I’m a huge fan of TED! I recently stumbled across this great TED talk given by Seth Godin. He talks about what it takes to stand out in your market.
I love how it almost all comes down to how remarkable your product or service is. Is it worth making a remark about? Are your customers going to tell their friends and family? Watch the video below and give us your two cents!
I found this information to be helpful. I’ve been wondering lately how best to structure the content for my upcoming info products. Is there a particular framework that you like to use with your info products? Let us know by leaving a comment below!
“An information product or program often uses a combination of frameworks. Here are six of the most common (there certainly may be variations on the themes below):
Problem/Solution. State a problem and then present solutions to the problem. The Magic of Conflict: Turning Your Life of Work into a Work of Art by Thomas F. Crum is written in this framework. He presents a number of problems that people face in their life and at work and presents solutions to those problems using the philosophical principles of the martial art of aikido.
Numerical. Create your product as a series of keys or lessons. A well-known example of this would be Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
Chronological. Some products need to be presented in a particular order because that is the only way it would make sense. As I mentioned above, Step A must come before Step B, as in Your Pregnancy Week by Week by Glade B. Curtis and Judith Schuler... ” [Read More]
So how exactly is the word “curation” applied online? Just like the museum curator, who picks out which paintings are shown, online curators pick out which bits of content are shown.
If you think about it, hasn’t this been going on since the dawn of communication?
Human’s have always shared what they felt was the most important, most relevant information to others around them. Even if they were the original source of that information.
Lately however, marketers have decided to call this “curation” in order to make it sound new. Regardless of whether it’s new or not, it is a very solid content strategy. Especially in this day and age! Let’s face it, there is an overwhelming amount of content out there now. We’ve become our own media outlet now that we have these smartphones in our pocket.
With an overabundance of content comes a growing demand for that content to be sifted and sorted. Curated to bring only the best bits to the forefront!
One old example of this online is The Drudge Report. This site produces no original content. Everyday they update the links on the one page they have. That’s it! This site gets butt loads of traffic, and it is worth millions. They employ a very small staff that “hand picks” the news they will feature on their homepage every day.
A better example would be The Huffingtonpost. As you can see, they add their own voice and opinion on the topic at hand in addition to syndicating content from other authoritative websites. It’s important to note that the owner of that site recently sold it for to AOL for $315 million dollars!
In regards to the word “curation”, Business Insider goes on to explain why it is becoming so popular with media companies large and small:
“..It’s a word that gained a lot of traction in the past 12 months as the overarching trends of ubiquitous distribution and mass content creation have emerged as the two headed dragon that may slay media as we know it.
The old model was “one to many” (NBC -> viewers). The new model is “one to a few” (YOU -> your friends and followers). That means there is an overwhelming explosion of content being created (Twitter feeds, blog posts, Flickr photos, Facebook updates) and most of it is interesting to a very small number of people. But, mixed in with this cacophony of consumer content, there is contextually relevant material that needs to be discovered, sorted, and made “brand safe” for advertisers.
Curation is the new role of media professionals.
Separating the wheat from the chaff, assigning editorial weight, and — most importantly – giving folks who don’t want to spend their lives looking for an editorial needle in a haystack a high-quality collection of content that is contextual and coherent. It’s what we always expected from our media, and now they’ve got the tools to do it better.
Yes, that’s right, the future of media is better, not worse. It’s more detailed, multi-faceted and nuanced. And, just more.“
A lot of content creators aren’t so happy about the growing popularity of “editorial curation — human filtering and organizing”. Steve Rosenbaum, the CEO of Magnify.net, explains why:
I have recently switched from using Firefox as my default browser to using Chrome. It’s just faster, and more streamlined in my opinion. I also had the chance to check out the Chrome Web Store.
If you’re not familiar, the Chrome Web Store has “Apps” that you can install in the Chrome browser to do all sorts of useful things. It’s similar to “add-ons” in Firefox. The difference is that in many cases these Apps are simply icons installed on your Chrome start page that link to a particular site or blog. Essentially they are just fancy bookmarks! Considering how many people use the Chrome browser, it’s easy to see why it would be beneficial for you to have an “App” for your site.
Anything that will allow Chrome users to easily access your site from their start page can only be a good thing right?
It would also be beneficial for you to promote this App from your website and to your ezine subscribers because the more popular your site is in the Chrome Web Store the better it will rank in the store. It’s almost like some kind of secret, secondary search engine.
How great would it be if your site had an App in the Chrome Web Store? Vikitech.com explains how this can be done:
“After reading the Chrome Web Apps Documentation for a while, I found that the process of making a web app from any existing website is quite easy. As an example, I created a Web App for Mind42.com which is my favorite site for creating Mind Maps.
Using the process described below you can create your own Chrome Web Apps. Lets see how it’s done.
Creating Your Own Chrome Web Apps:
Basics: What does a Chrome Web App consist of?
A Chrome Web App consists of a .crx file that contains the metadata describing the app. (The .crx file format is just a variation of ZIP that’s used by Google Chrome.)
The .crx file for a hosted app (app made from an existing website) must contain an icon and a manifest that has details about how the app should function in the browser.
Getting Started:
These are the only 2 things you need to make a Chrome Web App. The manifest and an icon for the web app.
The Manifest - Every app needs a manifest—a JSON-formatted file named manifest.json that describes it.
The Icon - Every app also needs an icon. The icon is used on the New Tab page.
Creating The Manifest:
In order to create a manifest file, open the notepad or any other text editor you use and…” [Read More]
Please feel free to share your Chrome App by leaving a comment below! We’ll have one for TrueWebPresence.com done very soon!
“After graduating from college in 1980, Prescott had labored for almost three decades to become a best-selling novelist, writing more than 20 books under various names. He enjoyed critical praise and some successes.
But when 25 publishers passed on buying his thriller Riptide, Prescott thought the gig was up. Then, on a whim, he decided to self-publish it as an e-book.
Today, the soft-spoken Prescott, 51, is living his dream. He is one of 15 self-published authors whose e-books, often selling for just 99 cents, have cracked the top 150 on USA TODAY’s Best-Selling Books list this year, threatening to change the face of publishing.
For Prescott and a handful of others, the numbers add up. Prescott says he has earned more than $300,000 before taxes this year by selling more than 800,000 copies of his self-published e-books.
Five of Prescott’s thrillers have logged a total of 42 weeks on USA TODAY’s best-seller list.
‘If someone in this year had told me I was going make a lot of money with e-books, I wouldn’t have believed him,’ Prescott says. ‘I thought maybe a couple of hundred dollars.’
E-books are changing the way authors and readers connect.
Today, authors such as Prescott can bypass traditional publishers. They can digitally format their…” [Read More]
Are you as excited as I am? Leave a comment and let us know what is on your mind!
