Bizsuccess

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

By: Susan Gunelius

Earlier this year, I attended a conference where I heard a speech given by David Meerman Scott, author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR and World Wide Rave and popular blogger at WebInkNow.com.  During his presentation, he said many things that mirrored my own thinking about marketing and social media, which is always nice.  However, he did say one thing that really stuck with me and made me think in a new direction.  During his speech, David said one of the most important things you need to do in order to harness the power of the social Web in spreading your ideas wider and farther than ever before is to remove the gateway to your online content.  I’ll say that again:

Remove the gateway to your online content.

What did David mean by this?  It’s actually quite simple and makes complete sense.  Rather than requiring people to register for your site or provide their email addresses to access additional content from you such as an ebook, make it freely available to them with a click of the mouse.  Publish your content with a Creative Commons Attribution license, and encourage people to share your content, republish it, link to it, email it, and so on, as long as they include appropriate attribution citing you as the creator.  This is one of the most powerful ways you can maximize your small business marketing content strategy.

In his speech, David provided several examples showing that the power of your content grows exponentially when you remove the gateway to it.  The social Web is made for sharing, and gone are the days of relying on email lists to get your content out to the world.  Instead, encourage people to do the work for you by letting them spread the word and share your content.

While it’s true that removing the gateway to your content represents a shift in thinking that many people aren’t prepared to make yet, the evidence is out there that the power of content gone viral is amazing.  Not convinced?  Take a look at David’s ebook, Lose Control of Your Marketing, which is available for free and without a gateway.  He shares some stories that might make you change your mind about requiring people to provide their email address to access your ebook, presentation, video, or other content.

You can check out David’s other ebooks here.  They’re very enlightening.