My new book World Wide Rave

UPDATE February 22, 2009

Thanks to everyone who participated in the poster shoot. The video is here. Unfortunately, my stock of posters is so low that I can no longer send any out.

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I've hinted a few times starting early this year about my new book World Wide Rave: Creating triggers that get millions of people to spread your ideas and tell your stories.

Now World Wide Rave is real. And I want you to hear about it first.

The manuscript is complete. It is now going through the editing, proofreading, indexing, layout process. World Wide Rave will be released on March 3, 2009, published by John Wiley & Sons.

I just love the cover designed by Doug Eymer, my friend and collaborator for more than ten years. Doug, who designed this blog, my site, and my ebooks, also designed some fun elements (such as Rave the Rooster) for the inside of the book, which will be, get this, two color! A business book with more than black and white pages? Are you a heretic, David? Well, yeah, I guess I am a marketing heretic! Not only that, the cover will be like a retro old school textbook with the cover image printed right on the hard cover (instead of the typical paper dust jacket). Hey David, are you insane? No dust jacket?

A World Wide Rave, what the heck is that?

A World Wide Rave is when people around the world are talking about you, your company, and your products. Whether you're located in San Francisco, Dubai, or Reykjavík, it's when global communities eagerly link to your stuff on the Web. It's when online buzz drives buyers to your virtual doorstep. And it's when tons of fans visit your Web site and your blog because they genuinely want to be there.

In the book I talk about how you can trigger a World Wide Rave too—just create something valuable that people want to share, and make it easy for them to do so. The research I did for more than a year on what some call "viral marketing" turned up fascinating stories from unlikely people and the World Wide Rave they triggered. There's the Australian men's grooming products company with an ebook about shaving and its link to sex, a Boston area cosmetic dentist who has grown her business four-fold in a few years through a blog and a podcast, a compliance software company with an outrageous viral video, an out-of-work marketer who had tens of thousands of people visit his blog in just the first month, a woman who teaches street defense techniques to young women and her use of mobile phone video clips contributed by teenagers, a real-estate agent who sold a house for full price AND won $25,000 with a YouTube video and many, many more stories.

The 37 stories in World Wide Rave led to the 6 essential elements that must be in place for an idea to spread and for people to share your stories. And I share those too.

Marketers may be interested to know about a difficult decision I faced and how I handled it. I always recommend that you never announce a product too early. Normally, I would never talk about a book a full year before its release. However, I coined a new phrase, World Wide Rave, and I wanted to "lay claim" to the phrase in Google and other places online. I thought it was just too good a concept and too great a book title for someone else to use first. So I dropped a few hints here and there starting in April 2008. Did you see any? Now the top search engine results for the phrase point to my stuff.

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UPDATE February 5, 2009.
Sorry, the poster offer is now complete. I distributed over 1,000 posters. Thank you to all who participated.

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I could use your help

You may notice that the book cover design that Doug and I developed looks like an old rock poster. (Cool, isn't it?) Our idea was that prior to the web, rock bands invested a lot of money in a great poster and plastered it all over a city before a gig. They created a localized World Wide Rave by using interesting graphics.

Well, we created posters too. And I want to send you one.

I am having people around the world put the poster somewhere interesting in their country, with fascinating people, or in unusual settings, and then send me a digital image or short video. My goal is to get a bunch of countries / cities / locations represented. You'll see some fun examples already on the World Wide Rave site.

I've got a stash of posters ready to be mailed. Do you want one? If you do, I hope you'll take a photo or very short video with the poster, but there's no obligation. Here's how it works:

1. Send me your postal mailing address to me via email. Please send to -david(at)DavidMeermanScott(dot)com - see the tricky way I put my email address to avoid bad email harvesters? I'm sure you can figure out what my address is.

2. When you email me, please send your address exactly as I should cut and paste it onto a mailing label. Also, please put "poster" in the email subject line. I'll mail you out a poster right away. Note that I have a large, but not unlimited supply of posters.

3. Shoot the photo or short video. Background should be something representing your city or country. Or you could shoot an interesting or unique situation or place if you want. I would like to have you and other people in the photo!

4. Upload the photo to your blog or flickr or just email me a digital image. If you shoot a video, you can upload to YouTube or another video site. If you can, use WorldWideRave as a tag. And provide some detail about where you shot it, who is in it and so on.

5. If you post the photo or video somewhere, please email me a link so I don't miss it.

6. I'll post as many photos and videos as I can on my World Wide Rave site with a link back to you. Some photos will go on this blog with a link to you. Some will be in a video I'm making. Who knows, I may give out a prize or two upon the book release. Creativity counts. Thanks!

To get your creative juices flowing, here are some of the photos and videos that I already have and that you will see at the World Wide Rave site.
- In Villingen-Schwenningen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany
- With New Zealand Maori Haka war dancers
- On Nantucket Island
- At HubSpot global headquarters
- Atop Mt. Ooe, Kyoto, Japan
- At the New Media and Public Relations class at Boston University, College of Communication
- With the Intertial Electrostatic Confinement Device in the University of Wisconsin-Madison Engineering Physics Department's Fusion Technology Institute
- With Gary Vaynerchuk, star of Wine Library TV
- At Guinness Storehouse in Dublin, Ireland

Comments

[Leo Wurschmidt]

The book sounds awesome! If it is anything like your previous books it will be a great read.

Just emailed my address to you. I live down in NC so not much in terms of fancy other country. But hey that just forces me to be a little more creative. :)

[Jessica]

David,

Interesting and creative way to spread knowledge about your book and encourage participation from your fans!

Cheers!

[Roger C. Parker]

David:
Congratulations.

You've already defined a new approach to publishing in your "New Rules," I'm sure you're about to do it again with World Wide Rave.

Best wishes on your continued success. Roger

[Byron Van Arsdale]

David:
First time to you blog and follow you on Twitter! Congrats on coining a new term and love your creativity. Thanks for the inspiration and look forward to reading your book.

Looks like it's going to be a Rave new world!!

Doug - love your design work!

Byron Van Arsdale
@headset

[Ryan Beale]

David,

"The New Rules of Marketing and PR" and "Tuned In" are excellent books. I am looking forward to the release of World Wide Rave!

Cheers,

Ryan

[doug eymer]

David ::

Thank you for the kind words (again!). You are a designer's dream client. You allow me to be creative, innovative and evolve as a visual communicator.

Everyone! Buy this book! Your brain will grow! You will make more money!

You will allow David and me to work on more cool projects!

Doug.

[Lisa McGrath]

I was all ready to go buy it & read it this weekend. Alas, I will have to wait until March. Love the cover & can't wait for the book!

[Ron Mlller]

When David released his last book, The New Rules of Marketing and PR, he did something incredibly clever. He wrote a blog post as public thank you note to anyone who helped him (even peripherally) in putting the book together, then he linked to each person's blog.

What David did is start an avalanche of linking and relinking where people reprinted the list over and over. This was a couple of years ago, when social networking wasn't quite what it is now, but David already knew the power of the internet and used it to his advantage to promote his book.

He not only wrote advice about marketing in this fashion, he actually practiced what he was preaching in the book. Not surprisingly, the book became a best seller.

Now David has a new book and here we are again, and social networking has matured significantly and so David's approach has grown that much more sophisticated.

You are a clever guy, David, and you bring new meaning to walking the walk. I wish you all the best with your new book, but I know that you don't need luck. I'm quite sure it will be a smash because you know this stuff cold.

Ron Miller
By Ron Miller Blog
http://byronmiller.typepad.com

[David Meerman Scott]

Thanks, all, for your kind support. I'm really jazzed about this book. But it is like having a baby - you gotta wait 9 months!!

Ron, Wow. Thank you for such kind words.

Yes, you've nailed it. Back in 2007 when I released "The New Rules of Marketing & PR" I had a challenge to myself - how to market the book using the techniques that I wrote about in the book. The blog link strategy worked amazingly well and the book is now in the eleventh printing in hardcover, is out in paperback and is translated into 20 languages.

Now with a new book about how ideas spread online, I need to try to generate a World Wide Rave of my own. Not easy! But I'm using the techniques I write about in the book.

Take care, David

[Jared Young]

David, I loved "New Rules" and look forward to reading and blogging about World Wide Rave, as well.

What I really love, though, is that you practice what you preach... even in promoting your books. You continue to prove that your ideas work by using them yourself. I have tremendous respect for that.

Thanks for all you do... looking forward to WWR!

[Michael A. Stelzner]

David;

Another brilliant "social proof" marketing move! I love it.

Mike

[Laura Ahlbin]

but what if your core audience isn't super tech savvy and they are not web 2.0 geeks? Can you still create a world wide rave using this book?

[David Meerman Scott]

Laura, Of course!! I do not write for Web 2.0 geeks, I write for marketers and entrepreneurs who want to reach their buyers online.

Take a look at any of the posts on this blog or take a look at the reviews on Amazon for my previous book "The New Rules of Marketing & PR".

David

[Amr]

Not having a dust cover on your next book is brilliant. I am currently in the middle of reading your book, the new rules, and its dust cover is sitting in a different country (England, I am in Egypt). I find them very annoying to handle and unless I store them somewhere I always end up damaging them somehow.

I bought your book to help me spread the word about a new travel Web 2.0 website that I am soon launching with friends (would like to tell you about it but don't want to be spamming). I find the content very useful but the trick is in the implementation. Hope I can manage.

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I like your book, I have a copy now. thanks for the post.

-heather-

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