Content Matters

I’ve just finished reading the galleys of David Meerman Scott’s latest book, The New Rules of Marketing and PR.  The final version will be published in June; you can pre-order a copy here.

For those who read David’s Web Ink Now blog, the themes of this book will be familiar.  David released an eBook, the New Rules of PR, last year, focusing on direct-to-consumer press releases.  That eBook, plus all of his experiences in viral marketing have led to this new book. 

The book expands beyond PR to include online marketing, viral marketing and leveraging content.  As David points out, in this new environment, these areas are all converging.  A news release, posted to your website, simply becomes marketing content to the reader.  As with his previous book, Cashing in With Content, Scott uses compelling real-world examples to demonstrate the benefits of these methods.  I was pleased to see Alacra mentioned twice in the book – once for the Alacra Blog and again for the Alacra Wiki.

Even for those who read his blog regularly, David brings some new themes to the book.  There is an interesting discussion on the creation of buyer personas – for each type of buyer who may visit your site, so that you can provide relevant content to each buyer type.  This builds upon some of his earlier work, where he focused on content to address users in various phases of a purchase cycle. 

Roughly half the book is focused on putting these concepts to practice in your own environment.  These ten chapters provide specific guidance for understanding buyer personas, using content to position your company as a thought leader and writing content that will resonate with your buyers.  There are also hands-on chapters on blogging, podcasting and leveraging social networking sites.

David Meerman Scott clearly uses the tools that he writes about.  His eBook was downloaded more than 150,000 times, all through viral marketing.  Advance copies of his new book were distributed to a lengthy list of the bloggers who were mentioned in the book.  Clearly David knows that's an easy way to get all of those bloggers (like this one) to write a book review. 

The New Rules of Marketing and PR covers a lot of ground in less than 300 pages.   For traditional marketers and executives, the book is an accessible guide to the emerging models.  For those knee-deep in online marketing already, the New Rules serves as a useful checklist of tips and tools to ensure that your marketing, PR and content are working together to help you achieve your goals.