book contains much more than just my own ideas, because I blogged the book, section by section, as I wrote the first edition. And as I have done revisions, including this sixth edition, I've continued to blog the stories that appear here. Thousands of you have followed along, and many have contributed to the writing process by offering suggestions through comments on my blog, via Twitter, and by email. Thank you for contributing your ideas. And thank you for arguing with me when I got off track. Your enthusiasm has made the book much better than it would have been if I had written in isolation.
The web has changed not only the rules of marketing and PR, but also the business-book model, and The New Rules of Marketing & PR is an interesting example. My online content (the e-book and my blog) led me directly to a print book deal. I published early drafts of sections of the book on my blog and used the blog to test ideas for inclusion in subsequent editions. Other publishers would have freaked out if an author wanted to put parts of his book online (for free!) to solicit ideas. The people at John Wiley & Sons encouraged it. So my thanks go to them as well.
The New Rules of Marketing & PR has sold remarkably well since the initial release in June 2007. The first edition made the BusinessWeek bestseller list for multiple months. Since then, the revised editions have remained a top title for more than 10 years among thousands of books about marketing and public relations. Want to know the amazing thing? I didn't spend a single penny advertising or promoting it.
Here's what I did do when I launched the first edition: I offered advance copies to approximately 130 important bloggers, I sent out nearly 20 news releases (you'll read later in the book about news releases as a tool to reach buyers directly), and my publisher alerted contacts in the media. That's it. Thousands of bloggers have written about the book over the years (thank you!), significantly driving its sales. And the mainstream media have found me as a result of this blogger interest. The Wall Street Journal called several times for interviews that landed me quotes in the paper because the journalists had read about my ideas online first. I've appeared on international and local television and radio, including MSNBC, Fox Business, and NPR. I've been interviewed on hundreds of podcasts. Magazines and newspaper reporters email me all the time to get quotes for their stories. How do they find me? Online, of course! And it doesn't cost me a single penny. I'm not telling you all this to brag about my book sales or my media appearances. I'm telling you to show you how well these ideas work and to let you know that you can achieve a similar result in your business.
But the coolest part of my life since the book was published isn't that I took advantage of the new rules of marketing and PR, nor that this book has been selling like hotcakes as a result. No, the coolest part of my life right now is that people contact me every day to say that the ideas in these pages have transformed their businesses and changed their lives. Really! That's the sort of language people use. They write just to thank me for putting the ideas into a book so that they could be enlightened to the new realities of marketing and PR.
Take Jody. He sent me an email to tell me the book had an unexpected effect on him and his wife. Jody explained that, to them, the really exciting and hopeful idea is that they can actually use their genuine voices online; they've left behind the hype-inflated, PR-speak their agencies had used so tediously.
Jim wrote to tell me “more powerful than saying I read your book twice, I used it to innovate a new writing model. I've been building my audience from scratch on LinkedIn ahead of publication of my first novel and I've now got over 70,000 subscribers and was named a Top Voice for 2016.”
Jorge, who lives in Portugal, commented on LinkedIn that “it was because of this book that I started blogging. It took me one entire day to do my first blog post. Now I use content marketing on a regular basis and all my business comes from Mr. Google! Thanks David and thanks New Rules.. (and Mr. Google)!”
Andrew left a comment on my blog: “David, your book so inspired me, I decided to start a brand-new business (launching shortly) based around the principles you espouse. You cogently expressed many of the things that I'd been grappling with myself. So your book has certainly changed one life.”
Mark said, “I took your advice back in 2006 and started a blog. If you Google ‘fix sales problems,’ you will find 42 million listings, and I am number one in the world! Thanks again for the advice years ago, and I forced myself to do it and I am glad I did.”
Julie, who is a senior executive at a PR firm, handed out copies to all 75 of her staff members. Mike wrote to say that his company takes advantage of all the trends and techniques described in the book. He purchased a bunch of copies to share with everyone in his organization. Larry bought copies for all the members of his professional association. Robin, who works for a company that offers public relations services, purchased 300 copies for clients. People approach me at conferences asking me to sign wonderfully dog-eared, coffee-stained, Post-it-noted copies of the book. Sometimes they tell me some funny secrets, too. Kathy, who works in PR, said that if everyone read it, she'd be out of a job! David told me he used what he learned to find a new job.
While all this incredible feedback is personally flattering, I am most grateful that my ideas have empowered people to find their own voices and tell their own stories online. How cool is that?
Now let me disclose a secret of my own. As I was writing the first edition of this book, I was a bit unsure of the global applicability of the new rules. Sure, I'd found a number of anecdotal stories about online marketing, blogging, and social networking outside North America. But I couldn't help but wonder at the time: Are organizations of all kinds reaching their buyers directly, with web content written in languages other than English and for cultures other than my own? I quickly learned that the answer is a resounding yes! About 25 percent of the book's English-language sales have come from outside the United States. And as I write this, the book has been or is being translated into more than 29 other languages, including Bulgarian, Finnish, Korean, Vietnamese, Serbian, and Turkish. I'm also receiving invitations from all over the world to speak about the new rules. In the past few years, I've traveled to many countries, including Bulgaria, Sweden, Saudi Arabia, India, Japan, the United Kingdom, Spain, Estonia, Latvia, Turkey, Egypt, Italy, Croatia, the Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Trinidad, and the Dominican Republic. So I can say with certainty that the ideas in these pages do resonate worldwide. We are indeed witnessing a global phenomenon.
This sixth edition of the book builds on the completely revised fifth edition with another extensive rewrite. I have checked every fact, figure, and URL. But I've also listened. In the past few years, I've met thousands of people like you, people who have shared their stories with me. I have drawn from those experiences and included in these pages many new examples of success. For those of you who have read earlier editions, you'll still find many fresh ideas in these pages.
I've made some more significant additions as well. The tools of marketing and public relations are constantly evolving. Consider this: When I wrote the first edition of the book, Twitter didn't even exist and Facebook was available only to students. Now Twitter is an essential tool of marketing, and as of the fourth quarter of 2016, Facebook had 1.86 billion monthly active users around the world. And those are just two examples.
The real-time web has sparked a tremendous opportunity for reaching members of the media directly – as they are writing breaking news stories. So I've added much more to the chapters on real-time marketing, including a section on Snapchat, and added to the chapter on newsjacking, the technique of injecting your ideas into a breaking news story to generate tons of media coverage.
I also got out my scalpel and cut stories and concepts that I felt were no longer appropriate. This edition is shorter than the last. While some cuts were obviously needed (such as removing the discussion of video-sharing site Vine, which was shut down), others were more about how the tools have changed. Want to know the single most significant change since the fifth edition was published? I eliminated the chapter on
