Can you grow your business by turning your brand over to your customers and giving away valuable information for free? Yes, according to David Meerman Scott. In The New Rules of Marketing and PR, David explains how new web tools & technologies are the best way to communicate directly with your customers.
In his latest book, World Wide Rave: Creating Triggers that Get Millions of People to Spread Your Ideas and Share Your Stories
By accepting that we don’t really have control of our message anyway, we can focus on spreading our message by encouraging others to share it with their friends with similar interests.
The book includes several examples of people telling their story to a few select people, and then letting them take over and spread the story from them. My favorite story in the book is about Cindy Gordon, who told 7 Harry Potter fans about a new theme resort. Those 7 people ended up telling 350 million people.
Here are some of Scott's "rules of the rave":
- Nobody cares about your products (except you).
- No coercion required.
- Lose control.
- Put down roots.
- Point the world to your (virtual) doorstep.
The last section of the book provides advice for helping you "get found" on the internet.
By creating something valuable that people want to share and making it easy for them to do so, you can create a World Wide Rave. The question is, will you?
P.S. – after reading World Wide Rave, I took a shot at creating my own e-book. After just a couple of weeks, I’ve had a little over 300 downloads. If interested, you can download my marketing e-book “Saying The Wrong Thing Louder Doesn’t Make It Right” here.
Bill Brelsford Small Business Marketing Consultant
