Want to see a World Wide Rave in action?

Check out David Meerman Scott’s new (way, way cool) World Wide Rave video — a montage of live video and photos of people all over the globe holding World Wide Rave posters.

David says in his new book that he gets push back on why companies can’t do a World Wide Rave: “We’re too small.” “We’re too big.” We’re B2B.”
“We sell widgets.” “We don’t have a large audience.” “We’re too boring.” (Ok, I made up the last excuse.)

You could also add, “I’m not a big name guru like David Meerman Scott.”

As David shows, in this new video and in his book, ANYONE can create a World Wide Rave. And it really isn’t that difficult.

I know, because I published an e-book, “Five B2B MarCom Strategies to Increase Sales Now,” last August. I didn’t really do anything to publicize it, except post it here on this blog and submit a press release to PRWeb.

Since then, I’ve been interviewed by Jon Miller of the Marketo blog and personal branding guru Dan Schawbel.

I’ve had thousands of people download it.

And I’ve had a number of people call or email to tell me how much they like the e-book and how it contains really great information they can use in their jobs. (This is why I wrote the e-book. My whole purpose is to help other B2B marcom pros develop marketing strategy that gets results.)

I’ve also given numerous presentations locally and have been asked to give three more in the near future — something that I’ve never had happen before.

And, I won a Platinum MarCom Creative Award for the e-book – one of 18% of entrants to do  so.

On the flip side, I have not received any direct business from the e-book, meaning, I have not had one person call to say, “Wow! I read your e-book and now I need to hire you!”

Not generating leads, sales, or business is usually why companies don’t use tactics like viral e-books or social media because it’s hard to measure the ROI and/or justify the expense.

What does happen when you create a World Wide Rave is that people talk about you and share your ideas — which draws even more people into your circle. As David says, when people are talking about you, some of them will end up using your products and services, which may be why I’m completely swamped with work.

So what are you going to do to get people talking about you?

The Boston Globe ran a great story on Sunday, February 15. Titled, Amid Recession, Vein of Optimism, it featured companies in the greater Boston area that see our current economic situation to be one of great opportunity.

Instead of hunkering down, they are growing and expanding.

Another company that’s growing – and hiring! – is Birst, the first on-demand, self-service, automated business intelligence and analytics solution that’s being marketed to companies of all sizes — from one-person firms to small and mid-size businesses (SMBs).

I had the opportunity to talk to Birst’s Director of Marketing, Barbara Lewis, about the company and why it’s growing so fast.

(Quick fact: Business Intelligence (BI) is the act of integrating disparate data and then analyzing it in order to produce a comprehensive picture of a business.)

According to Barbara, business intelligence applications have been around for decades, but the solutions offered were incredibly big, complicated, and took months or years to deploy. In addition, the customer had to do a lot of the work.

“BI systems were generally sold to large enterprises,” says Barbara. “The process was akin to purchasing a car by its various parts and then having to assemble the car yourself. These systems were so big and so expensive, only very large companies could afford them.”

Enter Birst in 2004 — or Success Metrics, as the company first called itself. The company was conducting on-demand BI at enterprise scale for Fortune 50 companies when the founders realized they had built a modern BI solution that any company could use.

Launched in September 2008, the automated Birst solution lets companies upload data from a variety of sources, including Excel spreadsheets, databases, and enterprise applications,analyze it, and then easily share reports and dashboards.

I took the Birst virtual demo and was astounded at what the tool can do — a reaction that many of Birst’s customers have when they first encounter Birst.

“People’s jaws drop when they see the demo,” says Barbara, “because they instantly ‘get it.’ Birst is the first integrated BI solution that’s automated and cost-effective. Instead of counting deployment in months or years, you can count it in days or weeks.”

Birst was so successful, the company changed its name in November 2008 — and since then, has been growing rapidly and adding employees to its engineering, sales, and marketing departments.

Some of its recent marketing activities include hiring a public relations agency and sending out a commissioned humorous card (designed by artist Kevin Pope exclusively for Birst) that pokes fun at the competition.

According to Barbara, Birst isn’t just for small or mid-sized  companies. Currently, they are in talks with a national retailer who already has a multi-million dollar BI system; however, one of the company’s departments doesn’t have access to the data because the existing system is so expensive and complex that it was only rolled out to certain parts of the company, leaving other departments out. 

Said the retailer’s department team, “We want something for us that fits our budget and our needs.”

“Birst is the perfect tool for right now,” says Barbara. “People want to know more about their businesses. They need to know what is driving revenue and costs. You can’t do this without business intelligence.

“Because Birst is so fast and so affordable, you can get this intelligence within days or weeks — and have immediate impact on your business.”

One caveat: Although Birst automates the integration and analysis of data, you do have to know what you’re looking for, you have to format the Excel data appropriately, and you have to know how to set up the report templates in order to glean the insight you’re looking for. So yes, there is a learning curve.

However, once I signed up for Birst, an employee emailed me and offered to show me how it all works. As of this post I have not done the one-on-one tutorial but am scheduled to do so next week. 

You can learn more about Birst by visiting its Website and taking the tour and/or demo. The company offers four price points depending on the number of users.

(Thank you to Vojtech Horna of Atomic Public Relations for replying to my request for positive business stories and for setting up this interview. Atomic PR is the agency of record for Birst.)

My friend, Ted Demopolous (@teddemop), recently wrote a blog post, Using LinkedIn for Business Correctly, about some tips he picked up from Jason Alba, (author of I’m on LinkedIn, Now What???) on how to use LinkedIn more effectively.

The WS Radio podcast, which features Jason (@jasonalba), is pretty good. If you’re not sure how to use LinkedIn for business purposes — or you’ve posted a profile and haven’t gone back to LinkedIn in a few months — I recommend you listen to the podcast.

I’ve been thinking about LinkedIn quite a bit these days given all the new functionality it has. For example, people with WordPress or TypePad blogs can incorporate their blogs into their profiles, as I’ve done.

You can also join or start a Group, making it easy to network with like-minded people, as well as post events. I also try to answer questions as time permits and often find myself referring other companies and consultants to people asking questions.

Suffice to say, if you think LinkedIn is a place to simply post a “resume” when you’re looking for a job, you would be wrong — which is why I find myself recommending to clients that they revamp their profiles and become more active in various Groups, ask for recommendations, and ensure their profiles link to their Website, Twitter page, or other info.

Due to increasing my participation on LinkedIn, I’m now getting more blog readers and newsletter subscribers, plus I’m meeting some pretty fabulous people.

How do you use LinkedIn? Are you a frequent visitor or do you think it’s too stuffy and prefer the more freewheeling Facebook atmosphere?

I have been thinking about signing up for GoToMeeting for quite some time now.

I often have conversations with clients over the phone where we’re both viewing a Web page or social media application — but as you know, it can be difficult to tell a client who hasn’t had experience with say Google Analytics or WordPress to “click here” and “do that.”

I’ve been hearing ads for GoToMeeting on the radio and seeing them on TV — plus seeing print ads in the newspaper (I think). Last week I received a direct mail letter that included a 30-day free trial offer (that everyone gets) plus $25 off.

I signed up today. It’s really very easy and within minutes I had scheduled my first meeting with a client and was viewing a tutorial in preparation for the meeting.

I really like how GoToMeeting is marketing itself. Clearly the company understands integrated marketing since it’s using radio, TV, print and direct mail to get the word out.

The kicker for me, however, is that when I posted on Twitter that I had signed up and was viewing the tutorial, David Baeza (@DavidBaeza), Area VP, responded with the following:

@diannahuff If you need any help during your GoToMeeting trial, we’re on Twitter and have 24/7 tech support http://tinyurl.com/acjl2c

How cool is that?

Ok, let’s get a couple of things out of the way.

First off, I am a huge fan of David Meerman Scott. I love his books, his e-books and his blog. I also like him — he’s a great guy and always willing to share his expertise.

I’ve also known David for almost 10 years — he was one of my first clients when he worked for a now defunct “dot com” company. He emailed me when he went out on his own and we’ve kept in touch ever since.

And last but not least, my client, Dr. Helaine Smith, is featured in his new book, World Wide Rave : Creating Triggers that Get Millions of People to Spread Your Ideas and Share Your Stories (Wiley, March 2009). I was one of those who received a galley copy.

Although I love David and his ideas, I was slow to see the value of social media. Because I work for B2B companies, I valued — and still do — traditional marketing practices like trade shows, white papers, direct mail and the like.

You know, the stuff that delivers LEADS.

But a revolution has taken place — and no where did I see this more clearly than with my own business.

The more I got my name “out there” using tools like this blog and LinkedIn and now Twitter, the more business came my way.

But I still didn’t quite buy into social media — the value of which I could see for a consultant like me or a dentist or even a hot Internet marketing company like HubSpot or a way cool company like Cisco.

But a company that manufactures high-tech widgets that only engineers could love?

No way, Jose.

But then I sat in a meeting last week with said bunch of engineers — and we’re talking the hardcore type — and one of them said, “You know, LinkedIn has a number of groups for our industry” and I just about fell over.

Social media is not about creating a company profile on Twitter and then sending people to your products and services pages via propaganda disguised as “Tweets.”

Social media is not about replacing your traditional marketing collateral with YouTube videos and then waiting for leads to drop out of the sky.

And social media is definitely not about creating content and then having people hand over their name, rank and serial number in exchange for this content.

As David says in his book, social media is about combining the many online  tools available and using them to reach your buyers directly by having people spread your ideas — with no strings attached.

For you marcom and PR folk steeped in traditional marketing and PR, this means letting others talk about your company without you “controlling the message.”

I really like World Wide Rave. I like it because David takes the time to answer many of his critics — and in the process, gives marketing and PR professionals ammunition to use when advocating the use of social media.

I especially like the fact that he dismisses the myth that a successful World Wide Rave only means that millions and millions of people view, listen or read your content. As David says,

A World Wide Rave is about reaching your buyer personas — the people who will be interested in your products and services. For you, that might just be 10 people. Or ten million. No matter the size of your market, when people are spreading your ideas online, it’s the best endorsement possible and a proven path to increased sales, fame and fortune.

David is doing lots of fun stuff to promote his book, which is due out March 3, 2009. Right now you can access his World Wide Rave blog and see the locations around the world where people have photographed themselves with his World Wide Rave poster — from the Boston area to Antarctica!

This poster campaign is just one clever way to conduct a World Wide Rave — one that *any* company can do with minimal cost and effort.

Years before anyone bandied about the phrase, “personal brand,” Penny Power, CEO and Founder of Ecademy, was asking herself how independent business people could become better known to each other through online communities.

Says Penny, “At that time, about eleven years ago, I could see that the way large companies were being run was going to implode. I could see the rise of the independent capitalist and the need for these people to create personal brands online.”

Penny and her husband ended up building the first online social network — Ecademy — with $5 million of their own money. “We built Ecademy organically,” says Penny, “because we really wanted a community that filled a specific niche and was high-quality. We wanted business owners to get value from each other.”

According to Penny, individual business owners can build their brands — and by extension, trust and reputation — by building their networks within Ecademy.

Last month Penny used social media tools from within Ecademy to promote a webinar Penny gave at BrightTALK’s Conversation Marketing Summit.

“I saw the email about the Summit from B2B Magazine and thought, ‘Hey, wait a minute! I’ve been talking conversation marketing for the last five years and I’m not on the list of presenters!’ I contacted the magazine, who put me in touch with BrightTALK, and within four hours I had my Webinar, ‘Understanding Social Networks for Your Business,’ online and ready to roll.”

In conjuction with the Summit, BrightTALK held a contest to see which presenter could attract the most attendees to their Webinar through social media tactics. Penny won the contest — despite the fact that she had only one day to promote her Webinar – by emailing her personal network of 4,000 and posting a market place listing on Ecademy.

“I posted only to my network — not the entire 500,000 member community,” reports Penny. “But the results show the power of ‘conversation marketing’ or social media. I did the marketing for my Webinar in a half hour . My webinar received 187 views — 77 of which were live and 110 of which watched the recorded version.”

According to Penny, the number of people who now work for themselves (or independent capitalists, as Penny calls them), is rising dramatically — and for those who hang out a shingle after losing a job, building a brand online can’t be done overnight.

The biggest mistake people make, when building a new network, is to go into an existing community and act as if they’ve been a member for years. “It works the same way offline,” she says. “You can’t move into a new neighborhood, stroll to the corner bar, hand out business cards and say, ‘Drinks on me.’ You have to build familarity and trust.”

Building this trust — and one’s brand — can take 18 – 24 months, says Penny. People need to see that you’re stable, that you’ll stick around and that you’re in the community to help others — not just take from people.

“When you join a new community,” says Penny, “you have to earn your place through good deeds — and this means helping others, offering information, and helping to forge connections. It’s all about building trust. Only then can you move into a business relationship where a transaction or referral can take place.”

Ecademy, which is huge in the UK and Europe, is slowly making inroads in the U.S. Unlike LinkedIn, which is a directory of business people, Ecademy is a social business community of people who forge networks. The platform includes many of the most popular social media tools, including Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and Skype — all of which are embedded in people’s platforms.

I write a monthly real estate newsletter for my client, ForeclosuresMass.

Each month I have to find real estate experts to interview on topics ranging from property management and rehabbing to marketing and financing.

Of course, the first place I begin my search is with Google. And, many of the top results for my search terms include articles submitted by “experts” to article submission sites.

After clicking through to these articles, however, I’ve learned that many times you can’t contact the people behind the articles. One day I spent close to two hours trying to track down an “expert” whose name was on all kinds of articles (which were actually rather well done).

Alas, I could not find him — not on any real estate Website, Facebook, LinkedIn, or via Google search on his name and town. I realized that his articles were simply a means to get people to his e-commerce site — and even then, you could not contact him. (Which then made me wonder what he was hiding.)

Suffice to say, I now skip over articles when they appear in the search results and have learned how to cherry pick the real experts — those that have real Websites that include contact information.

I bring up this topic because my last blog post, about saving money on translations, has garnered a number of comments. I wondered if the post is appearing for search terms. I checked, and yes, it’s at the top in Google for “saving money on translations” (I’ve seen it at #1 and #2).

The listing directly below it is to an article on the Ezine Articles site.

Those people who promote submitting articles to sites like Ezine Articles state that it helps you get top search engine listings. True enough.

However, a well-written blog and/or Website can get you the same results – with the additional benefit of driving people to content that resides on YOUR site versus content that resides with thousands of other “experts” on another site.

Having the same article appear on dozens of sites dilutes the value of the content as it’s no longer fresh or original. (And, I’ve found, too, that those blogs and ezines that re-use the content often don’t include links back to the author’s site/blog.)

The translation article in question does at least send people to a valid Website.

But don’t you think it would be better if the company included all kinds of optimized, educational content on its own Website or a blog — in the form of articles, reports, surveys, etc. — versus submitting it to article sites?

(I wonder, too, if Google won’t start cracking down on this duplicate content. Currently, you can find a “reprinted” article listed 3 – 5 times in the top 20 search results for a given search phrase. Is this duplication really helping people find the best information?)