David Meerman Scott - The New Rules Of Marketing & PR

Chris Stone [00:00:02]:
Marketing strategist, entrepreneur, keynote speaker in over 42 different countries, as well as the international bestselling author of twelve books including this, the updated 8th edition of The New Rules of Marketing and PR. Would you please welcome Mr. David Meerman.

Jim Fuhs [00:00:20]:
Scott.

David Meerman Scott [00:00:21]:
Hey guys, how are we doing? Jim and Chris, great to be here.

Chris Stone [00:00:24]:
Great. We got we got all the mistakes out of the way, the batteries are replaced. David, everything is locked and loaded.

David Meerman Scott [00:00:31]:
You did a great job dancing there in the beginning. I've been there, I know what it's like. But smooth as silk, I would say.

Jim Fuhs [00:00:39]:
Well, thank you, but it's really an honor to have you with us today. David and I know we had a little bit of conversation before, but do you want to tell because maybe not everybody knows who you are. You want us to tell us a little bit about yourself?

David Meerman Scott [00:00:55]:
Yeah, sure. I got of school, I thought I wanted to be a bond trader. I worked a couple of years on Wall Street. I hated bond trading, I was terrible at it. But what I loved was the information that the bond traders were using. So I spent 15 years in the real time financial information business, companies like Dow Jones. I worked ten years in Asia, Tokyo and Hong Kong and I found a new way to do marketing. So in 2002 I went out on my own to talk about this idea of creating content in order to do marketing. And it was great. Started blogging early 2005. The New Rules of Marketing and PR in the first edition came out in 2007. And 2007 was a remarkable year. Not only did The New Rules of Marketing and PR first come out, the first iPhone, Twitter became available, facebook not only just for students anymore, but available to anybody. So tons of cool things happening in 2007. And since then I've done twelve books, as you kindly mentioned, spoken all over the country. And this book, The New Worlds of Marketing and PR now in the 8th edition and also available in 29 languages from Albanian to Vietnamese. And super interestingly, I've got books in both Ukrainian and Russian. So I was looking at the covers the other day and they're really interesting. Looking at the juxtaposition between what those two covers look like.

Chris Stone [00:02:27]:
That's killer. That's amazing. Obviously they're spelled differently, they're in different languages. What are the variations in the different countries? I'm interested in hearing about that.

David Meerman Scott [00:02:38]:
Well, what's really interesting is it doesn't have anything to do with the author. So my publisher, and in the case of The New Rules of Marketing and PR is wiley in the case of my book Thanocracy that came out a couple of years ago. It's Penguin Random House. They have worldwide rights, then they can sell the rights to a publisher in a different country. And then once the publisher buys the rights, there's a one off upfront payment and then a royalty per copy. They can publish it however they want. They translate it. They create a brand new cover. Each cover is different. I have right here a Korean version of my book, Fanocracy. Each cover is different. So it's just really interesting that they're all like different versions of the original book. And I have a huge collection in another part of my office here where I've got a shelf with all of the different editions of the various books, the various editions, the various languages, and it's kind of super cool.

Chris Stone [00:03:40]:
Yeah, it is cool. That's definitely a collection worth having. So the other thing that we've noticed first and foremost is that little thing you have to your left and to the right of you on our screen, which is a couple of different things.

David Meerman Scott [00:03:58]:
Grain Surfboards. There's the Grateful Dead logo over here. So Grain Surfboards is one of my favorite examples of an organization that is using the new rules of marketing and PR. So they're a wooden surfboard manufacturer and they become the premier wooden surfboard manufacturer. They have a proprietary boat building technique. They don't spend any money on advertising. What they do is they engage with fans on social media. They're big on Instagram, they're on some of the other social media as well. They have a great website, and they're not afraid of sharing their technology. In other words, they're not afraid of giving away their proprietary information. The way they build the surfboard is super unique because prior to Grain Surfboards, there is no such thing as a hollow wooden surfboard. It was impossible to build. But their secret idea is that they use a special plug made out of goretex that allows air in, but not water. They tell people how to make them. You can buy the plans, you can go to their factory, which I did twice, to make your own surfboard. And all the things that they're doing generates attention for Grain Surfboards and allows them to become bigger and sell more and grow and serve fans like me. I made this surfboard. How cool is that? When I'm surfing and I have another Grain Surfboard surfboards that I made when I'm surfing, people like, wow, that's super cool. Where'd you get that? I made it. I tell them and I tell them about the factory. And I think this is true for any business, for any individual. When you're out there creating information, being onto the social networks, that that's a fabulous way to get noticed. Yeah.

Chris Stone [00:05:52]:
Do you think though, that there are a lot of marketers companies that kind of hold stuff back because they're afraid that I don't want to give away this secret sauce. Right. Or I want to keep that for the paywall? Why do you see that sort of happening where they're not doing what this green surfboard company is doing?

David Meerman Scott [00:06:13]:
Oh, totally. There's so many organizations that hold things back. One of the main reasons is that companies for whatever reason, have been a holdover of the old days when only the salespeople or only the company representatives delivered the information. I mean, think about buying a car 20 years ago. I mean, you had to walk into a dealership and the dealer had to tell you about the car. It was very hard to do research prior to the web. I mean, you could use, say, Consumer Reports or something like that. But today we have near perfect information with review sites, with people who do videos, even something similar to what we're doing now, showing different cars and all the different features. And many times companies act as if that's not possible and they're doing a disservice because if you're not sharing information about your products and services, then people will go somewhere other than you to get that information. And then you no longer have the ability to say what you want to say about what it is that you do so well.

Jim Fuhs [00:07:25]:
Yeah, and I wanted to add too, Dave, it's something that you hit on in the book that always kind of bothers me with my friends that are in the financial and the healthcare industry is like, oh, well, we can't talk about this. You really kind of hit on that in there. And you talked about how in Nova, up in Northern Virginia, which is where I grew up, has actually gotten out of their own way, I guess. And why do you think that is? And do you think it's ever going to change? I mean, I don't know if you're friends with Winnie's son, she's one of those that has embraced putting it out there and does a great job of it, and I just don't get it sometimes.

David Meerman Scott [00:08:04]:
It's really interesting because, as I mentioned at the top, I worked in the financial industry when I first started, and the financial information is highly regulated. The medical profession is highly regulated. My daughter is an emergency room doctor. She's not allowed to give away information about individual patients, but she is allowed to talk. Financial services people are not allowed to give away stock trading advice in certain ways, but they're allowed to talk. I heard the name of my buddy Mitch Jackson mentioned a moment ago. He's a very successful attorney, and yes, he is allowed to talk, even though the legal profession is highly regulated. I think what people are hiding behind is fear. They're fearful about a new way to communicate. And actually it's not even that new anymore. What we're doing now has been around for a while, but ways to communicate through video, through social audio, through social media like Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn and others, through Amazon Live and other platforms, people can communicate, but because it's new and different, people get fearful and then they naturally hide behind. Oh, we have regulations. We're not allowed to talk. That's what I see a lot.

Chris Stone [00:09:33]:
Yeah, I guess. Another thing to add to this and something that Mitch does, but something that I see that you do a lot, is don't be fearful of something new that launches, because this could be what is or what could become the next thing, whether that's involving yourself in the metaverse or whether it's involving yourself more in social audio or whatever. The new now it's TikTok. It was Snapchat still is sort of, but whatever that next thing is, if you just are sitting back and allowing it for you not to at least invest something into what you're doing, it seems to not just pass you by but it steamrolls you and you wished you had done it before. Can you talk a little bit about that and how you apply those tactics?

David Meerman Scott [00:10:28]:
I think that's definitely true. That whenever there's a new social network, and I remember it all the way back to when YouTube first started and remember the blender manufacturer and they made the Will it Blend YouTube videos and they were super successful because they were among the first businesses to figure out how to do YouTube really well. And that's continued. Every time there's a new social network, there's a couple of people, there's organizations, there's all sorts of types of companies and products that figure out how to use that new social network. And almost always it's not taking what you know from another social network or another form of communications and applying it. And I saw that in a huge way at the beginning of the pandemic. I'm used to giving 30 or 40 speeches around the world, in person speeches around the world and in March 2020 everything was canceled and so all of a sudden people started to do virtual presentations. They became big virtual conferences and events became big. But the problem is that people took what they already knew, which was an in person talk, and then tried to stuff it into a zoom room and it just didn't work. Which is the reason that I've set up the studio that I'm presenting from now. I've got a number of different views and cameras that I can call up of all sorts of interesting ways that I can generate attention using the studio and it was a different way to communicate and I was very early to use this kind of technology. Same thing with people who gravitated quickly to for example Twitch or for example Snapchat or for example social audio but I do want to counter that with another thought that I think is equally important. So it's a matter of figuring out the right balance and that is I do also believe even though it is a good idea to jump into the new social networks or the new forms of communications when they arise to be successful, I also believe strongly in the idea of focus. I think it's much better to do a great job on one social network. Let's just choose one LinkedIn, for example, a great job on LinkedIn than it is to do a mediocre job in 15 other social networks or five other social networks. Because I think if you're doing a great job in the social network that your buyers are frequenting, let's say you're a B to B company, LinkedIn is very important. Do a great job in LinkedIn, it's probably going to be better than if you're chasing every new social network that comes along and you've got a presence in TikTok and Snapchat and Twitter and Instagram and Facebook and LinkedIn, and you're not focusing enough on the people that you're trying to reach.

Chris Stone [00:13:47]:
I love that you said that, because I think a lot of times, especially as solo entrepreneurs, you feel like you got to do all the things. And if you are by yourself or maybe you're hiring a couple of VAS or whatever, you still can't do all the things. It's sales and Marketing 101. Like, who are you talking to, exactly? What are they doing? Where are they hanging out? Snapchat may not be my most favorite thing, and newsflash it's not. But if Snapchat happens to be the best place for us, guess what we're going to do? We're going to focus on making ourselves better on that. And then we're going to crack open this book and we're going to read about Snapchat. Because, listen, if there's ever a resource for you that are watching here on all the tubes and listen, we've got a ton of people that are hanging out here on LinkedIn and Twitter, and we're getting a lot of comments. Everybody's fired up. Listen, this book is chock full of and when I say chock full, that's super thick. But don't think you got to read.

Jim Fuhs [00:14:53]:
It cover to cover.

Chris Stone [00:14:54]:
It's a great evergreen resource for you. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the 8th edition, which started how many years ago? Twelve years ago was the first edition.

David Meerman Scott [00:15:03]:
2007. So, 15 years ago.

Chris Stone [00:15:07]:
See, I can't do math. Is there a section on math in here, Dave?

David Meerman Scott [00:15:10]:
No, there is a section on how to use AI and data, but definitely it's kind of remarkable, 15 years. It's remarkable because at the time, it's like, this stuff is super new, and for many organization, it's still super new. 15 years later, it's still considered new. So that's kind of interesting.

Chris Stone [00:15:33]:
Yeah, we definitely should roll into AI because I'd love to do that. So if you're on any other place besides Amazon, come on over to Amazon. We've got David's new book in the carousel dealcasters live. I'll send you right here in the chat where Johnny Kong is here. Thanks for hanging out. Of course. Mitch Jackson is just lightning it up over on the Amazon, so we love that. Mitch, mitch, buy yourself another couple of copies of this and get it to some friends while you're out there. Paddle.

David Meerman Scott [00:15:59]:
Actually, Mitch had a super interesting social media post came out yesterday. It was him on a paddle board with a copy of The New Rules of Marketing. I saw that, which is so interesting to me because I'm not a paddleboarder, I'm a surfer. There is no way that I could ever do that without soaking the book like crazy. But Mitch managed it. He is a man of superhuman strengths and abilities in all regards.

Chris Stone [00:16:29]:
Yes. So, artificial intelligence, I love that you segue there, David. And you and Jim and myself have mutual friends, some of which are chris Bro from Lately is here in the chat. Nice, Chris. And so AI is something that I think we could probably broad based and say most people don't know about it enough, and so maybe they're a little fearful of it. But I love your stuff in the new book about AI because you have us think differently about how we should treat AI in terms of our marketing.

David Meerman Scott [00:17:11]:
Yeah. So the first thing that's really important is just to step back and just think about what AI is and how it's being used today and what that might mean to sort of educate you. If AI is sort of new or something you're not familiar with, and it's just simply applying math to a whole bunch of data, and you experience AI every day. One of the ways that we all experience AI is if you're using a platform to look at video like Netflix and it looks at what you've already seen and then suggests new things. Now, I think Netflix is going too far in that direction. I'm a fan of rock documentaries, and I've watched a number of them, and all of a sudden, that's all they're serving up to me, as if there's no other content on Netflix. So I think organizations have a tendency to rely too much on AI. So think about AI from that perspective. I also think that the social network AI algorithms in some cases have gone way too far, especially Facebook. I think the Facebook AI algorithm is among the most destructive technologies ever invented. And I believe that because what the Facebook algorithm is doing is it's sorting people into groups based on the content that they look at. And so in this country, it's the red team against the blue team, for example. And because when people are angry, they consume more content. Facebook knows this. Facebook serves more content to make you angry because you'll stay on the platform longer, allowing them to sell more ads. And this leads directly to things like the events of January 6. So I'm a big problem with some of the algorithms that are out there. However, from a marketer's perspective, you're probably using algorithms and not even knowing it. If you're using the social network's ad platforms, twitter or LinkedIn or Facebook's ad platforms, there's tons of AI built into that so that you know that when you're sending your advertisements that they're being targeted to the right people. We're also chris is on. Thank you Chris, for being here. And our friend Kate from lately. This is a service that I've been using now for about a year. I'm also an investor in the company. It's an algorithm that takes long form content, breaks it into short form content. So, for example, text or video drop it in to the AI platform. It reads the content and then creates from, say, a long form text based, like a blog post. Creates individual tweets from a long form video like something we're creating right now. Creates social video of a minute or less. And then you can then schedule those videos to go out. So again, math applied to a big data set. And this is very, very powerful for marketers to understand both the limitations of AI and the dangers of AI, but also the tremendous opportunities that AI allows for us. If you can find the sorts of platforms like Lately that make your job easier, that allow you to reach more people, that allow you to repurpose content in very, very awesome ways.

Chris Stone [00:20:56]:
Yeah, what Lately always says is they'll get you to third base and you as the human will bring it home. Right? Absolutely. I know this looks like a big commercial for Lately, but there's a lot of artificial intelligence outside of just social media platforms and we use Lately a lot. But how important is it for someone? Obviously, again, looking at kind of garnering your time and how you apply it to all of the things that you want to do. A lot of people are looking for easy buttons and they're like, well, this artificial intelligence thing, I can give it to the robot and then the robot can just do it for me and I don't really need to worry about hashtags or my own voice or things. How important is it for the human to be involved in a lot of this?

David Meerman Scott [00:21:51]:
I don't think we're there where you just give it to the robot and you go away. I think that in all cases, the technology helps humans to do a better job or to be more efficient or to generate more content than we could otherwise. I don't think there's a replacement. I mean, there are a few Aigenerated content delivery technologies that have pretty much completely taken away humans, but they're very specialized. For example, technology can read an earnings press release from a publicly traded companies and parse that out to create an article for, say, Associated Press or Reuters. But that's very different than writing a blog post or creating a tweet or creating an instagram post. Yes, artificial intelligence can help, but humans are super important. I am a massive fan of repurposing content. Repurpose, repurpose, repurpose. I write a blog typically once a week that blog posts then become the important parts of a new edition of a book or a new book I'm going to write. The blog post becomes things I can share on social networks. The blog post becomes a riff that I might deliver in a speech going forward. So I do kind of my best thinking. I think of it as when I'm writing a blog post and I always write blog posts. I take good care and time doing it, knowing that that content can be repurposed in many different ways. In some cases using technology and using AI services. Like lately to be able to repurpose it easier than if I were manually doing it myself. But humans are so critically important, otherwise you end up sounding like a robot and it's not what you want to do.

Jim Fuhs [00:24:00]:
And that was a point you made in the book about using AI. You can kind of tell if someone just let the AI do it versus if a human is actually involved. And that's something people need to think about because there are all these programs coming out. I feel like you're like, oh, I'm just going to throw it into the AI machine and post it. And it's like it doesn't have that human connection sometimes.

David Meerman Scott [00:24:21]:
And there's dangers in doing that too. I mean, one of the examples that I talk about that most people can relate to is if you're doing a search on a stock photo photo site and you want to get a picture of a CEO, you type in CEO. It generally delivers middle aged white men pictures. And we all know that there's all kinds of people, different ages, different genders, look different, who are CEOs of companies. And we just talked about Kate, a CEO of a company who's a woman. So this idea of relying exclusively on AI is going to pose many challenges. And I just recommend you need to get that human in there.

Chris Stone [00:25:13]:
Yeah, I finally found it. I was thumbing through the spot in the book. I'm not going to read this verbatim, but I think it's pertinent to the conversation because you were talking about an institute that sort of teaches AI. Ground up.

David Meerman Scott [00:25:29]:
The Marketing AI Institute is what?

Chris Stone [00:25:32]:
The Marketing AI Institute. And they say, here is a succinct list of what AI cannot offer curiosity, creativity, empathy, emotion, intuition, and maybe most of all, imagination.

David Meerman Scott [00:25:49]:
Absolutely right. That's my friend Paul Reutezer, who's the president of the Marketing AI and AI Institute, great organization, tons of free content. If you want to dig in, learn more about AI, it's a great place to go. But that's absolutely right. And it's such a great list. Imagination, creativity. I mean, those things are amazing when it comes to marketing. And AI is not good at that. Another thing that AI is not necessarily good at is understanding when there's an important change and something that is an entire chapter in the new rules of marketing in PR, the 8th edition is the idea of newsjacking, and another chapter is the idea of real time marketing. So I mentioned at the top of the show my first job was at a bond trading desk, and I learned how important real time instant engagement is, because that's how bond traders make money. Something happens. Bang. They make a trade. And we marketers and business people, when something changes in our industry, there's a new news story that comes out, a new government regulation is announced, there's a change in the weather. I mean, depending on your business, that can be huge. That is an opportunity to create instant content, something I call newsjacking. When somebody is communicating back to you, that's an opportunity to instantly engage. I call that real time marketing. And AI is not necessarily good at that, not necessarily good at processing. When there's a change or when there's a piece of news that comes out again, the humans becoming involved super important.

Chris Stone [00:27:33]:
Jim, you want to know how you've made it? You've made it. When you create a word and it gets inserted into a dictionary.

David Meerman Scott [00:27:40]:
There you go.

Chris Stone [00:27:42]:
That's what newsjacking has done.

David Meerman Scott [00:27:45]:
Yeah, newsjacking is in the Oxford English Dictionary, and they mentioned me when they decided to list it a couple of years ago, which is kind of super exciting to have a word that I'll never win an Oscar, I'll never win a Grammy, but, hey, I got a word in the dictionary.

Jim Fuhs [00:28:01]:
You're in the dictionary.

Chris Stone [00:28:02]:
I think it's cooler than winning a Grammy, to be honest.

David Meerman Scott [00:28:05]:
There you go.

Chris Stone [00:28:08]:
What a segue into music. So obviously you're a huge Grateful Dead fan, and you have this passion times I don't know how many. Again, not a math major here, David, but I spent a long time in the music industry and with a company that actually had distributed Grateful Dead music.

David Meerman Scott [00:28:30]:
By the way, nice.

Chris Stone [00:28:32]:
And attended one Grateful Dead concert. So that's about all I know as far as Grateful Dead is concerned. But I think as entrepreneurs, and the number one job everybody wants when they're 16 and they're asking everybody what they want to be when they grow up is to be a YouTuber. Right?

David Meerman Scott [00:28:52]:
Right.

Chris Stone [00:28:53]:
And they want to do that because that just seems like this glorious thing until they find out how long it takes to monetize and all of that.

David Meerman Scott [00:29:00]:
That's hard work.

Chris Stone [00:29:01]:
Right? Exactly. You got to do you got to put in the work, and part of putting in the work is looking at your potential superfans. Right. When I spent a good bit of time in the music industry and working with companies like Spotify and Apple Music, with streaming services, there was that superfan thing tossed around. So how does one cultivate that? Whether you're a business or whether you're an entrepreneur or I know it's a very general thing, but how does one cultivate these people who will follow you up a hill? That will be David Meerman Scott at his 400th Grateful Dead show.

David Meerman Scott [00:29:40]:
Not quite that many. I think I meant 86 Grateful Dead concerts. But I've been studying this idea of fandom now for a couple of decades because it's so fascinating to me. I wrote a book called Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead. I also wrote this book called Phanocracy with my daughter. And what I learned from studying the idea of deep fandom is the idea that we humans are hardwired. It's in our brains, in our DNA, to want to be part of a tribe of like minded people, because when we're with a tribe of like minded people, we feel safe and comfortable. It goes back tens of thousands of years. If you're sitting around the fire with your tribe, you're safe and comfortable. If you encounter another tribe when you're out in the bush, that is a dangerous thing. And that's still part of the way that we humans operate. So we're always looking to find a tribe of like minded people. You're building a tribe here. You can build a tribe virtually as well. The Grateful Dead built a tribe of like minded people, and I love that they've done that in many different ways. One of the most interesting ones to me is the Grateful Dead was the first band to allow fans to record their concerts. Every other band said no. If you went into a Rolling Stones concert or who concert, Pink Floyd concert, they said, no way. You cannot bring your recording gear in. The Grateful Dead said, sure, why not? And in early days, it was cassette tapes and later on, MP3 files that people could share. And the band said, Give it away. Trade it with people. Totally fine. We just don't allow you to sell that music. And having that music circulate of thousands of different Grateful Dead concerts got people like me when I was 17 years old to go to my first Grateful Dead concert because I wanted to experience the music live. So that idea of building fans is give more than you ever thought you had and give people a way that they can build that tribe. And interestingly here and what we're doing now, and you mentioned YouTubers and these different ways of people connecting that's also rooted in neuroscience. So one neuroscientist, whose name is Edward T. Hall, identified the different levels of how important it is to be close to other humans. Again, this tribe of like minded people. And it turns out there's several different ways he's identified how far you are from another human being. And this is in person physical, 12ft or further away. He called public space. And our brains know people are in our public space, but we don't track them. Inside of about 12ft, you begin to track people because we need to know, are those friends part of our tribe, or potential enemies? You walk into a cocktail party, you immediately scan the room. It's even an unconscious thing. You're looking to make sure that there's no danger. You're looking for the people who are your friends, part of your tribe. And inside. A 4ft personal space where the most important emotional attachments happen. So what about video? Well, there's another form of neuroscience. It's called mirror neurons. And mirror neurons are the part of our brains that fire when we see somebody doing something, as if we're doing it ourselves, which I will now demonstrate with a lemon and a slice of lemon. If I take a bite of this slice of lemon, my brain will fire. But because of the power of mirror neurons, your brains are firing, too. Even if you're listening to this only as a podcast, your brain will fire as I take a bite of this lemon. So, wow. Lemon super powerful. Makes my eyes kind of close in water a little bit. I can feel it on my tongue. I can feel it on my lips. Biting a lemon is powerful. My brain is firing. Your brains are firing, too. Now, what this has to do with video is when you're filming video through the power of mirror neurons, through the power of physical proximity to another human, your brains are and our brains are firing as if we're in the same room with someone on video who's cropped it sort of like we've done with the show. As if you're about 4ft or around there, away from somebody. This is precisely why you feel you know a movie star. This is precisely why you think you know a television star. Intellectually, you know, you've never met that movie star. But your brain fires and says, I know this person personally. This is a very long way of saying that if you want to build fans, use these techniques that YouTubers are using. Use these techniques that we're using right now that Jim and Chris are using, the way that they've cropped these videos, the way that they're talking directly to the camera. This is a way to build fans. And all of us have the ability to do that in the way that we communicate using video as a form of marketing. And I love that it's rooted in neuroscience. And I forgot what question you asked me, but I just it's okay. Fascinating to riff on this idea of BrainIANS. Are reacting to that. Yeah.

Chris Stone [00:35:32]:
Absolutely fascinating. It's so true. It's so very true. David, I'm sure you've had experiences where you've walked into a room and somebody who you've never met before came up and started talking to you like you knew them.

David Meerman Scott [00:35:48]:
Yes.

Chris Stone [00:35:48]:
And I'm sorry. My name is David or whatever, and they're like, oh, I feel like I know you all.

David Meerman Scott [00:35:55]:
Yes.

Chris Stone [00:35:55]:
All the time. And they may have only listened to your audio podcast, which I think so we're talking visually, right?

David Meerman Scott [00:36:04]:
Visually is important. Audio, too, because anyone who heard me talking about taking a bite of lemon was probably feeling that lemon in their mouth as well. But video is way more powerful when it comes to this idea of mirror neurons.

Chris Stone [00:36:20]:
Amazing. And I know we've got just a few more minutes because I know you've got a hard stop. We do have some questions that are coming in from all over the tubes and thanks, everyone. Let me grab one here. So Nina wants to know what made you so passionate about getting this new addition into the hands of your audience?

David Meerman Scott [00:36:44]:
So what's really important is the strategies have remained the same over 20 years and 15 years of the new rules of marketing and PR, that is that you can spend money in ads, you can try to convince the media to write or broadcast about you, you can hire salespeople to knock on doors. If those are working, great. But a better way is to create content and engage with people, build fans. But there's always new tools, there's always new stories that I want to put in the book. So in this particular edition, new ideas around artificial intelligence. In this new edition, new ideas around social audio. In this new edition, new ideas around the use of short form video like TikTok. So there's always new ideas and new stories that I want to put into the book, which is why I updated about every two years now, a brand new 8th edition.

Jim Fuhs [00:37:40]:
Wow. And I think we have time for this. One last question, I think the one from Gabe Chris, if you want to bring that up. And that was there's a lot of.

Chris Stone [00:37:50]:
Questions here I should have started.

Jim Fuhs [00:37:52]:
The question was, which one of your books was the most difficult to write and publish?

David Meerman Scott [00:37:59]:
Wow. That's interesting. My first book was a novel that was a little bit tough to write just because fiction involves so much more than nonfiction. But the one I did the most work on, the single book I did the most work on is the book I wrote called Phanocracy because I wrote it with my daughter. And the reason is because we screwed up when we first started writing it. We screwed up because we tried to write it in one voice. So we wrote it and then we edited it such that it felt like it was one voice with two authors, and it just wasn't working. So we basically completely had to redo the book where I took a chapter and it said, like, chapter two by David, chapter three by Rako, chapter four by Rako, chapter five by David, and we each had our own voice come through. We're utterly different writers. She's a better writer than I am. And so that made the book way better in it, but also took twice as long to write. Wow. I can take another couple. If you guys have those two more questions, I'm happy to take a couple more.

Chris Stone [00:39:12]:
I think you've answered a number of these. By the time we got through a number of these things, you definitely have answered a number of these more related to 8th edition. How is that different from previous editions? Which you've answered a few times, so appreciate that.

David Meerman Scott [00:39:31]:
Also interestingly, I take things away, google plus. Remember Google Plus? It didn't exist in the first couple of editions. Then I added it because all of a sudden Google now has a social network. How cool is that? It was an important part of the book for a couple of editions. It no longer exists, so I had to get rid of it. And so there's other social networks that have completely gone away as well. Like for example, vine. Remember vine video?

Chris Stone [00:40:02]:
Oh yeah, the TikTok before there was.

David Meerman Scott [00:40:04]:
TikTok, right, exactly right. And what's interesting about this, and I think it's an important lesson, is that if you focus on a particular social network, vine or Google Plus are two examples, they can completely go away. All your content can disappear, all your connections can disappear. So the lesson I take from that is social networks are great, but every single business needs a home base on the web that they own. That's typically your website or a blog or a combination of the two, but something that you own, a URL that you control so that you're not only at the mercy of a social network that they may go away, like those two examples. But also a social network can change the way the algorithm works and your content is no longer seen. That's happened to some friends of mine where they were very popular on a social network getting hundreds or even thousands of views a week and then all of a sudden, bang, the algorithm changes and they get no more views at all. Mainly that's because the social network has now decided to get you to pay to get that exposure. But you're at the mercy of a social network if you're focused on it. So you need your own home base on the web.

Chris Stone [00:41:20]:
Right. Stay off the well, you can be on rented land, but the stuff that you own, so to speak, definitely look to build that and email lists and things that if the bottom falls out on whatever platform, including this one that we're on right now. Right. So you got to work off the platform. So ladies and gentlemen, car buying public of Amazon, make sure you pick up this amazing book, the 8th edition of the New Rules of Marketing and PR. This has been just amazing. David, I'm going to ask you one final question, if I could.

David Meerman Scott [00:41:57]:
Sure.

Chris Stone [00:41:58]:
So you're updating each one of these editions with taking out the Google Pluses and the vines and adding the TikToks and all of the social audio and the things. So any new addition is obviously going to be but what would you say are maybe a few of the evergreen things that if you had addition one and you are picking up edition eight, what's the DNA of this that rings true and is sort of the spine of each one of these additions.

David Meerman Scott [00:42:32]:
So super important is that you now can control your own destiny. And it's incredibly liberating that you no longer have to pay for attention. Now you can generate attention yourself. To me, that's incredibly liberating. And that's been the case in every edition of the book. The idea of real time connection, the idea that if somebody sends you a message, somebody comments about you on a social network, there's something that happens in the news that is super interesting and that will remain being interesting going forward. There's a number of other things that have been consistent, but one of the most important ones, and people sometimes don't recognize this, but this kind of marketing and communications and public relations is fun. I've had so many people tell me over the years, oh, my God, marketing, that's something that I dread and I'm terrible at it, and I hire someone to do it for me. But no, I mean, how cool. We've just spent a fun hour together. Chitchatting and it's a form of marketing and having a conversation, creating a video, writing whatever you're into, writing or creating videos or doing audio, whatever it might be, shooting photographs, putting it on Instagram, whatever it is that you love to do, that can be your marketing. So marketing can be fun. Public relations can be fun. Communications and sales can be fun. If you let it be fun, you're going to build a more engaged tribe of like minded people, build fans, and you may end up like me. And never, ever have to make a sales call again, because people just want to come to you, because you attract them based on what you're doing.

Jim Fuhs [00:44:29]:
That is awesome. David, thank you so much. This has been amazing. And maybe we can get you back for the 9th edition. Let's do it. All right, so we put that on our calendar. Chris folks, this has been great. David, thank you so much for joining.

David Meerman Scott [00:44:46]:
Thank you, Jim, very much. Thank you, Chris. Appreciate it.

Chris Stone [00:44:49]:
Thanks, David. And as always, everyone, don't fear the gear.

Jim Fuhs [00:44:57]:
Thanks for listening to Dealcasters. Congratulations. You've taken another step forward in your content creation journey. Please don't forget to hit the subscribe or Follow button here in your favorite podcast player, so you can be reminded every time we drop an episode.

Chris Stone [00:45:14]:
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Jim Fuhs [00:45:34]:
If you have questions about this episode or have something you want us to review, you can also email us at dealcasters at dealcasters live. Thanks again for listening. And you know the deal. Don't fear the gear. You.