I remember when the Internet first gained prominence and it became apparent that having a Web site was essential for any commercial enterprise.

Back then, Web designers were not plentiful and few people thought to hire a professional to create a Web site. They felt that ANY Web presence was better than none at all and they found people they knew to help them who were “into the whole Internet thing.”

As a PR professional, when I would see a Web site that didn’t represent people well or looked amateurish, I’d ask who created it. Invariably, I’d get answers like, “My nephew did it,” or “I bought Web Design for Dummies and did it myself,” or “My son has a friend who just graduated with a degree in computer science.”  While those days have passed for Web sites, I’m afraid I am seeing the same thing happen with regard to social media.

As social media has become a serious part of the foundation of the media in general, some people regard it the same way as they used to regard Web sites – as something that’s a good addition to their marketing tactics, but not so essential that they need to approach it with a professional sensibility. As with any marketing outreach, social media done badly will actually set you back instead of move you forward. Here are some ways to know if you are taking the right approach or heading down the wrong path:

• My Daughter Does That For Me – If your daughter is a college graduate with a broad-based education that includes a degree in mass communications, I’d say you may be on the right track. However, if she’s 18 and her primary qualification is that she has Twitter and Facebook accounts, I’d say you need to reevaluate your choice of marketing personnel here. Just because she’s your daughter and can use Facebook and Twitter, doesn’t mean she has the skills necessary to market a business using social media.

• I Hired a College Intern – While college students may be part of the social media generation, it doesn’t automatically qualify them to do social media for you. Unlike traditional media, which is a communication to a broad audience, social media is one-to-one marketing outreach. You are communicating directly to individuals and anyone who has ever posted an opinion in an Internet forum knows the online audience is not to be trifled with. Understand that your reputation is on the line. With the variety of questions and comments you will receive, it is critical that they’re handled with care and professionalism to avoid any repercussions to your name and brand. A social media marketing professional is an astute communicator who ensures each time the right tone, caring and message is delivered for maximum return and keeps your audience engaged. This dynamic is crucial for the success of the program.

• I Got 11 New Followers on Twitter This Week – Of course, building followers is important, but you’ll never make a social media campaign work with the onesy-twosy approach. For myself, my company and our social media clients, we have a monthly benchmark for building followers. Now, this benchmark is not a gross number, but a net figure after we have weeded out spammers, chronic friend adders, and marriage proposals from men in foreign countries, and yes, I’ve gotten a few of those. J

At the end of the day, social media is serious business.  Do it right and you can create a base of thousands of followers.  Do it wrong and you’ll have spent a lot of time and energy, spinning your wheels and getting nowhere fast.  More importantly, you’ll end up thinking that social media marketing is a complete waste of time, when in fact in today’s world it is one of the most critical and fundamental components for any marketing strategy, which every company needs to put in place.

If you’re an old newspaper hound, it’s not a pretty sight.

The Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC), the standard-bearer of newspaper and print publication circulation reporting, just reported a couple of weeks ago that newspaper circulation for the six months ending Sept. 30 dropped 10.6 percent from the same period in 2008, with a 7.5 percent dip on Sundays.

Other snapshots of the trend don’t make the news look any rosier:

• Oct. 1, 2008-Mar. 31, 2009: down 7.1 percent on weekdays, down 5.3 percent on Sundays.
• Apr. 1, 2008-Sept. 30, 2008: down 4.6 percent on weekdays, down 4.9 percent on Sunday.
• Oct. 1, 2007-Mar. 31, 2008: down 3.5 percent on weekdays, down 4.5 percent on Sundays.

Conversely, as newspaper circulations take a nose dive, online readership of newspaper Web sites is on the rise. Newspaper Web sites attracted more than 74 million monthly unique visitors on average in the third quarter of 2009, more than one-third (38 percent) of all Internet users, according to a custom analysis provided by Nielsen Online for the Newspaper Association of America. The sites collectively tallied more than 3.5 billion page views during the quarter, with users spending 2.7 billion minutes browsing the sites over more than 596 million total sessions.

This is a 17 percent increase over the 62 million unique visitors the same sites drew in 2007. In fact, for the first time in history, the stats now show that more people are getting their daily news online, and not from their daily printed newspaper.

The irony is that while newspapers are bleeding money, they are actually building a healthier combined online and offline readership. More people overall are consuming the news than ever before. People keep hearing about the decline of newspaper readership, but that’s a deceptive statistic, because newspaper Web sites are picking up more readers online than they are losing offline. It also underscores the power of print-based PR, because every time a print article is written about a company, a Web-based article is also born.

Having worked in the business for nearly 20 years, it’s interesting how the attitudes about Web-based news coverage have changed over the course of time.

It used to be that if you got an online placement for a client, they would laugh it off as if the coverage was inconsequential. Today, it’s very different. Recently, we had a client covered on The Huffington Post, which made the client incredibly happy. Soon after, she nearly went into orbit when she was asked to become a regular blogger for the news site. So, it’s not just about the numbers. While 74 million is a good number of unique visitors, the news-based Web sites are growing in influence and prestige, as well. At the end of the day, print and Web combined means more eyeballs for your story.

David is an internationally recognized viral marketing strategist and speaker at conferences and corporate events around the world.

If for some reason you missed part 1 or part 2, please let me know and I will forward them to you right away.

David Meerman Scott: The EMSI Interview

Part 3

MF: David, I would like to ask you about video. What do you think the value of an online video is to creating a World Wide Rave?

DMS: I think they can be huge. Remember though, there are two main uses of video. One use of video is sort of something that might become a World Wide Rave. In other words, you post it on YouTube and then maybe people will talk about it. A great recent example that has all of the classic elements of a World Wide Rave is “United Breaks Guitars.” It’s absolutely fantastic.

Basically, “United Breaks Guitars” is a country music singer who is in a band called Sons of Maxwell. They’re out of Halifax, Nova Scotia.

And so this guy, Dave Carroll, looked at the window of the airplane on the tarmac and they’re throwing his guitar case and his guitar broke, a $3,000 Taylor guitar. And he tried for six months to get United to do something about it and they didn’t. So he decided he was going to write a song about it. And he wrote a song called “United Breaks Guitars” and in a week, it’s had 2.8 million views on YouTube.

MF: Wow — almost 3 million in one week!

DMS: It’s huge. So that’s one use of online video and it’s a fantastic way to get people talking about you. However, a lot of people underestimate the other great use of video. Video is a terrific element to help with the sales process. Imagine the effect of a compelling video on your website that people can watch while they’re investigating as to whether they want to do business with you. So let’s say you’re a professional services firm of some sort: doctor, lawyer, whatever it is. You can have a short video talking about you or your philosophy or some other element.

I went to a chiropractor last week, and he has a series of videos which he sends to his patients. He goes, “Okay, so for that back, I want you to do these exercises at home. I’m going to send you a link to a video on YouTube and that will tell you how to do it.”

So I think there are those two uses of video.

MF: Do you feel like a professional video company is appropriate, or not?

DMS: It can be but it doesn’t have to be. There are a couple of different ways to create a video. Of course, you can bring in the pros, but I don’t think it’s required.

I’ve personally done some great videos just using a $120 Flip video camera. I’m a huge, huge believer in the marketing use of a very, very simple video camera like the Flip.

But you can go all the way up to spending $100,000 with a professional firm to shoot a really slick video for you. It’s not really that big a decision point until you get a sense of what story you want to tell using video, who you’re trying to reach, and what that means in terms of how you need to create it.

MF: In your book there is a chapter entitled “Think Like a Venture Capitalist.” You wrote that the best way to begin a marketing initiative that has the potential to become a World Wide Rave is to think like a venture capitalist or film producer. Can you explain what you mean by that?

DMS: It’s a really quirky thing to try to come up with something that will potentially spread like wildfire on the web. So I recommend people to not think like a traditional marketing person.

A traditional marketing person says “I’ve gotta launch a book” or “I’ve gotta launch a product” or “I’ve gotta increase sales for the last six months of the year” and then do one big marketing campaign. This is not the correct approach when you’re talking about creating a World Wide Rave.

The right approach is to create 10 different things and hope that one or two of them become extremely popular…and you don’t necessarily have to put a huge amount of effort into each one!

Basically, that’s the way a venture capitalist invests in companies. As you can never know if a company is going to become extremely successful, venture capitalists invest in a bunch of different companies. This way they increase the odds of making money because hopefully one or two of them will either go public on the stock market or be sold.

MF: I couldn’t agree with you more. In the process of a world wide rave, is there a formula for how many posts or articles or updates somebody should be doing daily or weekly?

DMS: No, not really. Although I think what’s important is consistency. I think it’s fine if you only want to update your blog twice a month. It’s fine if you want to update your blog twice a day. But what’s not as appropriate is building up an audience based on blogging twice a day and then suddenly going to twice a month. People will think you’re dead.

So generally speaking, the more often you post, the more followers you will get.

MF: That brings me to another question, as CEO’s are so busy in today’s economy trying to keep their company alive, how do they keep up with the wave of the social media?

DMS: I don’t know that the busy CEO or executive has to keep up with everything. However, I think an executive or CEO needs to understand this. There are four ways that their organization can generate attention, and for decades companies have been generating attention using just three ways.

The first way is buying advertising: Yellow Pages, magazine, radio, television, newspaper advertising, billboards, trade shows, direct mail list, whatever. They can buy attention. The second way is that they can beg for attention with the media. They can hire a PR agency or use a team of in-house PR people that will get them media attention in talk radio, television or print. The third way that they can generate attention is one person at a time by hiring a big sales force and having them reach out to people, one at a time.

So for decades, those have been the only three ways that people can generate attention. Buy it, beg for it, or bug people one at a time.

What the social media and social networking sites do is that they allow companies for the first time to earn attention by creating something really interesting on the web. You can earn attention by doing a YouTube video, by creating a blog, by being on Twitter, by being on Facebook.

You can earn attention. And what CEOs and executives should understand is that there’s a fourth way now to generate attention that didn’t exist when they were coming up through the ranks. And they need to understand that there’s another way to generate attention, and it doesn’t always come down to hiring more sales people or spending more money on advertising or firing the PR agency and getting a new one. There’s this fourth way of generating attention, which is earning attention.

Related to that is another very important thing that CEOs and executives — all business owners, entrepreneurs, business people — need to understand. And that is that today people go to the web first when they want to solve a problem.

They don’t go to the trade show first, they go to the web first. They don’t go to the trade magazine first, they go to the web first. They don’t necessarily wait for a sales person to call them; they’re out searching themselves when they’re ready to buy something.

And what that means is that if you’re not out there, you don’t exist. And those two things that I just mentioned are converging now. Number one, more and more people are going to the web to solve their problems. And number two, companies have this unbelievably great opportunity to earn attention by creating stuff on the web.

Now what I see is that a lot of CEOs and executives just don’t understand that. Or if they know it, they don’t want to think through what that means for them. And that’s critically important. Does that mean you have to understand what Twitter is? Of course not. But you do have to understand that you can earn attention of people who are solving their problems by going to the web.

MF: David, the last question I have, and I think it’s really important for business, how do you see phenomena like the World Wide Rave changing the marketing and advertising industry as we move forward in business?

DMS: Well, I think that it’s a separate thing. And I’ve kind of said this now a couple of different ways when I was talking about how people go to cocktail parties. I think that public relations agencies are incredibly skilled at what really should be termed “media relations.” They’re really skilled at trying to get the media to write or broadcast about their companies or clients. And I think that advertising people and advertising agencies are really skilled at buying attention, placing ads or doing billboards, or whatever it might be. The skills that are required to be successful on the web are different. They’re the skills of content creation. And generally — although there are certainly a bunch of exceptions — generally, most PR people that I know and most advertising people I know aren’t good at creating great content of the sort I’m talking about.

Sure they’re great at creating pretty advertising, 30-second commercials, or display ads in magazines. Or they might be good at writing press releases and pitching media, but they don’t have the skills of being able to create a content-rich website for a company or being able to credit a 5-minute YouTube video or being able to create a Facebook presence necessarily. Now can they develop those skills? Sure. But I think that advertising is not going away. I think that public relations is not going away. I think direct sales is not going away.

Those skills will always be in demand, but there’s a new set of skills that are required to be successful with all the things that we’ve sort of talked about. And I think that the organizations and the agencies that are developing those skills are the ones that are understanding that it’s about content creation.

MF: Exactly. What I see is that it really adds so much value to a PR campaign. I can no longer imagine in any sense not having both. It adds great value to advertising and to PR campaigns.

DMS: They all come together. These things aren’t happening in vacuums. I would like to say that these ideas are unbelievably liberating and exciting for us as either business owners or marketers or communicators, we never really had these opportunities in the past. And it’s just exciting that all of a sudden we can create these exciting pieces. And again, it makes marketing and communications fun again. It hasn’t been fun for a while for a lot of us, and all of a sudden, it can be fun again. So it’s all good stuff.

MF: I can’t agree with you more. It’s been a wonderful experience for me too. Being a marketer and a communicator and a PR professional, I mean, for me, it just combines the best of all worlds.

~~ End of Interview ~~

Well, I found David’s remarks to have incomparable value. And from the feedback I’ve been receiving from part 1 and part 2, it seems that many of you have enjoyed this interview as well.

It has given me great pleasure to be able to share this with you, and I would be doing you a disservice if I didn’t also urge you to read David’s recent bestsellers, “The New Rules of Marketing and PR” (Wiley) and “World Wide Rave” (Wiley). If you found the information in this interview useful, you will love both these books.

Below is Part 2 about the marketing value of social networking, which I hope you will enjoy as much as I did! Next week we will conclude the series with Part 3.

David Meerman Scott: The EMSI Interview
Part 2

MF: David, I know you probably get this question all the time, but how does someone best utilize the social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter? It can be overwhelming for somebody who’s just starting or for a busy executive with little free time. With all of the different formats, group applications and constant notifications, how would you recommend they best utilize it?

DMS: Ok, I’m going to take you through my tortured analogy. I think this is a great way to explain how the tools of social networking — by the way, there’s a difference between social media and social networking. Social media defines any online content that people can participate in. So a newspaper website that allows comments is social media.

Social networks are sites that are specifically created to encourage people to network on those sites. And that includes Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and literally thousands of others. But I think those terms are often used interchangeably and they’re not really the same thing.

MF: I think many will thank you for that clarification!

DMS: The confusion is very common. So anyway, getting back to my tortured analogy. Think of the web as a city and think of each activity that happens on the web as being an analogy with what’s going on in an actual physical city.

So in a city, you’ve got the book store, which is Amazon.com. You’ve got Main Street that has stores and shops, which are the consumer-facing websites of the web. You’ve got B2B websites, which are the office buildings. You’ve got the bulletin board when you walk into the supermarket, which is Craigslist. You’ve got the underworld of p*rn and sp*m going on both on the web and in the city, the physical city. You’ve got eBay, which is the garage sale. And so on and so on.

The social media are things like the private clubs; the bowling leagues, the golf clubs, the churches, the bars, and the pubs of the city. These are places where people meet and congregate to share like-minded interests. And just like in a real private club, you join and hang out with people who you like. If you like bowling, you join the bowling league. If you like bowling, you become interested in somebody’s bowling blog. I look at Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and all the others as the cocktail parties that are going on in the city.

So think about a cocktail party. You walk into a cocktail party, you might know a few people there, but a lot of people are strangers to you. And the way that you participate in that cocktail party, the physical cocktail party, is very similar to the way that you would behave on a social networking site like Facebook. So the question then is how do you decide if you should become involved in Facebook, and what you do.

MF: I love your analogy…thinking about it that way makes the web seem like a “real” place. So which cocktail party — social networking site — should someone get involved with??
?
DMS: I think it comes down to the same deciding factors you make about whether you’re going to get involved in a cocktail party. If somebody invites you to join Facebook, it’s kind of the same as if somebody’s going to invite you to come to their cocktail party. You need to make a decision. I’m really busy but Friday night I’ve got time, but what’s better, watching the Red Sox on TV or going to this cocktail party? And that’s the same point you make about joining Facebook.

For a lot of people who are looking to use the social networking sites for business you have to decide “Am I going to go to this cocktail party because I’m simply going to have fun and meet interesting people?” or “Am I going to go to this cocktail party because I’m going to do a lot of business there and maybe make some money as a result?” Some people do only one and some people do only the other, but a lot of us — me included — go to physical cocktail parties and go into social networking sites because it’s likely we’re going to do both.

We’re going to meet interesting people, have some fun, maybe make some friends, but there’s also a decent chance that we will meet somebody who might ultimately be able to help us in business in some way. If you come in with that healthy attitude, sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and whatnot can be extremely valuable.

So the decision point becomes what cocktail party you go to. Do you want to go to the one that’s on the other side of the tracks and in a dirty sort of dungeon-like old warehouse where they’re playing house music that starts at 1 o’clock in the morning and everyone’s got black t-shirts and tattoos?

Or do you want to go to the one where everyone’s got coats and ties and speaks with clenched jaws and talks about their summer homes in the Hamptons?

These are both fine — there is nothing wrong with either of those things. The point is you need to get a sense of where the people are at that you would be interested in hanging out with. Where are they? And where are the people that I might want to do business with hanging out?

After all, a real estate agent can absolutely do business in their city by going to cocktail parties and joining the bowling league. Absolutely.

The same thing is true of these social networking sites. And by the way, the tortured analogy goes even further with Twitter, which is when you’re in a cocktail party and the girls go to the bathroom and talk about the guys and the guys stick around and talk about the girls when they’re gone!

So anything you want can fit this analogy. And I think also that what this analogy does is allow people to get a sense of the right behavior if they’ve never experienced a social networking site.

MF: I’m glad you brought that up David. Can you share with us some of the agreed-upon etiquette for the social networking world?

DMS: You know, a lot of times people who are new to social networking sites tend to behave in ways that aren’t really that well accepted when they first jump in. For example, if you have a sales background, your natural tendency in social networking sites is to sell. But can you imagine if you’re a sales guy, you go into a cocktail party, go into the middle of the room, and scream at the top of your lungs, “Buy my product?”

And some people who have an advertising background, their natural tendency is to buy advertising space. So you don’t go into a cocktail party and then paste posters onto the wall of the cocktail party room that talks about your products and services, do? Of course not!

So I think it’s just a matter of being human, wandering in, seeing who you can meet, being friends with people, being helpful, being interesting, offering to provide advice. And sooner or later, you’ll meet people, you’ll make friends, and all kinds of interesting opportunities will come your way exactly the same way as if you’re on the cocktail party circuit.

MF: Now, I want to talk a little bit about Twitter. I have had clients ask me why someone on Twitter — someone who doesn’t really know them — would even care to read tweets about them, their day or their message.

DMS: Typically what happens is there are three main ways people discover somebody else on Twitter and decide if they want to follow them. One way is if you do a Twitter search. If you do a Twitter search (search.twitter.com is the URL) you do a search under company name, your own name, the category of product you sell, your city and you can find people who are talking about things that are interesting to you and you can choose to follow those people.

Another way is if somebody who you follow all of a sudden is pointing to you and maybe pointing to a blog post that you wrote or one of your tweets. Then other people see this and say, “Oh, that sounds like an interesting person. I’ll try to follow them.” The third broad way is that if somebody starts to follow you, you find out who they are and follow them back. So again, in my earlier analogy, why would someone want to talk to you at a cocktail party? Because you’re interesting!

If you’re not interesting, maybe they won’t want to talk to you more than a minute. If you bore them to tears, they’re going to make the excuse that they need another drink and they’ll go away. But if you’re interesting, people will want to engage with you.

MF: Now, all of the responses can’t be positive in the social networking world. What’s the protocol when you get a negative response?

DMS: First of all, it happens a lot less frequently than a lot of people think…it’s actually quite rare. I’ve had something like 5,000 comments on my blog and probably fewer than 20 have been truly negative. Ultimately, you want to engage the person who has been negative and reply politely saying, “Gee, I’m sorry you feel that way” and go on to explain why you said what you said, and that you hope they can see your side of it. Typically, that’s enough.

But if you really get someone who’s just out of control bent on trying to hurt you, then you just disengage. Again, that’s exceedingly rare. I think that’s only happened to me one or two times. People make it out to be much, much more common than it is. Now of course, there are exceptions. If you work in the banking industry or the airline industry, maybe you’ll see it more often than not. But for most of us, it’s very, very rare.

MF: You know, that’s been my experience too. There’s a really small percentage of people who go out of their way to be rude or difficult, but most people are great! And one of the lessons you (hopefully) learn early in your life is to ignore the jerks and spend your time with the positive folks.

~~~~~ End of Part 2 ~~~~~

I certainly found David’s comments illuminating, I hope you did, too!

Click here to view the David Meerman Scott Interview, Part 1, or Part 3.

As David makes clear in both books, the rules for marketing and PR have changed, and everyone, from marketing executives to business owners and entrepreneurs, needs to understand the new landscape if they want to stay relevant in today’s online world.

I am personally excited about his ideas and I’m delighted I can share them with you! I have separated the interview into 3 parts, and below we start with Part 1. (Part 2 and Part 3 are now available.)

Enjoy.

Marsha Friedman: David, there are so many questions I want to ask you! But to start off I’d love for you to tell us about your new book, “World Wide Rave.” Can you explain exactly what this is?

David Meerman Scott: A World Wide Rave is when people are talking about you or your products, services or ideas. It’s really fascinating…it can be an unbelievably successful way to market because, ultimately, if other people are talking about you in a positive way, you’re reaching a whole new audience of people.

MF: Who would benefit the most from the “World Wide Rave” strategy? Is there a certain type of market, industry or individual that is the best fit?

DMS: I’ve seen it work for all different sorts of businesses: large global organizations, small local companies, for B2B, for consumer brands and everyone in between. I’ve even seen it work for very small, local businesses, like dentists. Ultimately, every single person who’s reading this interview is capable of creating something on the web that has potential for people to talk about it, whether it’s a YouTube video, a really interesting blog post, a series of photographs on Flickr, or even an e-book or a research report.

There are countless formats for how you can trigger people to talk about you. I’m convinced from several years of studying these phenomena that anybody can create something that has the power to spread.

MF: Sounds like a nonfiction author could be a good candidate as well?

DMS: Again, I think anybody. For authors, I’ve had tremendous success with what I call e-books. This is a simple PDF document which provides valuable information on the topic that your book is about. The way it works best is you that you offer if for free, with no registration required, and everyone sees instantaneously that it’s valuable because it’s well designed, well written and because it clearly articulates answers to a problem that people have.

And then they say, “Wow, this is pretty cool! I’m going to share this. I’m going to either email it to a friend or colleague, or tweet about it, blog about it or share it on Facebook.” Then one person sends it to another, who sends it to another who sends it to another.

The reason this is so effective for authors is that within that e-book, typically the second or third page (and then again at the end) you reference your printed book. You can say, “This e-book is written by the author of…” including the title of the printed book and links to purchase the book on your own website, Amazon.com or wherever appropriate.

To put it in perspective, last year I put out an e-book called “The New Rules of Viral Marketing.” So far, that e-book has been downloaded over 600,000 times.

And I point them to my published book “The New Rules of Marketing and PR” as the place that I want people to go if they enjoyed reading that e-book. And that is one of the important reasons that “The New Rules of Marketing and PR” continues to make the Business Week Best-Seller List, even two years after its initial release.

It’s not like people talk about you for five minutes and then you’re history. If you offer something really valuable, it lives on.

Another interesting point that is particularly true for authors of business books is that it allows you to get an important search term into the search engines. Then if you do a clever job with an e-book, you can actually own those search results. So as an example, an important search term for me and for my business is the term “viral marketing.” And actually viral marketing is the term that most people use for the phenomenon that I call “World Wide Rave,” and we’ll talk a little bit later about the differences.

So viral marketing is an important search term for me, and I purposely named my e-book “The New Rules of Viral Marketing” because I wanted to get that term into the marketplace. Now before I did that, if you enter the term viral marketing into Google, you’d probably have to go down to page six or eight before you got to anything that was written by me…which is Siberia when it comes to the search engines because very few people go beyond the first page.

But now because of the e-book’s popularity, if you go to Google and you type in the phrase “viral marketing,” you see something like 5 million hits, and that e-book, “The New Rules of Viral Marketing,” depending on the day that you look, is somewhere between five and seven on the very first page. The fifth, sixth or seventh position. So absolutely, business book authors can use this tool!

MF: David, that is really interesting. How would you define the difference between World Wide Rave and viral marketing? Is there a difference?

DMS: Viral marketing is a term that’s been around for a while and it refers to information that spreads like a virus. There are a couple of reasons why I tend not to use that term very much these days. One is that virus has negative connotations in terms of health and well-being. Not to mention the negative connotations by way of the computer world. I mean, a virus is a bad thing. Right?

You don’t want a virus in your computer. The other issue is that there are many unscrupulous agencies that have jumped on the viral marketing bandwagon, claiming to be viral marketing agents or viral marketing experts and offering to create programs for people around viral marketing initiatives. I have found that a lot of those, not all as there are certainly some great agencies out there, but a lot of them are based on bait and switch contests and games and other odd practices.

That isn’t the form of viral marketing I’m talking about. The World Wide Rave is based on the idea that you create some really valuable and interesting information that people want to share. A lot of viral marketing nowadays has become “Want to Win a Free iPod? Click Here!!!” And when people do click that link, it doesn’t send you them to valuable information. The result is that you don’t get people who are interested in what you’re doing. You get people who are interested in a free iPod.

MF: Great point, David. Speaking of sharing valuable information, what is the value of a blog and a landing page to your online marketing strategy?

DMS: I think that some place that you point people to is always important. Getting people to talk about you is fantastic, but you want to point them somewhere where they can either learn more, buy something, join a mailing list or whatever it might be. There are many different ways to do that.

It could be your Amazon.com page (for authors), your blog, your website or a landing page. If you have an email newsletter, you can point them to the place where they can sign up for the email newsletter. But it is important to provide people with somewhere they can either learn more, buy something or get into your lead-generation program.

MF: That makes total sense, David. Bottom line, all businesses need to make sales, and at some point their marketing efforts need to result in leads and sales.

~~~~~ End of Part 1 ~~~~~

Part 2 of this interview is now available and can be viewed here: David Meerman Scott Interview, Part 2.

And Part 3 is also now available: David Meerman Scott Interview, Part 3.

Women influence 95% of all purchases and control 80% of all household spending.

She specifically points out their spending habits in these categories:

• Domestic Products

“Buying the ‘small stuff’ has always been in the woman’s domain. Part of her domestic duties as wife and mother has been to keep the family healthy, warm, and well nourished. From the family meal to the family doctor, from shirts for her husband to shoes for her kids, chances are those choices have always been hers.

“What many marketers haven’t caught onto yet, though, is that women’s spending power now extends far beyond shoelaces and shirts.”

• Big-Ticket Items

“In the past, the big-ticket items like cars, insurance policies, and major appliances were historically bought by – and therefore marketed to – men. Things have changed! Nowadays, women need their own cars, their own computers, their own cell phones, and their own investment accounts – among many other new big-ticket items – and so manufacturers are facing a whole new market.”

• The Buying Power of Single Women

“Get this: Single women head 27 percent of households in the United States. Did you register that? More than one out of four U.S. households! Thus, a substantial portion of the market for cars, computers, and cell phones, for instance, is dominated by women serving as sole decision makers.”

• The Buying Power of Married Women

“Looking at married households (55 percent of U.S. HH), the fact of the matter is that the woman of the house spends not her own paycheck but a good deal of her partner’s as well. She still handles all the domestic spending. And when it comes to the big-ticket items, not only is she buying her own products – like the single women above – but she also has a disproportionate say in the shared decisions, such as cars, investment accounts, and family vacations.”

So, what’s the “take-away” from all this information? Again, it’s that – Women influence 95% of all purchases and control 80% of all household spending.

As it’s important to me that our clients are groomed to do their best, we provide them with helpful tips they can study and apply. Let me share a few of these tips, in case you’re also using this medium as a means of promotion. These particular tips relate to your appearance: how to dress, which colors show best, make-up (that includes you guys as well) and more. I hope you enjoy them!

1. Wear something that conveys your personality and your message: You don’t want to be judged by your appearance, but knowing that happens, prepare for it. You want to appear confident and professional, so make sure you are comfortable in what you wear and that the color and fit compliment you. Keep in mind that not every camera angle is going to be close up. Your whole outfit will show, including the shoes. Make sure that your shoes are polished and that laces are not frayed or missing all together. Remember, you want to give a good impression so that your appearance speaks to your credibility!

2. Be choosy about color and pattern: Small, tight patterns do not come across well on TV – they tend to shimmer, so solids are better. Certain colors are overpowering on TV or tend to bleed. Black, white and red fit this category. Blue works very well on camera. You want the audience to focus on your message, not your clothing, so keep it simple and classy.

3. Jewelry: Microphones are very sensitive, so although those dangling earrings and that big chunky necklace go beautifully with your suit, you will want to remove them so they do not make any distracting noise. Keep it tasteful and simple; a nice necklace, a ring or two and classic earrings are a good choice.

4. Manicures: Manicures are not just for the ladies anymore. Clean, buffed, trimmed nails are important for men and women alike. When the camera zooms in for a close up on your book or product, your hands will reflect your level of professionalism. For the ladies, if you choose color for your nail polish, tone it down so it doesn’t detract from the cover of your book or product.

5. Put on your face: Not all shows have make-up artists. You should make sure you are made up in an understated and professional manner. Some base and some powder should do the trick. Base will help keep your pores from showing and powder will keep you from looking shiny. This goes for the men, too. Yes, you are going to have to wear make-up, and you may have to apply it yourself! Make sure, gentlemen, that you cover your face and your forehead with powder; you want your message to shine, not your forehead! If the show has a makeup artist, they can then enhance what you have done. If they don’t, then you will look good anyway. Remember…less is more.

Now you can be more prepared for that close-up!

Last week I sent you Part 1 of my interview with Lee Habeeb, a friend and business associate who is a “Talk Radio Coach to the Stars.”  To refresh your memory, Lee currently coaches 7 of the top 10 talk show hosts in America; people like, Michael Medved, Mike Gallagher, Dennis Prager, Hugh Hewitt and Bill Bennett.  He also developed “The Laura Ingraham Show” and was Laura’s Executive Producer for many years.

Below is Part 2 of my interview…I hope you enjoy the information!

Warm Regards,
Marsha

My Interview with Lee Habeeb: Part 2

Marsha Friedman: One thing I regularly tell my clients is the importance of not only being interested in the talk show host who is interviewing them, but also demonstrating a caring for him, his show and his listeners.  In your opinion, how important is this?

Lee Habeeb: In my opinion listeners are attracted to this sort of caring.  Take the case of Click and Clack, the two car brothers.  I don’t really care about car repair or cars, but every time my wife and I are in the car and those guys come on, we tune in because there’s such energy there.  You get the sense that they live, breathe and love cars.  But furthermore, they love each other.  The audience loves them!  The show is so rich in detail, in warmth and humanity, you can’t help but tune in whether you like cars or not.

The best performance comes from those who are relaxed.  These brothers are so relaxed because they prepared for so long, they’ve got the details down so well that when they get on the air, they are ready to go.  And this is what happens as you can probably imagine for most guests doing a radio tour.  The more prepared they are and the more interviews they do, the better they will get!

MF: That’s a great example of how to manage the expectations of a guest.  After booking guests for 20 years, I know that by their 15th interview, that’s when they start hitting their stride.

LH: Yes. The staged interviews you do in a room that aren’t real can be a real waste of time.  It’s like scrimmages.  If you ever coached college basketball and said, “Hey, let’s scrimmage and then we’ll play one basketball game” no one would ever get better.  That’s why there’s lots of practice, but then you get right into the season and you start playing games.  And luckily, there are a lot of games before the NCAA tournament so you can get really good.

It’s the same with radio interviews.  There’s generally a progression.  In the beginning – you’re awkward, not sure what you’re doing, and after all, it’s your first time.  Then step by step, interview by interview, you get better at it.

MF: I often try to explain to people that this is an art – a skill that you develop.  It’s not the same skill as being a public speaker or being a professor.  Just because you’ve done hundreds of public speaking engagements or talked in front of groups, it is not the same thing.  It’s very different, and that difference really needs to be understood.  I emphasize the fact that there is a skill attached to this kind of activity.

LH: Well, look at E.E. Cummings – I think if you had stuck him in sonnets, I don’t know how good he would have been.  So even with poets or even actors who are great on the stage, they just may not be as good in front of a camera.   A good 100 meter sprinter is a different runner than a 440 or a 400 meter.  And I get this all the time.  “Man, he’s such a good guest.  He should host a radio show.”  My response is, “Oh, no, no, no, no.”  Most people who are good guests can’t host a show because they’ve been so good at reducing stuff to six minutes that the idea of carrying a show for 15 hours a week doesn’t work as well.  They’d rather spend 15 hours in a week to get six solid minutes.

So if you’re a professor and you have an hour a day, three days a week, 15 school hours, and you’ve had 8 years to prepare this, that’s a lot of time to make your point, get those ideas across, and do all the goodies and magic you do in that classroom.  But it has nothing to do with coming on a radio show and having seven minutes to impress the listeners.  It’s a totally different format.

MF: You know you’ve really sent home the point that being a good guest is a craft.  You’ve got to study, prepare and drill.

LH: I can go to a basketball game and during the practice, I can pick out who the captain is by how he walks around.  He’s not the guy slamming the ball down and trying to impress the cheerleaders.  No, he’s the guy in a quiet conversation over here because he’s actually the leader.  He’s acting like it; he’s talking like it.  The best way to credibility is to be credible.

The best way to be credible is not to talk about yourself.  Talk about the problem and the solution.  Talk about the audience’s problem, the host’s problem, not your own problem.  Here’s the solution.  I’m not the solution.  This is the solution.  And then your credibility goes up the more comfortable you are in your own skin.  The more you try and sell yourself, the less credible you sound.

MF: That brings up the question about how someone should pitch themselves as a good guest?

LH: For starters, don’t pitch yourself.  Talk to the host, engage him and then through him, define a problem and offer the solution.

These hosts and producers could care less about you…they care about their show!  Every day they look at the pitches they get and think, “Hmm, what would make this show work today?”  And in the timing of the news cycle, what would make the show work.  No matter what business you’re in, there’s a news cycle.  If you’re in the vitamin business, it’s vitamin news.  I’m just trying to make the point that there’s always news you can tie your message into.

MF: Lee, you’ve given us so many nuggets.  Is there a final piece of advice you would like to share?

LH: Get with a professional media coach.  You’re not going to get good as a talk radio guest by yourself.  And, if you’re going to spend x amount of dollars on a PR campaign, make sure you’ve got the coaching.  And make sure you get coached from a seasoned professional who’s actually done it as this is a specialty.  If you’re going to get out there, be prepared.

MF: Lee, thanks so much for taking the time to sit down and speak with me today.

LH: It has been my pleasure Marsha!

###End of Part 2###

Click here to read Part 1.

I sincerely hope you enjoyed my interview with Lee and found some interesting points to consider when thinking about your own talk radio publicity campaign.

As Lee is one of the top “go-to” guys for helping national talk show hosts be the best at this medium – who better to give you advice on how to effectively use this medium when appearing as a guest!

I’ve separated the interview into two parts – below is Part 1 and this link will take you to Part 2.

I hope you enjoy the information!

My Interview with Lee Habeeb: Part 1

Marsha Friedman: Lee, why do you think being a guest on talk radio is such a good marketing vehicle for promoting a product, book or service?

Lee Habeeb: There are a few reasons why being a guest on talk radio is superior to every other medium.  First and foremost, when you’re on a talk radio show you’re getting the implicit endorsement of the host.  And what makes talk radio so powerful is the fact that the relationship between the host and the listeners is very intimate.  This differs from TV where pictures and action distract the audience’s attention and the segments are very short.  The speed of television is – four minute segment, commercials, four minute segment, and commercials again.

With talk radio, the hosts are on with the audience three hours a day (every day) and people become addicted.  They listen in their cars and online.  That three-hour session with that host over a long range of time builds a strong bond.

And these bonds are lasting.  This is evident in the career span of the average radio host.  Look at Gordon Liddy, Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage, they have been doing it for decades and continue to go on and on.  The life of their careers is longer than most television hosts.  Television tends to chew up hosts and spit them out.

And so, the intimacy between the host and listener is powerful.  When you’re a guest, you become the expert the host is endorsing because he’s carving out some of his show time for you.  And I think that is the true power.  It’s the testimonial power and the implicit endorsement that you’re getting from this host.

MF: I couldn’t agree more.  What qualities would you say are the most important for somebody who wants to make the most of their air time when being interviewed as a guest on a talk radio show?

LH: The most important thing to think about is… “Who cares?  Why should I be listening to you?  What are you going to do for me?”  That’s the voice of the audience and they’re brutal.  Just think about when you’re the audience.  If the program doesn’t either pull you in emotionally or provide quality information…you hit that clicker button.  And how many times a day do we hit our clicker buttons while watching TV?  I would say 95% of our choices in television are choices away from certain programs seeking something we like instead.

MF: To reiterate your point, when prepping for the show the question most important to ask yourself is “Who is your audience and why should they care?”

LH: Exactly right.  The most important audience is the host.  If you can engage him, he by proxy is the entire audience.  The only reason most people gather around “The Savage Nation” is because they’re interested in what Michael Savage has to say and what he is interested in.  So by proxy, you don’t have to worry about entertaining Michael’s audience, you simply have to engage and entertain Michael.

The beauty of radio is you’ve got no one to look at, so all you have to do is engage the host.  You’re rarely even in the same room with them.  Moreover, since the host booked you on their show, your message is something they are interested in.  But if the host doesn’t like your interview, you are out the door!

MF: You mean a host will cut the interview short?

LH: Absolutely.  Your job as a guest is to entertain the host, share good insights and provide quality information.  In other words, provide good content for the host…which is what they want more than anything else.  After all, in many cases they could have three hours to fill per day!

MF: You’re really hitting on something which can be an obstacle for talk radio guests to overcome – making the most of their time on air.   The natural inclination for guests is get on the air and start selling.  But the problem is that they end up sounding like an infomercial!

LH: It’s crazy to think “I’ve got to say the name of my book 14 times!”  I’ll never forget, one author we had on Laura Ingraham’s show, who had obviously been coached by a consultant who said, “Name your book 12 times.  When you’re saying a sentence, name your book.”  And so he kept on saying, “Well, in my book “Blah Blah”…in my book, “Blah, Blah.”  Finally, Laura said, “Hey, this interview’s coming to an end right now if you say the title of your book one more time.”  He couldn’t just have a conversation with her and, of course, he only got five minutes and we didn’t book him anymore due to his shameless self-promotion.

The important thing to remember is his time on the air was not his time.  The host has loaned you the airtime, whether you paid for it or not.  As the host, I have given you good grace to invite you into my house.

Ask me about my family before you sell me your book, product or service.  Develop a relationship with me.  If you can do this, I will give you more time, plug your book or product, push you towards success…all without even thinking about it.  Even when you leave the studio, I’m going to say, “Wow, what a great guest.  Don’t forget, you’ve got to go out and buy so-and-so’s book.”

To help this along, be prepared before you are interviewed.  Have your five funny bullet points, a personal story and a flattering story about the host.  The best way to achieve this is to research the host.  Listen to a podcast of a recent show and find out something special that happened and say, “Before we get into the book, I listened last Thursday and that segment you did with so-and-so on sailing, even if you’re not a sailor, you had to love that segment.  Just thank you for doing what you do.”

You’ve got to care.  I think too many people don’t care, and to me pre-show preparation represents caring.

MF: Great point Lee.  It may seem like a lot of research before each show, but the payoff has got to be worth it.

###End of Part 1###

Click here to read Part 2