Web Publicity Grows Up, Learns the Value of Conversation

Mac Slocum
October 20, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (2) | Listen

Chris Brogan and Julien Smith, co-authors of the upcoming book Trust Agents, share a few ideas for drumming up pre-publication interest in a title. Some of their suggestions are straight from the Web publicity playbook (ebook previews, blogging during the writing process), but they're also exploring engagement through online events and workshops -- two things that usually happen after publication.

I hadn't considered this until reading Brogan's blog post, but many social media publicity techniques aren't particularly social. Podcasts, blog posts and Facebook groups are technologically progressive, but there's a significant difference between a publicity update and an open invitation.

Twitter serves as an example here: The best Twitter users engage their audience through curated links, retweets, commentary and discussion. This stands in contrast to the auto-generated Twitter blasts employed by many media organizations (they're easy to spot -- look for the abrupt truncations).

Brogan's post -- and efforts from people like Seth Godin -- show that Web-based publicity is following the same developmental trajectory as blogging (and Twitter, although it hasn't reached puberty just yet). The top-down messaging that marks the early days of a Web effort eventually matures into a two-way conversation -- and that's when things get interesting.

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2 Comments

Chris Brogan... said:
October 20, 2008 6:26 PM

The comments section was way better than the post, actually. People had some amazing ideas, but then, that's why I blogged it. Why trust one opinion, when I can form a community of passionate people, and then riff off their collected wisdom?

Thanks for your ideas, too. That's what it's all about.

Mac Slocum said:
October 20, 2008 8:00 PM

@Chris: Thanks for following up regarding the comments -- you certainly hit a nerve (in a good way!) with your post!

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