Web Ink Now

Sex, shaving, and your oral health

Please forgive the gratuitous headline but I couldn’t resist. Two new free ebooks have been sent to me recently and both of them involve sex. Well, sort of.

Dianna Huff points us to Dr. Helaine Smith, a Boston, Massachusetts cosmetic dentist. Dr. Smith asks the question: "When was the last time you thought about your teeth? That's like asking when you last thought about your femur or your elbow."

In her new e-book, Healthy Mouth, Healthy Sex! Dr. Smith explains the connection between oral health and sexual well-being: "a topic not too many people talk about."

She says: “What many people don't understand -- or even consider -- is that the health of our teeth and mouths has a huge connection with our overall physical health -- and our sex lives!

Luke Faccini points us to an ebook that his agency The Sponge created called The 6 Essential Elements to an Exceptional Shave!

The ebook asks: "Were you taught how to shave by a pro? More likely you've unknowingly taken on the bad habits of your father, or even worse, you've taught yourself to shave from what you've seen on television commercials. If you ever get razor burn, ingrown hairs, redness or irritation then you have to read on!"

The ebook includes six reasons why you should pay attention to your daily routine with number 6 being: "The amount of sex you get is in direct proportion to how well you shave!"

The sex angle, while just a teeny bit gimmicky, does spark some interest because the authors are linking sex to unexpected things like shaving and dentistry.

I really like these ebooks. If a dentist and an Australian company producing "male grooming products that were created to increase the appeal of the uncompromising man" can find topics to write an ebook about, it shows that virtually any company, product, or organization can use an ebook to tell a story.

You can too!

Disclosure: Both of these ebooks kindly mention me in the acknowledgments and I thank the authors for that. I had nothing to do with the development of either ebook. However, both authors were in some way inspired by the information about creating ebooks that I included in this blog and in my latest free ebook The New Rules of Viral Marketing: How word-of-mouse spreads your ideas for free.

Al Gore: PR agent for planet earth

Al Gore was on 60 Minutes last night and I was struck with how successful he is in the role of Public Relations.

(Please note: This is not a political blog. I am not commenting on presidential politics or on the politics of global warming. This is commentary on Gore as a communicator.)

PR and marketing professionals should look to Gore as an important case study on how to do things right. Here are my top-of-mind thoughts:

1. Al Gore has successful communicated a powerful idea, that "Global Warming is the greatest challenge facing our time." He doesn't talk about his products -- books and movie -- instead he communicates powerful ideas. He knows exactly what he wants his buyer personas to believe.

2. Gore pays attention to buyer personas and he tailors his presentations accordingly. For example, when he talks to evangelical Christians, he includes passages from the Bible.

3. Gore is persistent, building his ideas over time. When he first started talking about Global Warming years ago, very few people were interested. He kept at it, speaking to hundreds of groups and building the buzz.

4. Gore understands how to use the media to help deliver his information. In practically every interview I've seen with him, Gore talks about climate change. To use an old PR term, he is "on message." Even when reporters draw him into other discussions, like who he supports for President, he brings the conversation back to what is important to him.

5. Gore understands how to use the Web. He has an attractive, content rich Web site and he is a blogger.

6. He is the undisputed thought leader when it comes to climate change and he delivers his ideas through various media including online, print (his book An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We can do about it), and video (the documentary An Inconvenient Truth.)

7. He knows how to deliver compelling live presentations.

8. Gore understands global communications. An Inconvenient Truth been translated into 27 languages, and he delivers speeches all over the planet.

9. Like many successful PR pros, Gore knows that sometimes advertising is important in an overall communications campaign. He is using the profits from his books and documentary as well has his Nobel prize award to kick off a $300 million advertising campaign to raise awareness about climate change. (You should start seeing TV ads soon.)

10. Awards programs, another PR tool, are part of his work. You can't do much better than an Oscar and a Nobel. (An Inconvenient Truth won an Academy Award for best documentary feature in 2006, and Gore was awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize (together with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) for the "efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change." And when he wins an award. Gore talks again about his powerful idea because he know the world's media is paying attention.

Al Gore, PR Agent for Planet Earth.

PR and Marketing pros can learn from his work. I certainly have.

Video mashups: Easy to create and informative for visitors

Alert readers of this blog know that I am a believer in the power of YouTube videos for any organization to show the world what they are doing. Video, done well, is great marketing.

Many people (particularly those from large companies) push back and say things like: "We can't do a video like Blendtec's Will it Blend – that seems too difficult. Besides, we’re a _______ company." (Fill in the blank with conservative, B2B, nonprofit, famous, startup, or some other excuse for not doing videos).

Well, there's an option. Why not do a video interview program that's essentially a mashup of the audio from a telephone interview with someone of interest to your market, with some in-house video.

WebProNews does a great job with this format. Kara Ratliff interviewed me on the phone for about a half hour and then condensed the conversation into just under four minutes in the studio.

Watch WebProNews Publicizing Your Blog

I've had many people tell me they’ve seen the video and there are 16 comments as of this writing. Clearly people are interested in this format.

Here's another example, WebProNews Reporter Kara Ratliff takes a look into how you can make money from blogging through syndication. She talked with President of Newstex, Larry Schwartz about benefits and disadvantages, along with other various topics of syndication.

Kara uses audio from Larry plus some video footage of him from the BlogWorldExpo conference and a bunch of screen shots. I syndicate my blog through Newstex (and, disclosure here, I am on the board of advisors of Newstex). Despite being affiliated with Newstex for several years, this is probably the best explanation of blog syndication I've ever seen and the video mashup format is what makes it work.

So if your company is considering some YouTube videos but you think that the funny viral stuff may not be for you, consider a video mashup like these from WebProNews. You can interview people in your industry, perhaps some customer, partners, and analysts, add in your own analysis, and pop the videos up onto YouTube.

New Rules of Viral Marketing update and free virtual book tour teleseminar

It's been twenty days since I released my new ebook The New Rules of Viral Marketing: How word-of-mouse spreads your ideas for free.

I'm amazed at the stats. In just 20 days:
> 42,810 downloads (based on my Web analytics)
> Close to 100 blog posts about the ebook (depends on which blog search engine is used)
> Well over 1,000 hits on the exact phrase "new rules of viral marketing" (on the day I put out the ebook there were zero hits on the phrase.)

How did I achieve these results?

I didn't do a thing. I didn't beg the media to write about it. I didn't pay for expensive advertising to promote it. I didn't interrupt people by sending it out via email.

All I did was post it on my blog. That's it. You did the rest. Thank you for downloading the ebook and for talking about it.

(Well, I guess I can safely say that my viral marketing ebook has gone viral.)

++++++

UPDATE - Due to a scheduling problem with the technology provider, the live event needs to be postponed to Tuesday March 4, 2008 at 6:00PM eastern time. Sorry for the inconvenience.

++++++

I'll be on a live teleseminar Tuesday February 26th, 2008 at 5:00 PM EST to discuss viral marketing in depth. For about 70 minutes, I'll answer questions that you submit to me and discuss the issues people face with going viral. It's free to participate. I hope you can make it.

Mike Sigers, of Simplenomics kindly offered to host the live Q&A with me. Mike will do the Q part and I'll do the A part. Mike is a sales and marketing consultant who simply tries to help people find easier, simpler ways to sell more and market their products and services for less cost with bigger results.

To submit a question for Mike to ask me, please go to the New Rules of Viral Marketing Virtual Book Tour site. You'll have an opportunity to post the question and then get the dial in information.

Your questions are really important to me. As I learn more about viral marketing and more about what you want to know about viral marketing, I will be creating more information about how to spread your ideas for free. The questions help me to speak, write, and produce the most valuable information.

If you don't want to ask a question, but would like to listen in, that's cool too. Please go here.

If you can't participate live, ask your question anyway. The New Rules of Viral Marketing Virtual Book Tour site will have the replay as an MP3 the morning after the live event.

Thank you for spreading my ideas.

Personal branding, great design, and a new masthead

I'm a huge believer in the power of personal branding on the Web. How cool is it that you can create interesting content that people want to read and share? Things like ebooks, blogs, YouTube videos and the like show the world your passions. And then interested people seek you out.

For nearly a decade, my favorite designer is a genius named Doug Eymer. I worked with Doug in my last corporate VP marketing job and continued using Doug to create killer designs for two of my book covers – Eyeball Wars and Cashing in with Content. Doug also designed my Web site and my two most popular ebooks The New Rules of PR and The New Rules of Viral Marketing.

I commissioned Doug to do a new masthead for my blog. The direction I gave Doug was that I wanted to convey through the masthead the ideas I talk about, particularly the concept that you can create great content on the Web and that you don't need to rely on expensive advertising or begging the media to get noticed.

I also wanted to carry consistency of my designs through my various publishing endeavors. The blog masthead was the one thing that had been a little "off" because the old design (which I liked very much) was done by a different person.

Here is the old masthead

My friend, the positioning guru Mark Levy, says of the new masthead: "Doug nailed it, David. It's perfect. It's energetic, passionate, and shows the power of the individual's mind and voice in action. Bravo."

I think Doug did a great job, don't you?

(Note – if you're reading this soon after I changed mastheads today and you're seeing my old masthead, you may need to hit refresh on your browser.)

Thanks Doug!

Why most CMOs get fired

A few weeks ago I get a call from Gary Stern, a columnist for Investors Business Daily.

Gary says, "I'm doing a story on the average tenure of Chief Marketing Officers, which is only 26 months. This is much shorter than 44 months, which is how long CEOs last. Can you comment?"

"Oh, boy can I," I say. "How much time do you have?"

(I could talk about this all day.)

We ended up talking for about a half hour. Basically I ranted. A lot.

I didn't give my opinions in quite this way, but here's a few ideas to let you know what I think:

> CMOs get fired because they would rather spend money on a PR agency to spam the media than be thought leaders that the media seeks out.

> CMOs get fired because they measure themselves on leads and press clips instead of what the marketplace thinks about their company and its products and services.

> CMOs get fired because they would rather spend millions on TV commercials than figure out how to get a free YouTube video that goes viral.

> CMOs get fired because they ________ (fill in the blank – there are many more reasons).

(And once they are fired and are looking for a new job, ex-CMOs obsess about resumes and networking and spamming people via LinkedIn instead of blogging, speaking, and writing about what they are passionate about.)

Gary did a terrific job with the article. It is slated for the print edition of IBD on Monday February 4. But here is a sneak peek via CNN online:

How To Move CMOs Out Of Harm's Way

Gary's article begins:
"Warning: If you're seeking job security, don't think about becoming a chief marketing officer. Over the last few months, the CMOs of Home Depot, Wendy's, Rite Aid, and Chico's CHS changed over."

Read the rest of How To Move CMOs Out Of Harm's Way

The New Rules of Viral Marketing - free ebook!

The New Rules of Viral Marketing: How word-of-mouse spreads your ideas for free

> Imagine you're the head of marketing at a theme park, and you're charged with announcing a major new attraction. What would you do?

> What would you do if you were a vice president of marketing for a technology company and you were ready to find a new opportunity to advance your career?

> If you were a marketing executive for a big, famous company, how could you quickly put a human face on your organization?

> Or think of a marketing program that you might initiate if you suddenly had to launch a startup technology and services company targeting marketing professionals, Web designers, and business owners interested in improving their Internet marketing. How would you do it?

The answers will surprise you. The smart marketers profiled in The New Rules of Viral Marketing: How word-of-mouse spreads your ideas for free tell you exactly how they used viral marketing and provide advice in their own words.

Download The New Rules of Viral Marketing now! It's free and there's no annoying registration requirement.

You and I are incredibly lucky.

For decades, the only way to spread our ideas was to buy expensive advertising or beg the media to write (or broadcast) about our products and services. But now our organizations have a tremendous opportunity to publish great content online—content that people want to consume and that they are eager to share with their friends, family, and colleagues.

How word-of-mouse spreads your ideas for free!

Word-of-mouse is the single most empowering tool available to marketers today. I wrote this e-book so you can take advantage of the power of viral marketing too. In it, I share ideas that will help you create your own viral marketing strategies and campaigns. These are the "new rules" I've used to create marketing programs that have sold more than a billion dollars' worth of products and services worldwide.

It's not easy to harness the power of word-of-mouse, but any company with thoughtful ideas to share—and clever ways to create interest in them—can, after some careful preparation, become famous and find success on the Web.

Please download my new ebook. And if you find it interesting, please share it with whomever you believe would benefit from reading it. Thank you.

This Year in Marketing Blogs: GrokDotCom's list of Definitive Posts of 2007

GrokDotCom has created a list of the definitive marketing posts of 2007.

They say: “Blogs have taken over, creating a feedback loop between journalists and readers, businesses and customers, you name it — conversation has officially changed the game.”

This is an absolutely terrific list. I've read about a dozen of the 39 posts and all are stellar. Good thing there is some holiday downtime coming up so I can read the rest.

A Brand Your World personal branding summit audio archives available

Last month, in celebration of the 10th anniversary of Tom Peters' thought provoking-article on Personal Branding "The Brand Called You" published in Fast Company, I participated in A Brand You World, one of the largest global events ever on the subject of personal branding.

If you didn't have a chance to listen in live, the audio archives are available for free download.

My session Promoting Brand You with Viral Marketing on the Web was a great conversation with Krishna De, Europe's leading personal branding and marketing strategist. Thanks Krishna for inviting me to participate.

Here are some other notable sessions that you might want to check out.

Evangelizing Evangelists to Build a Business and Build Your Brand, an entrepreneur panel moderated by Guy Kawasaki

How to Write a Great Business Blog with Debbie Weil

Express Your Personal Brand Through the Power of Podcasting with Neville Hobson

Identity You: Creating a Personal 5x5 Branding Strategy with Phil Gerbyshak

Millions and millions of books, twenty authors, and one funky room

"I choose Mug root beer from the big white fridge with the pull handle because that's what I would have grabbed in my own rec room. The mismatched furniture and leftover paint that colors the walls are just what we had at home. As a place to stimulate ideas and build new friendships it’s great to finally get out of those damn hotel conference rooms and instead meet in a place that reeks of Pink Floyd and making out with Nicole in the corner. As I first sip my Mug, I swear cheap incense burned thirty years earlier still lingers. A flashback, perhaps."

I've attended more than 50 conferences in 2007 where I was invited as a speaker and this week, I finally attended one for me. As an attendee! The terrific business book author Pow Wow, expertly sponsored by 1-800-CEO-READ (8CR), brought together 21 business book authors, and industry luminaries including publishers, publicists, designers, speaker’s agents, and more.

There were dozens of bestsellers represented and millions of books sold. It was so terrific to meet and share ideas about writing, marketing, and selling books. And with this group of extremely successful entrepreneurs we all picked each others' brains on the business of speaking and writing as a career. I learned a great deal (hey 8CR – sign me up for next year!)

The paragraph above was the result of a writing assignment – we had about ten minutes to write a few sentences that describe the funky Catalyst Ranch room we were hanging out in.

Here are the authors who attended:

Erika Andersen Growing Great Employees

Greg Alexander Sales Benchmarking

Jose Castillo

Kevin Eikenberry Remarkable Leadership

Phil Gerbyshak 10 Ways to Make it Great

Joanne Gordon Be Happy at Work

Jackie Huba Church of the Customer

Joe Heuer Business Daffynitions

Mike Kanazawa Big Ideas to Big Results

Alexander Kjerulf Happy Hour is 9 to 5

Steve Little The Milkshake Moment

Ben McConnell Citizen Marketers

Robert Mintz The World According To You

Jack Mitchell Hug Your Customers

Susan Quandt Sudden Impact on the Job

Michael Stallard Fired Up or Burned Out

Dan Roam The Back of the Napkin

John Rosen Stopwatch Marketing

Rajesh Setty Life Beyond Code

AnnaMaria Turano Stopwatch Marketing

Bill Welter The Prepared Mind of a Leader

Steve Yastrow We

Here are the people who work in the business book publishing world who shared ideas with us:

Ray Bard - Bard Press

Mark Bloomfield - Harvard Business School Press

Shelley Dolley - Leap7

Barbara Cave Henricks - Cave Henricks Communications

Mark Fortier - Fortier Public Relations

Nick Morgan - Public Words

Gerry Sindell - ThoughtLeaders Intl

Les Tuerk - BrightSight Group

Dennis Welch - Cave Henricks Communications

Susan Williams - Jossey-Bass

Thank you to Jack, Todd, Sally, Kate, Dylan, and Aaron from 8CR for putting on this great event.