The following are my favorite quotes from David Meerman Scott's World Wide Rave: Creating Triggers that get Millions of People to Spread Your Ideas and Share Your Stories.
- Rules of the Rave: a) Nobody cares about your products b) No coercion required c) Lose control d) Put down roots e) Create triggers that encourage people to share f) Point the world to your (virtual) doorstep.
- I often use the word stories when I talk about the content people want to share. I do that on purpose. People love to share stories.
- Cindy Gordon estimates that 350 million people around the world heard news that Universal Orlando Resort was creating The Wizarding World of Harry Potter theme park -- all by telling just seven people.
- "New media has created a new marketing environment where the old rules of marketing no longer apply." Cindy Gordon
- Success comes from the fact that people want to share this content with their friends, colleagues, and family members.
- The concept of telling people that they aren't allowed to use mobile phones at the start of a session and the encouraging it later is brilliant. People like being a bit rebellious, doing things that they were told is not allowed.
- When you focus on your buyers, you're taking the first, and most important, step to triggering a World Wide Rave.
- Nobody cares about your products except you and the others in your organization.
- When it's obvious that you understand your buyers and their problems, it jars your visitors into paying attention.
- Never talk about your products and services again. Instead, focus on your buyer personas and how you can solve problems for them.
- How can you push the envelope of what's tried and true in your market?
- You've got to think in terms of spreading ideas, not generating leads.
- Think about how your information spreads online. If you are clamping down and exerting control, then your ideas aren't spreading as they could be.
- If you require an email address or other personal information, perhaps only 2 percent of your audience will bother to download your stuff.
- When CEOs and executives push back with an ROI excuse, I ask, "What's the return on investment of the army of landscapers who are constantly at work on the plantings around your corporate headquarters?"
- What works online is creating content ourselves -- information that people want to share.
- The key for success is honesty, transparency, and not to be an apparent sellout.
- One needs to think of hundreds of ideas and then choose a handful to "fund" (i.e. actually create).
- When a campaign starts to take off and spread on the Web, give it all the care and attention you can, in order to turn it into a World Wide Rave.
- The best triggers are often the most imaginative.
- An interactive tool is frequently the perfect device for generating a World Wide Rave.
- Sometimes, just being the first product out of the gate, or the first to exploit a new technology or change in regulations, can lead to success.
- Think about the kinds of user-generated content that would naturally tie in with your product, and devise an online contest.
- A great way to spread your ideas is to use your customers to tell your stories for you.
- You can't trigger a World Wide Rave if you're invisible.
- Performing search engine optimization on a crap-filled site just makes it slightly less crappy.
- Go to Google and do a search for the most important phrases that your buyers are using to find organizations like yours, and look at where you fall in the search results.
- Tweaking bad Web content is just putting lipstick on a pig. Don't settle for bad content.
- What proprietary data and metrics do you have that would be valuable to others?
- High search engine rankings are not created through manipulation or trickery. They are the result of offering excellent content.
- All your blog posts should be good, but it's impossible to make them all great.
- I have strong evidence that "negative" headlines and titles often generate a lot more clicks that "positive" ones.
- Take a look at your site and find a link you can flip around. Measure the traffic before and after the switch and see which version works better.
- Write something that people will find clever or funny but that will still tie back to your organization in some way.
- Web content in the form of true thought-leadership--the kind that tells important, thoughtful stories--holds the potential to influence many thousands of your buyers in ways that traditional marketing and PR simply cannot.
- It isn't about "the message." It's about being helpful.
- You must create some free Web content that drives people to you.
- "If you don't find a literary agent falling into your lap quickly enough, if you feel like your work is done and is ready to be shared with the world, self-publish. Give your work to the world. Let it go." Lisa Genova
- When will you stop making excuses? (or When will you stop allowing your bosses to make excuses for you?)
- "At some point, it dawns on you that the corporate ladder is really more of a treadmill. You run faster, work harder, climb higher, sweat more blood, and push through stifling fatigue. But, in the end, all too often, you're no freer or happier that the day you began." Jonathan Fields
If you liked the quotes, consider picking up a copy of the book yourself. At the time of this blog post, the Kindle edition is completely free.
