Marketing expert Scott Stratten of Un-Marketing.com shared valuable tips during his engaging, funny presentation at the Triangle AMA meeting last week. Kudos to Chris Moody of Bandwidth.com for recruiting Scott.
Karl’s 10 Favorite UnMarketing Tips from Scott Stratten
Scott’s big themes were authenticity, dialogue, emotions, and common decency, with a focus on social media marketing:
- Grow your network on Twitter by chatting with others, not promoting yourself. Scott said he’s now tweeted 59,000 times — and 75% of those are @ replies. Check your own stats at TweetStats.
- Social media isn’t hard — it’s just talking. The ideal marketing is permission-based — “pull and stay,” not “push and pray.”
- Don’t market things the way you hate being marketed to yourself. Like cold-calling, for instance. Scott said, “I could punch everyone in the face and someone would eventually pay me to stop. That doesn’t mean it works.”
- People do business with people they know, like, and trust. There’s a marketing and customer service angle, but social media is ultimately about building relationships. Scott said, “Every time you ask the ROI on Twitter, a kitten dies.” and “People tell me, ‘I don’t believe in Twitter.’ It’s not a religion!“
- During your own presentations, tell the audience to turn on their phones. You should be sharing information that’s so valuable, people can’t wait to tweet it, and make everyone else jealous that they’re not there in the audience.
- People share things that evoke emotion. Just because you say it’s a “viral video” doesn’t make it viral. People don’t spread “meh.” They spread emotional and awesome. Your business can be a commodity, but emotion isn’t. The reason we spread and share content online hasn’t changed, even if the technology has.
- If you don’t trust an employee to do social media, that’s not a social media issue. It’s an HR issue.
- To focus your energies, use “platforming.” Be active on a single platform and do it really well. For instance, Scott committed to Twitter in January 2009. He tweeted 7,000 times that month, growing from 1,200 to 10,000 followers. Since then, his followership has grown to 60,000 people, through retweets and other cross-pollination. If you don’t have that much time, spending 30 minutes every day is better than spending 3.5 hours one time a week.
- If it takes you longer to reply to a tweet than to send a letter, you’re doing it wrong. Scott mentioned someone who took 89 days to reply to his message, about whether she was going to an event he was doing. Her reply, three months later? “No.”
- All we want is be validated. Respond to people, unless they’re trolls. Ignore the trolls, or write a reply and delete it before sending. As Scott said, “My job is not to be the jackass whisperer.”
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Comments, Analysis, and Discussion
I’m sure Scott had given the talk many times already, as it was very polished, but everything seemed quite fresh. His sarcastic humor stood out and kept the audience laughing…and scribbling notes about new ideas to use back at the office.
During the Q&A, I asked Scott my “what’s an interview question you’ve never been asked” question, a la my Seth Godin interview. Scott seemed taken aback for a moment but quickly regrouped.
He said that no one had asked how his book tour came together. His answer? All via Twitter, all from people contacting him and asking him to come to their city. Here in the Triangle, for instance, it was Chris Moody.
Scott’s answer made for a great illustration of his “pull and stay” approach to marketing, versus traditional “push and pray” marketing.
As an early registrant for the TriAMA lunch-and-learn, I received a copy of Scott’s book, UnMarketing: Stop Marketing. Start Engaging. After chatting with friends, I lined up for the signing. The inscription (right) riffed off his onstage response to my interview question: “Greatest. Question. Ever.” Thanks, Scott!
I noticed just one disconnect during his presentation — when Scott described “living” on Twitter in January 2009, he said he told his assistant he’d be unavailable for a month. I wish I had an assistant to delegate to! And I’m pretty sure most of my fellow TriAMA audience members don’t have assistants, either, virtual or otherwise. But that’s a minor point.
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Conclusion
If Scott’s tips resonated with you, check out the book and follow him on Twitter at @unmarketing.
I also recommend reading Deirdre Reid’s event recap, reading Morgan Siem’s recap at MediaTwoPoint{OH!}, and watching Chris’ “5in5″ video interview with Scott. I’m looking forward to re-absorbing the presentation’s content when I read UnMarketing.
What were your biggest takeaways from Scott Stratten and UnMarketing?
Image credits: Scott Stratten photos by Brian McDonald (used with permission) and book page photo by Karl Sakas
