Greg Verdino: Bum rush the conversation

Jaffe is going to be insufferable tomorrow. ;-)

Today his new book, Join The Conversation (Wiley,) hit #26 on Amazon's list of bestsellers and at various points held the #1 slot in a variety of categories including Marketing & Sales, Advertising (ironic), Business Management and (inexplicably) Accounting. Joe bested Trump and Suze Orman, perennial business bestsellers Jim Collins and Malcom Gladwell, and at one point was even ahead of fiction bestsellers like The Kite Runner in the overall ranking.

I'm not sure how many books were actually sold but I'd say that #26 (even on a Sunday) is quite an achievement.

So how does a business book about conversational marketing crack the Amazon overall bestsellers list? Simple - Jaffe tapped into the power of community or, more precisely, his community.

Joseph leveraged his blog, podcast, Twitter and Facebook to rally his readers, friends and fans to all buy the book today. This is a technique known as "bum rushing the charts" and has been used before to get songs by indie artists to the top of the iTunes bestseller ranking and turn self-published sci-fi novels into Amazon bestsellers, but I believe that this is the first time we've seen a business-to-business bum rush. And it actually worked...

So is this a case of gaming the system or savvy social media marketing? Or maybe it's neither. Or both.

However you interpret it, the impact is undeniable and here's the takeaway -- there's nothing to stop pretty much any marketer from applying these techniques to garner attention for their own new product launches and spur on-demand sales. Nothing, that is, if that marketer takes the time to build their own community, fosters meaningful relationships with the members and then makes a coordinated effort across a variety of conversational channels to connect with the community at just the right time to move the needle. None of these things happens overnight -- they take quite a bit of effort and long term commitment.

So marketers -- you are building good relationships with the members of your community (e.g., your customers and prospects), aren't you? And your community would mobilize to help make your new product a big success, right? If not, you might want to pick up a copy of Join the Conversation.

My Books & eBooks

Download my FREE marketing and social media eBook. In it, I present 24 'signature' posts from my first two years of blogging. Feel free to share '4 & 20 Blog Posts' with your friends and colleagues.
The second Age of Conversation volume features chapters from 237 authors in 15 countries. My contribution explores social media fatigue. As with the original Age of Conversation, all proceeds benefit Variety.
Buy The Age of Conversation, the unique collaborative book featuring contributions by more than 100 bloggers, including me. All proceeds go to Variety, The Children's Charity.

About

Greg Verdino is a futurist, marketer, writer and speaker who works as Chief Strategy Officer at marketing consultancy crayon LLC. His first book, microMARKETING, is due from McGraw-Hill in summer 2010. This blog looks at trends in media and marketing, as these industries grapple with the changes being brought on by disruptive technologies, new business imperatives and the rise of the empowered consumer.

July 2009