their plate. They need to attract buyers, engage them, nurture those relationships, close deals, retain customers, and grow lifetime value. To be successful, you need the right technology in place.

Below, you’ll find the six key pillars of a modern sales stack. Spoiler: You won’t find headsets and call center technology on the list.

1. Data and Analytics

Adapting to the modern buyer has been beneficial for sales leaders. It has forced them to build sales stacks that provide plenty of data. With numbers and analytics at their finger tips, sales leaders can determine which strategies are successful and which ones aren’t.

2. CRM

Most companies already have a CRM in place. As you build your sales stack, use your CRM as your home base. Ensure that your tools integrate with your customer relationship management software. This will reduce the number of applications that your sales reps need to open, making it easier for your sales team to adopt new technologies.

3. Email

Do you know any buyers without an email address? I don’t. As you can imagine, email, like CRM, is a given for many companies that want to interact with digitally savvy buyers. Sales leaders have invested in ways to track emails, measure their effectiveness, and establish the right cadence of messages.

4. Social Selling

To be sure, email is just one way to reach buyers. Social networks are another way. In fact, sites like LinkedIn and Twitter have proven to be extremely effective in the sales process. Sales reps who use social are 79% more likely to attain their quota (Aberdeen Group).

The native tools that LinkedIn and Twitter provide are a good starting point. But to standardize best practices across your team and have actionable data at your finger tips, you’ll want to invest in a social selling platform.

5. Content

For salespeople to be effective in the digital world, they need content, and by content, I don’t mean product brochures and order forms. They need blog posts, infographics, industry news, and videos that will capture the buyer’s attention, challenge the buyer’s status quo, and spark conversations.

Content needs to be organized, readily available to salespeople, and easily passed from marketing teams to sales teams. Look for these capabilities in your social selling and sales enablement tools.

6. Mobile

The average American spends 4.7 hours a day on his or her mobile phone. As you can imagine, your sales team is no exception. To ensure that your sales team adopts your sales stack, make sure that your sales software offers mobile applications.

Out-Perform Your Competition

It is imperative to develop a technology ecosystem that focuses on the modern buyer and adheres to the six key pillars. Without a doubt, sales leaders who harness the power of a well-considered sales stack will out-perform their competition.

Why’s that? Armed with data and insights, these leaders will better understand how prospects and customers act online, and they can create strategies that adapt to their customers in the digital world.

Today’s CROs need people within the sales organization who can identify and implement new technology solutions. They need a sales team that is willing to adapt to the modern buyer and to the new technologies. And they need people who can interpret the data and improve results.

Those organizations will be the cutting edge organizations. They will be the ones who have a better chance of engaging their buyers and building relationships with them. They will be the ones who close more deals and drive more revenue.

Bottom line: The better your sales technology stack, the more it will help you acquire, engage, and retain your customer. Good luck!

Want to Learn More about Social Selling?

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