CHAPTER 14

Be Spreadable

While the tapers who attended and recorded the concerts made up their own mini subculture within the Deadhead community, the fans that collected tapes were a much bigger subculture. Deadheads often had hundreds of tapes in their collections and actively sought recordings of significant shows. Before the Internet, people freely passed tapes to friends, who made copies. These friends would share them with their friends, who shared them with their friends, and so on. Deadheads played their tapes in college dorms, at work, and at home—turning on still more fans.

 

Deadheads also spent hours creating beautifully hand-drawn “covers” for their tapes, especially if a particular show had special meaning (i.e., you met your wife at the concert or your first child was born on that show date). Fans might draw the dancing bears on the tape cover and then give the tape to a friend.

 

All of this copying and sharing and creating was fully sanctioned by the Grateful Dead, whose only stipulation was that recordings not be sold for commercial purposes.

THE GRATEFUL DEAD MADE IT EASY TO SPREAD THEIR MUSIC BECAUSE THEY DIDN’T PLACE BARRIERS AROUND IT.

The music industry put strict barriers around artists’ content, a battle that continues to this day. According to copyright law, a fan could make a copy of an album or a cassette tape but was not supposed to share it with others—the thinking being that sharing would reduce sales. The way you learned about a band’s new music was by listening to the radio, talking to friends, or maybe by reading an industry publication such as Rolling Stone.

 

No band freely shared their music with fans the way the Grateful Dead did—and as we’ve already pointed out, rather than working against them, setting their music free only fueled their success as Deadheads spread their music far and wide. Each tape was like an advertisement that attracted new people to one of their concerts. The more concerts the Grateful Dead performed, the more tapes were in the marketplace. The more copies were made of the tapes, the more advertisements were in the marketplace pulling in new customers.

MARKETING LESSON FROM THE GRATEFUL DEAD

Be Spreadable

As a marketer, your goal is to spread the word about your product or service in the marketplace. Twenty years ago, the friction in the marketplace was high. To overcome this friction, you spent money on PR firms and on expensive advertising campaigns.

 

Today, the friction in the marketplace against getting your product known is much, much less. If you have a remarkable idea, you will attract bloggers and social media users in your marketplace that will help you propel your idea without spending lots of money on PR and advertising. Like the Grateful Dead, you can set your content free and then watch your fans and followers spread it far and wide.

THE GRATEFUL DEAD TEACHES US THAT MAKING IT EASY FOR OUR AUDIENCE TO SPREAD OUR CONTENT MAKES OUR PRODUCT “KNOWN” IN THE MARKETPLACE.

Epidemiologists use the term “R-naught” (designated by the symbol R₀) to define the spread of infectious disease outbreaks. Basically, if R₀ is greater than 1, it’s an epidemic. If R₀ equals one, it’s an epidemic, and if R₀ is less than one, the disease dies out.

 

You want your content and ideas to have an R₀ as high as possible so that they spread and spread and spread (hence the term “viral” for viral marketing). If 10 people read your content and each person forwards it to at least one person, so that at least 10 more people see it, then your R₀ is greater than one. If 10 people read your content and only one of them forwards it, then your R₀ is point one.

This means you want your content to be as remarkable as possible and you want to make it as easy as possible for people to spread your content through Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, StumbleUpon, Digg, etc. Putting registration barriers in front of your content will ensure an R₀ of less than one. Setting your remarkable content free and enabling people to share it on social media sites, combined with huge reach (which we discussed), can help you get as high an R₀ as possible.

WHY MASHABLE’S CONTENT IS SHARED ACROSS THE INTERNET

Mashable is the defacto Web 2.0 and social media blog read by over 2.4 million people. Instead of putting its content behind barriers the way some mainstream media outlets do (i.e., the Wall Street Journal), they removed all barriers to people reading, linking to, and sharing its content with others. Prominently displayed on every blog post are Mashable’s social-sharing buttons, including Google Buzz, Twitter, Facebook, e-mail, and the relatively new Facebook “I Like” or “thumbs-up” button.

 

Mashable is particularly good about keeping up-to-date with these social sharing tools: within moments of Google announcing Google Buzz, for example, Mashable had the Buzz icon on every post to make it easy for readers to spread content using this new tool. Shortly after Facebook announced its “I Like” feature, Mashable had this button on every post.

 

By removing barriers to its content, making it easy to spread, and adding social sharing features as they become available, the site gets over 15 million monthly page views.

ROCK ON

Make it easy to spread your content

Whether you’re just getting started in social media or you’re a blackbelt, it pays to make it easy for your marketplace to spread your content for you.

 

ACTION: Integrate social media throughout your marketing. If you have a blog, put Facebook, Twitter, Google Buzz, and e-mail social sharing buttons on each article so that it’s easy for readers to help you spread your great ideas. If you have a LinkedIn account, integrate your blog and Twitter feed into your Profile or Group. When you announce a webinar or other event, include social sharing buttons on the landing page so that people attending the event can tell their friends what they’re up to and help spread the word. The same applies to videos, e-books, and other content: make the landing page and e-mail response an opportunity for your new fans to spread the word.

 

When you write your e-newsletter, include social sharing buttons that allow readers to tell their friends in their e-mail about the content via their preferred social media tool. This means you’ll have to set it up so that when they click the Tweet icon, for example, the link that the user tweets about points to a version of your e-newsletter that’s on your web site.

 

You should make it easy for people to spread your offline marketing activities as well by encouraging folks to follow you on Twitter and Facebook on any advertising you still might be doing.