Online viral thought leadership marketing works – here is the proof

I am a huge fan of online thought leadership.

Rather than the old crap about "branding" with slick and expensive advertising that people ignore anyway or being being "on message" with the media hoping some journalist throws you a bone, thought leadership based marketing delivers valuable information that people want to consume, reaching your buyers directly and branding your organization as one to do business with.

Alert readers of this blog may recall that six months ago I published thought leadership content of my own called "The Gobbledygook Manifesto". You may recall that I worked with Dow Jones Factiva to analyze 9 months worth of press releases (380,000 of them!) for meaningless, overused, hype-laden words like "mission-critical" and "cutting-edge."

The Gobbledygook Manifesto was published on my blog and I also issued a press release about it.

Now that six months have passed, I want to report back with some interesting metrics:
> 8 bloggers tracked back to my original post
> 18 comments were left on my original post
> As of this writing, there are 753 hits on Google for the exact phrase “gobbledygook manifesto” (which I made up). There were zero hits the day before my original post so I can safely say that I introduced this phrase to the Web and those hits are a result of my work. The many bloggers and media people who have written about my original work created all of the hits.

> I am particularly intrigued that The Gobbledygook Manifesto secured a mention on Wikipedia under the entry for "mission-critical." It is not only cool that someone mentioned my stuff in this entry, but excellent marketing for me too. Each day I receive traffic to my blog from this Wikipedia entry.

OK, what about ROI? I can definitely track inquiries from companies and conference organizers back to my thought leadership content and I have booked many a bunch of speaking gigs, new consulting clients, and corporate seminars as a result. I do absolutely no "traditional marketing" for my business—it is all thought leadership based in the form of my blog, my books, my magazine articles, and my site.

The best way to reach your buyers directly is through online thought leadership strategies including blogs, Web news releases, ebooks, and viral marketing. Imagine if people learn about you on the Web first, so when they to contact you, the sale is already partly done.

Here is a post I wrote from several months ago on thought leadership including eight tips on how to develop thoughtful content.

Comments

[Michael A. Stelzner]

Hi David;

This is a great example of word of mouth in action.

One important step you took, I recall, was soliciting a select group of bloggers to comment on your Manifesto.

I think that was a key step in lighting the flame.

Mike

[Mike]

I didn't do anywhere near the amount of work you did, nor is mine near as important, but I did coin the term "link leak" and it has 19,300 returns on Google and I too get a ton of visitors each month because of it.

I need to do this for, oh ... 7 other blogs now.

Thanks for making me aware of the power of viral thought leadership.

[David Meerman Scott]

Machael - yes you are correct,. I did email a link to my blog post to a few people who I thought would be interested and I also wrote by-line versions of the article for MarketingSherpa and Pragmatic Marketer magazine. But all in all it was a small effort. Imagine what getting the same result would cost using advertising? A million dollars maybe?

Mike -- "link leak" what a cool phrase! Congrats. I've been thinking of others like that myself...

Cheers, David

[Mehdi Bagherian]

I am wondering how I can buy your product 'The New Rules of PR ebook: Revised and updated for 2007' without credit card. Is there any bank account to draft money to?

[David Meerman Scott]

Mehdi, Thank you for asking about my ebook. It is free! No credit card required. How cool is that?

Here is a link to the blog post http://www.webinknow.com/2007/01/the_new_rules_o_1.html

Here is a link to the ebook http://301url.com/NewRulesofPR

[Michael A. Stelzner]

Hey David - How did you get MarketingSherpa to get one of your articles on your site.

This would be a huge lesson for me.

Mike