Why Leave a Hole in Your Marketing?

Everyone’s got something to “sell.” It might be a product, like a book. It might blur the lines between product and service, like a blog. It could be a new process in a workplace setting. Or maybe even a bowl of green beans, to a fussy toddler.

What’s a writer, a manager, a parent to do?

Matthew May, in his book In Pursuit of Elegance, suggests that a good “salesperson” will leave a hole in his marketing—some missing piece, some mystery, a space for others to add their voices and creativity.

About a week ago, I decided to try May’s idea for myself. I was getting ready to “market” this series, and instead of simply announcing it, I engaged people in a missing-pieces game.

It worked.

Between comments at the blog posts where the game was played, and comments on Facebook, about 100 game-related comments were generated altogether. Not only did the game create more response than usual on my blogs, it also increased traffic and, most importantly, it created a space for readers to make their own meaning— resulting in delightful jokes, banter, poems, and philosophical musings (no one did a Cheetos sculpture in response, but Cheetos did eventually enter the conversation, as they are wont to do when Duane is nearby).

The challenging part of leaving a hole in our marketing is that we can’t find one “game” and continue to play it. Mystery resists formulas. Still, there are some principles to help guide the way. What are they? I probably shouldn’t say, ‘til next time.

(Got ideas? I’d love to hear them.)

Top 10 Steps to Make Your Blog or Book Go Viral

Viruses used to be simple. I'd sneeze, you'd catch my cold. Those were the days.

Yesterday, I perused a bunch of articles about Penenberg's new book Viral Loop: From Facebook to Twitter, How Today's Smartest Businesses Grow Themselves Reading these articles, I learned that spreading a cold just got more complicated. Not impossible, mind you, but way past a simple sneeze.

You can read some of the informative articles (I've linked to them at the bottom of this post). Or you can grab the high points here. These are the Top 10 steps to make your blog or book go viral...

1. MENTION your blog or book a lot. Stone Crossings. (Um, that's just me mentioning my book. I think it's very important to follow these steps with the same level of dedication a germaphobe would have about washing her hands. Because the minute I mentioned Stone Crossings, you may have washed it away (sorry, this does not imply that you are a germaphobe).

Anyway, whether or not you're annoyed by yet another mention of Stone Crossings is probably secondary. As Bill Wasik learned when trying to stop Peter Bjorn and John, even bad buzz can be good. Stone Crossings. :)

In all seriousness, I would be very careful about this step. It's better if other people mention your blog or book; see #4 below.

2. GET COVERAGE on popular blogs. Trust me, a bikini just won't do. It's got to be real coverage, like full body armor. Oprah, Rick Warren, Paris Hilton, where are you? I need coverage.

(I was going to mention Stone Crossings again here, but I was afraid to annoy you. However, I SHOULD mention that Penenberg got coverage on popular tech blogs, because his book is technically technical. Still, I bet he wouldn't mind a footnote from Paris Hilton. Viruses aren't necessarily fussy about how they spread. In my case, I figure everybody could use a little grace, so I'm not going to flinch either when Paris decides to make a video about Stone Crossings: Finding Grace in Hard and Hidden Places.)

3. TWEET A LOT. That's what Penenberg is doing. And from what I can tell by cruising his tweets, 'New' is a vital component. He tweets about Newsday, Newsweek, and the New York Times. (Ah, serendipity! I live in New York. Do you think this will tip the scales for sales of Sto.. Oh, seriously, I couldn't bring myself to say my book name again. Maybe you could say it for me?)

4. TWEET Retweetably. Did you know there are scientifically proven ways to get retweeted on Twitter? There are. And there are ways to pretty much guarantee being ignored. I've used a few myself, in both directions.

Unfortunately, the article that will tell you how to get retweeted didn't have any data on the usage of two words very dear to me: Stone Crossings. However, if these words count as self-reference, they would reduce my chances of being retweeted. Because, as the article will tell you, "Tweets about work, religion, money and media/celebrities are more retweetable than those involving negative emotions, sensations, swear words, and self-reference." Oh, and I was sad to learn that I must release my penchant for the semi-colon. It's the least retweetable form of punctuation.

5. OFFER VALUE to people. Penenberg notes that you can't control a viral loop. Bad things might happen if you try (or not). The best thing to do is give people something they want to spread the word about. As Penenberg says, "To get it, you have to give." If you're trying to make your blog go viral, this isn't so hard. Write well. Be generous with links. Highlight the good work of others. Books are trickier. You can do some giveaways or provide excerpts and reviews. But a book is a material object. That obviously complicates matters.

6. Recruit a design firm to DEVELOP an interactive website. I like this idea. It seems simple enough. When someone rolls over the Viral Loop website icons, they pop up messages like, "Click to explore bebo's story" and "Click to explore Tupperware's story."

How hard could it be to do this for my book? I could have little messages that say, "Click to explore the Evocative Creek Story" or "Click to explore the Fifth-Wife Car Story." You know, stuff like that. The only hard part of this step, in my humble opinion, could be the price tag. (Still, maybe I should talk to cool designer 23 Degrees.)

Penenberg's website also offers visitors a wiki opportunity, where they can add their own information or provide links and commentary. Would this work as well for a non-tech book? What do you think?

7. Find someone to DEVELOP A FACEBOOK AND iPOD application/widget. On the app, include a click-through button to your blog or buy-this-book page. Penenberg's application includes infographic, game, and research project related to his book. It estimates the real time value of users to various social networks, like Facebook.

Btw, did you know that Michael Jackson is apparently worth more than God? The Viral Loop app says so. (Hey, Chris Cree, HighCallingBlogs techno-genius... I need a Facebook and iPhone app for Stone Crossings. Is that too much to ask? Check it out, I already designed the art— see top of this post)

8. MAKE YOUR FACEBOOK APP/widget topical. Not as in topical skin cream, but as in make it relate to what you're trying to spread. This is obvious. The problem is that it's not simple. For someone like Penenberg, it takes creativity, but it's not impossible to create an app that will test and promote the theories of a technical book. However, as you've seen when you looked at my artwork for a Stone Crossings Facebook app (you did look, didn't you? Click picture for enlarged view.), well... who would know whether to laugh or cry at the absurdity of a widget on grace.

9. GET INVITED to be a guest Editor at Publisher's Weekly. (Anybody have some spare PW stationery sitting around? Bring it over and we can secretly pen a few invitations to ourselves. :) Obviously, this step is going to take some finegaling. In the meantime, though it might be a conflict of interest for me, as Managing Editor of HighCallingBlogs to invite myself to promote Stone Crossings at that awesome site, you could get to know me and someday get your blog or book featured.

10. USE EMAIL opportunities. Calacanis notes that he gets about a 60% RSVP rate through email, versus 30% from Twitter and 10% from Facebook. I'd say this is the one to be most careful about. Nobody likes to be spammed with read-my-blog or read-my-book notices in their inbox. Legitimate ways to email a list include offering a Subscribe by Email option in your sidebar.

If you made it this far, I'm assuming you're truly interested in making your blog or book go viral. These days it takes more than a simple sneeze. Still, I can say "God bless you."

P.S. It doesn't hurt to make a video too. Sorry, that's 11 steps to viral success.

RELATED ARTICLES:
CrunchGear's Viral Loop: Using Facebook and the iPhone to Promote Something Called a 'Book'
The New York Observer's Adam Penenberg's Crazy Viral Book Blitz
Fast Company's Viral Loop: Jason Calacanis Q&A From the Top of the Leader Board
Publisher's Weekly's Viral Issue: The Viral Loop
Fast Company's Report: Nine Scientifically Proven Ways to Get Retweeted on Twitter (this one's pretty cool because it also includes words most likely to get you retweeted and those most likely NOT to get you retweeted)
D: All Things Digital's Viral Loop: What Are Your Facebook Friends Worth?
Mediaite's Viral Loop: For Facebook, Michael Jackson is More Valuable than God
Fast Company's Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg on the Value of Viral Loops
Trenchwar's fun theory What Do Ninja Turtles, Hush Puppies and Pokeman All Have in Common?
HighCallingBlog's 7 Easy Tips to Grow Your Blog Audience

Original Viral Loop art by Studioe9. Viral Loop Christian Parody art by L.L. Barkat.

The Gift: Take, Eat, this is My Tweet-- hospitality on Twitter

'Honey, come and try some viral-marketing broccoli rabe,' says a woman to her boyfriend.

The context? Bill Wasik, author of And Then There's This: How Stories Live and Die in Viral Culture has just removed the plastic-bag-cooked-veggie from the microwave; he's promoting the bag as part of a word-of-mouth effort he signed up for on-line. This is the world of viral dreams, where businesses capitalize on 'media-consuming individuals' in hopes of creating 'community' that will sell their products.

But corporations are only tapping into a reality that exists for many who move and shake on-line. These are the 'sub-culture [who have] the mind-set of the marketer, drunk on numbers, single-mindedly obsessed with gathering attention, engineering sudden spikes.' They are the 'individual consumers...learning and refining the tricks of manipulation for themselves— where they serve as secret agents inside their own crowds, totaling up mentions and page views, sifting through their troves of data in a scurrilous search for gold.'

In other words, we are a tweeting, blogging, story-churning narcissistic cyberbunch, asserts Wasik, and who knows what effect this will ultimately have on culture?

Wasik's conclusions are only slightly less narcissistic than the cybertrends he observes.* In a kind of secular-spiritual-practice approach, he recommends quiet times, techno-Sabbath, self-reflection, and delaying gratification (by waiting for a topic to die down before reading about it). He asks us to be judicious controllers of what we take in, mostly to preserve our sanity and productivity and possibly to grant reason to our politics and greatness in our art. Any mention of true community and grace-engagement seems absent, as he urges us towards a corrective of partial 'disengagement.'

Enter The Gift, by Lewis Hyde. In speaking of gifts, he considers three levels at which they can function: the ego-of-one (which is self-gratification), the ego-of-two (which is reciprocal and best exemplified by lovers) or a full circle scenario that is unlike many married couples who 'get just so far in the expansion of the self and then close down for a lifetime, opening up for neither children, nor the group, nor the gods.'

In a sense, Wasik's Internet antidotes speak to dealing with the ego-of-one. But can *disengagement* alone move us towards higher levels of gift-giving? Towards reciprocity or full-circle giving? Maybe for that, we need to consider grace-engagement, a kind of cyber-hospitality modeled on tried and true off-line social behaviors.

For simplicity's sake, I thought we might focus on the increasingly popular Twitter world. However, if you tend to move more actively in the blogging or Facebook world, I invite your observations in those arenas. I don't think I've reached an adequate hospitality model quite yet, but here are some questions I've begun to ask myself about the act of tweeting...

1. How often do I tweet? If I spoke that much at an actual party, would I be monopolizing the conversation? Would I be viewed as a self-focused self-promoter?

2. Do my tweets tend to focus on *me*? As a journaling tool, focusing on myself can be positive, but how would such inward-focus be viewed in the average off-line conversation?

3. Do I tweet about the good stuff? Comparing this to off-line, am I just the gossipy tidbit type (sometimes fun and can serve a purpose) or can I also be counted on to move the conversation to refreshingly humorous or profound places?

4. Are my tweets usually monolog? Or do I engage in dialog? At 140 characters per entry, dialog is no simple matter. Still, am I talking AT or WITH other people?

5. Do I celebrate others' successes in my tweets? (And here I must thank Bradley Moore for retweeting my self-focused tweet on how I received an unexpected advance because Stone Crossings is being translated into Korean! Oops, pardon that temporary descent into narcissism :)

6. Do I think twice before tweeting on a bandwagon? As Wasik notes, he has seen the 'day-to-day destructiveness of the Internet churn, of the manufacture of nanostories with little regard for their ultimate truth.'

7. Do I tweet-dialog mostly with one other person? As in off-line life, it's good to focus on one or two friends sometimes, but in a social context that can border on the ego-of-two which never widens the circle.

8. Are my tweets always directive, statement oriented? Or do I sometimes ask questions, thus encouraging others to think and respond and add their wisdom or humor to the conversation.

All righty. Take, eat, these are my thoughts on tweeting. Now I'll sit back and wait for the bread and wine you'll bring to the table. And together maybe we can feed a wider world.


And Then There's This, photo by L.L. Barkat. *Overall, I enjoyed Wasik's book; I attribute the nature of his conclusions partly to the stage we're at with this whole 'social media conversation'; others like him, including those in the Christian community, have offered similar antidotes that rely on disengagement. As the conversation continues, I expect we'll eventually see a call for other kinds of solutions that favor what I've termed grace-engagement. For an article that begins the call in this direction, check out Loving Your On-Line Neighbor as Yourself, at Catapult.

OTHER BOOK CLUB POSTS:
High Calling's Laish and the Silo Effect
Thanks to International Arts Movement, for linking to our discussion of The Gift.

OTHER SEEDLINGS POSTS ON 'THE GIFT':
When Did You Labor, or will Sabbath help your gift go viral?
Womb, Harlequin, and License Plates: The Gift, 1

RELATED:
Trust Word of Mouth, at eMarketer
Loving Your On-Line Neighbor as Yourself, at Catapult
The Rise of the Nanostory, at Freedom to Tinker
Nanostory, at Tangzine

TOTALLY OFF TOPIC:
My First Giveaway, at Billy Coffey's.