How can Building Product Marketers create their own “World-Wide Rave?”

6 Core Rules to help you get people talking about your ideas from David Meerman Scott.

I read a book a few years back and thought the ideas were powerful enough to pick it up and review again. The book is World Wide RAVE by David Meerman Scott. The basic idea behind the book is to create triggers that get millions of people to spread your ideas and share your stories. In the world of building product marketing, we know how important relationships are, and years ago we called this “word of mouth” marketing. With technology, those basic ideas can be infused with steroids and put into overdrive. It may sound obvious but, in order for people to share your ideas and stories on the web, you must make something worth sharing.

Basically, Meerman contends there are 6 core rules:

1. Nobody cares about your products (except you). Yes, sad but true. People care about themselves and ways to solve their problems.
2. No coercion required. You don’t have to trick people to engage with free or % off deals, engage them with relevant content – no coercion required.
3. Lose control. You have to be willing to lose control of your messages for this concept to even have a chance of success.
4. Put down roots. It’s simple and the same here as in the off-line world. If you want to receive a letter, you need to send one to someone first. If you want your ideas to spread, you need to be involved in online communities of people who actively share.
5. Create triggers that encourage people to share. Your content needs to solve someone’s problem, be interesting, or funny, or even outrageous to gain traction.
6. Point the world to your virtual doorstep. Engaging content drives better search results.

Simple right? And, if it is, why are so many organizations still not doing this? Well, Scott offers up 26 different challenges to us to get past the logjam; some of my favorites:

1. You have to answer the questions—what is interesting about you and your organization? Why do people like to do business with you? How are you and your organization unique?
2. Never talk about your products and services again. Focus on your buyer personae and how you can solve problems for them.
3. How can you push the envelope of what is tried and true in your market? What can you talk about that others are too scared to touch?
4. Every company has something fascinating or unique that can be turned into a video that people want to share.
5. What proprietary data and metrics do you have that would be valuable to others? Publish them.
6. Think about how your organization can do work with bloggers or other influential online contributors such as podcasters and video bloggers. Include them in your press conferences, schedule interviews with them along with any traditional media journalists or include them in your product tests.

Just think about the last time you were at the stadium watching your favorite sports team – one person stood up and started the wave and it quickly spread to thousands. Get out there and create your “rave.”