This advice isn't for everyone, though. Most people don't like running fast in business. They feel more comfortable if there are lots of checks and balances or committees to cover their asses. Or they don't want to destroy the morale of PR and marketing departments due to the disintermediating effects of the Internet.
After all, you can type “OneNote Blog” into Google, Bing, or Yahoo! and you'll find the OneNote team at Microsoft. You can leave a comment and tell them their product sucks and see what they do in response. Or even better, tell them how to earn your sale. Do they snap into place?
It's a new world you're about to enter, one where relationships with influentials and search engine optimization strategy are equally important, and one where your news will be passed around the world very quickly.
You don't believe me?
Look at how the world found out I was leaving Microsoft for a Silicon Valley start-up.
I told 15 people at a videoblogging conference – not A-listers, either, just everyday videobloggers. I asked them not to tell anyone until Tuesday – this was on a Saturday afternoon, and I still hadn't told my boss.
Well, of course, someone leaked that information. But it didn't pop up in the New York Times. It wasn't discussed on CNN. No, it was a blogger I had never even heard of who posted the info first.
Within hours, it was on hundreds of other blogs. Within two days, it was in the Wall Street Journal, in the New York Times, on the front page of the BBC website, in BusinessWeek, in the Economist, in more than 140 newspapers around the world (friends called me from Australia, Germany, Israel, and England, among other countries), and in other places. Waggener Edstrom, Microsoft's PR agency, was keeping track and said that about 50 million media impressions occurred on my name in the first week.
All due to 15 conversations. Whoa, what's up here? Well, if you have a story worth repeating, bloggers, podcasters, and videobloggers (among other influentials) will repeat your story all over the world, potentially bringing hundreds of thousands or millions of people your way.
How did that happen? Well, for one, lots of people knew me, knew my phone number, knew what kind of car I drove, knew my wife and son, knew my best friends, knew where I worked, and had heard me in about 700 videos that I posted at http://channel9.msdn.com on behalf of Microsoft.
They also knew where I had gone to college (and high school and middle school) and countless other details about me. How do you know they knew all this? Well, they wrote a page on Wikipedia about me – not a single thing on that page was written by me.
What did all that knowledge of me turn into? Credibility and authority. Translation: People knew me, knew where I was coming from, knew I was passionate and authoritative about technology, and came to trust me where they wouldn't trust most corporate authorities.
By reading this book, you'll understand how to gain the credibility you need to build your business. Enjoy!
INTRODUCTION
As I write this, it is several months after Donald Trump was elected 45th president of the United States. Rather than rely on the marketing and public relations techniques that had worked in the past, like dozens of other major party candidates did in 2016, Trump embraced the new rules. He spoke directly to his audience via Twitter, and he used real-time content to get the media to pay attention to him, generating more than $5 billion in free exposure for his candidacy. While Hillary Clinton used the strategies that had gotten her husband elected, and Jeb Bush used those that had allowed his father and brother to win, Trump forged his own path using the tools and techniques that you will read about in this book.
Many of the same marketing techniques that elected the most unlikely candidate to the most important job in the world are available to you, right now, for free. I'll show you how they work. Rest assured that you don't need a big international company or controversial opinions to take advantage of these new rules. Let's look at a more approachable example. We'll return to President Trump in Chapter 10.
A few years ago I was considering buying a new surfboard. I've been mainly riding an 8′0″ Spyder Wright over the past several years, and I wanted to get a smaller board. In an article in Surfer magazine, I read about a trend back to wooden surfboards, so I thought I'd do a little research on wood as an option for my next purchase. Like billions of other consumers, I headed over to Google to start my research. I entered the phrase “wooden surfboard.” Then I followed the link to the top search result: Grain Surfboards at grainsurfboards.com.
I was not disappointed. The Grain Surfboards site drew me in immediately with beautiful images of the boards and excellent descriptions of how the company makes them. No wonder Grain Surfboards had the top search result for the most important phrase in their business.
I learned that while surfboards were originally made of solid wood a hundred or more years ago in Hawaii, for the past 60 years machine-made materials such as polyurethane or polystyrene foam have all but replaced wood. After all, wood is heavier and harder to work with.
But along came Grain Surfboards. The company pioneered the idea of applying boatbuilding techniques to make a hollow wooden board that is light, beautiful, and eco-friendly. The Grain Surfboards site wasn't just talking up their products; it was educating me about the history of my sport.
The lessons didn't stop with history. In fact, the company details its building process on the web for all to see. The idea of sharing your best ideas is foreign to many marketers and entrepreneurs, because people don't like their competitors to understand their business. Yet the more you educate a consumer, the more likely he or she is to buy.
Along the way, I learned that at Grain Surfboards, you can buy a build-it-yourself wooden surfboard kit that has everything you need, including detailed plans. I also learned that the company conducts classes most months in its Maine workshop and also has a traveling course (held recently in New Jersey, North Carolina, and California). If building your own board doesn't appeal to you, you can have the artisans at Grain Surfboards craft one for you.
Grain Surfboards perfectly illustrates a different way of doing business – the very method we will discuss in this book. Grain Surfboards understands that when you share your work on the web, you spread your ideas and grow your business as a result. Throughout these pages, we'll discuss how to create content that educates and informs, just like Grain Surfboards does.
As I was poking around on the site, I found my way to the Grain Surfboards Facebook page (12,000+ likes) and the @GrainSurfboards Instagram feed (50,000+ followers). Grain Surfboards engages with fans and shares what's new. Because they are excited to be engaged, fans naturally help spread the company's ideas – without even being asked. On the Instagram photo-sharing site, for example, Grain Surfboards posts get hundreds of likes and many comments and shares. The team regularly shares images of the boards they are building, of customer-created work, and, of course, images of surfing enthusiasts shredding atop beautiful Grain Surfboards.
In this book, you'll learn how to use tools like Instagram and Facebook in your business too. Social networks are easy, fun, and powerful! It just takes a minute or two to shoot a photo, manipulate it with the filters, and share it with your network. With Instagram, the images do the talking, so even writing-challenged people can create awesome content.
In about 10 minutes of research on the Grain Surfboards site, as well as their Facebook and Instagram feeds, I made up my mind to purchase one of their boards. But I did more than that. I signed up for the four-day wooden surfboard building class held at the factory in York, Maine. When I read this description, I just couldn't refuse this empowering