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They had a nice office, although too few plug-ins and not enough coffee.

First off, congrats to Rick Mahn and the entire MSP community for growing SMB MSP into the monster that it is. I can still remember the first SMB at Key’s Cafe with like 10 of us ACTUALLY SITTING DOWN TO EAT BREAKFAST.

And now here we are eight months later with free books, Fortune 1000 companies opening their doors to us, nametags (!?!) and 100 attendees. Holy crap. This thing is a beast.

David Meerman Scott presented today. If you didn’t know already, this guy is one of the founding fathers of marketing 2.0. Here’s his Wikipedia bio:

Scott’s ideology “the new rules of marketing & PR” is that marketing and public relations is vastly different on the Web than in mainstream media. He says that the “old rules” of mainstream media (which he asserts do not work on the Web) are about “controlling a message” and the only ways to get the message into the public domain using mainstream media is to buy expensive advertising or beg the media to write about you. He says that the rules of marketing and PR on the Web are completely different. Instead of buying or begging your way in, Scott says anybody can “publish their way in” using the tools of social media such as, blogs, podcasts, online news releases, online video, viral marketing, and online media.

So yeah, he’s kind of a big deal. He speaks to 20,000 people a year, has multiple books and definitely knows his stuff.

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His new book, World Wide Rave, talks about ways companies can create triggers to cause raves and engage their consumers.

David is a great speaker and while he evangelizes a lot of what I share with clients every day, he sure does say it better.

For example:”On the Web, you are what you publish…and what other people publish about you.”

David opened his presentation showing how one person in a stadium can cause a wave, which I think is a great meta example for clients.

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He talked about his Word of Mouse theory, including Cadbury Gorilla YouTube and remixes:

He discussed some old rules and new rules, including Buy Your Way Into Advertising and Beg your way in with PR (old rules) compared to Publish your way in directly (new rule) and offered to sell sticker space on his laptop for $2k/year.

Another old rule is Measurement via sales leads and press clips. On the web, says David, these leads are silly and counterproductive because they cause you to do the wrong thing.

David Meerman Scott’s Rules of the Rave:
1.    Nobody cares about your problem (except you)
2.    No coercion required.
3.    Lose control
4.    Put down roots
5.    Creat triggers that encourage people to share
6.    Point the world to your (virtual) doorstep

David says he shares all of these theories and then clients say,  “Hang on, but we’re a ________________” so he shows them the case study of B2B toilet company CWS with their “Say No to Dirt” YouTube video boasting 2 million views:

Since I’m a music blogger, I quickly connected with his “Why was the Grateful Dead popular?” analogy. Because they let their audiences record their concerts and trade tapes, consumers were so interested and fascinated by the music they wanted to come and experience it themselves (well, that and the drugs but he didn’t really get into that). TGD became the most popular touring band in history because they lost control over their music.

Other examples worth highlighting:

• Who says dentists can only market the traditional, boring way? Local dentist campaign, Healthy Mouth, Healthy Sex, which was released as a free ebook and quickly spread like crazy. It gave consumers (and media) a unique angle to pass along to their influence groups.
• NY Islanders Hockey Team have the NYI Blog Box and treat bloggers the same as MSM. They had 12 bloggers accepted for last season; 20 for this season. They get  the best seats for every game in press section, access to interview coaches and players, media sheets and are enabled to break stories.
• Create Triggers that encourage people to share, for example, the “Cities I’ve Visited” Facebook Application from TripAdvisor, which more than 5 million people have installed. It took TA two days to make this application.
• “Everything I’ve been talking about is search engine marketing. If you have a crappy site and do SEO, it’s just a slightly less crappy site.”
• Point the world to your virtual doorstep — once you’ve engaged with our online advocates and created all of these social media programs, be sure they can point somewhere online where you can keep the discussion going and provide value.