Free Means Free: Why email Sign ups Could be Wrecking Your Social Marketing Efforts

By Rodney Brooks, on March 19th, 2009

Many digital marketers have yet to fully understand the way the online world works, according to leading social marketing expert David Meerman Scott.

Meerman Scott, the author of “The New Rules of Marketing and PR and the upcoming World Wide Rave”, shares his latest social marketing tips on developing a successful small business marketing strategy online in a new series of business TV shows on yourBusinessChannel.

In this, the fourth of seven shows, Meerman Scott describes a rule that must be followed in order to roll out a really effective social marketing web strategy.

The aim of his social marketing tips is to create a World Wide Rave about your product, In other words, a major buzz that has people visiting your website because they genuinely want to be there, and global communities are eagerly linking to your site.

In earlier shows, Meerman Scott explained that social marketing involves dropping the traditional product-centric and ego-centric approach to marketing, and instead adopting a web strategy based around creating highly attractive content that customers genuinely want to access and share.

In this show, he urges viewers to give up control of their message as part of their small business marketing strategy.

While the idea is frightening to a lot of marketers, it is a vitally important part of a successful web strategy.

The essential point is that the great content that you create for customers to enjoy and share should be freely sharable. So if you create a valuable white paper for download from your website, then make it genuinely free.

According to Meerman Scott, creating a World Wide Rave about your product is not about generating sales leads, collecting email addresses or filling out forms. All those things will irritate customers, and therefore undermine your web strategy.

Meerman Scott shares the rest of his social marketing tips in upcoming shows on yourBusinessChannel.