The opening keynote to kick of Search Engine Strategies New York was definitely well worth getting up early for and getting a front row seat.  I was rather excited to be attending this keynote since I had just finished up reading the speaker’s latest book, World Wide Rave.

David Meerman Scott is just as engaging in person as he is in his books and his presentation was chock full of great information for any audience to take back and implement into their own marketing strategies.

David started off his presentation just like his book starts off, by relating the story of Cindy Gordon from Universal Studios Parks and how she launched the Wizarding World of Harry Potter.  She only told 7 people.

That may sound like a small number, but those 7 people were very influential in the Harry Potter world of fans.  From those fans over 350,000,000 now know about the new theme park that Universal Studios is launching. It’s all about how big is YOUR world.  Sure you likely don’t have a “Harry Potter” in your arsenal of marketing strategies, but that doesn’t mean creating a World Wide Rave is going to be impossible for you.

It’s about knowing your audience and creating triggers for them.  Triggers are valuable content that just naturally want to be shared with others. During this keyknote David explains the 5 rules he sets out in more depth in his book and had some really great examples to go with the rules.

1. Nobody Cares About Your Product
   The most overused word in press releases is “Innovate” the 3rd most overused word is “Unique”.  Who searches on that stuff really?  This tends to be insulting to your customers, just like those stock photos of models who you choose to represent your company.
   
   
2. No Coercion Required
   Here David speaks to an ad he saw that featured a Fly V style guitar.  It was an advertisement for parents against explicit lyrics.  He clicked through and was lead to a landing page for the Toyota Matrix.  This is REALLY stupid, why trick people?  If your content is valuable, you don’t need to trick them.
   
   
   David shares the story of Girls Fight Back and how at the beginning of every session Erin has the girls turn off their cell phones.  At the end of the session she has them turn them back on and use them to take photos or videos of them doing the moves they learned in the self defense session.  What happens is these girls share the photos and videos, without even being asked.
   
   
3. Lose Control
   This is about understanding you don’t really control the message, no matter how you craft it, or spin it, you just really can’t control how other people interact with it.  When you loose control it allows the world wide rave to happen.  David starts to explain about how the Grateful Dead used this to their advantage by allowing people to record their concerts and share it with their friends.  To this date the Grateful Dead is still the most successful touring band.
   
   
4. Put Down Roots
   Don’t just be a lurker in social media, get involved in the community and make it your home.  Create relationships that are meaningful.  Henry Poser from B&H Photo does this so well that people in the photography communities he’s involved with find him to be a valuable asset because he helps them with their problems, not pitching the products B&H sells.
   
   
5. Create Triggers that Encourage People to Share
   You need to think about what makes people want to share.  David relates his own story of being asked to ring the closing bell for NASDAQ as his book was being released.  They told him he could bring 50 friends.  He shared this on Twitter and 50 people signed up, it was the first Tweetup ever that happened at NASDAQ and it made the main stream news.
   
   

These five rules can really help you when you are entering into the world of online marketing, but there’s something that companies wrangle with even more.  Fear.

Fear of loosing control, fear that they can’t do this or that, fear of the negative.  You can’t be afraid if you are going to be successful in engaging your audience.  Right now over 25% of companies still limit the access that employees have to the internet because they are afraid of what they “might” do.  This hurts companies more than they know.

David points to the US Air  Force and their use of Twitter and social media.  His story was even picked up and reported on by Wired magazine and he brought one of the US Air Force’s commanding officers to South by Southwest with him to speak to them using these social media channels.  They want to have 330,000 employees in public affairs – all of their soldiers.  When asked about restrictions and worrying about “what could happen”, the officer had the perfect answer:

“If these generals are trusting a 23 year old with a 50 million dollar jet airplane, why can’t they trust them to be on the internet?”

Lots of food for thought if you are a company entering into the online marketing space.  If you haven’t already, make sure you pick up a copy of  “World Wide Rave”, where David goes into more stories about how companies are finding success online every day.

Related posts:

1. Privacy in a Globally Linked World
2. Authentic Engagement with Word of Mouth Marketing
3. Blog Potomac Opening Keynote – Lionel Menchaca
4. SEM Training New York
5. Cause Wired – a book review

Tags: #sesny, #sesnyc, @dmscott, david meerman scott, search engine strategies, ses, ses new york, world wide rave
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