“This excellent look at the basics of new-millennial marketing should find use in the hands of any serious PR professional making the transition.”

—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“David is informative, entertaining and inspiring! No one knows more about new ways to reach buyers. The groundbreaking strategies in this book reinvent the way entrepreneurs engage the marketplace and grow business.”

—Tony Robbins

“This is absolutely the best book on the new world of marketing and PR. David Meerman Scott is ‘the teacher's teacher in the world of social media.’ I get all my best stuff from him. In fact, I buy each new edition because, in the ever-changing world of online marketing, if you don't stay current, you die a fast death. This edition is so new that it includes tools I hadn't even heard of yet. You'll love it.”

—Michael Port, New York Times Bestselling Author of Book Yourself Solid

“Most professional marketers—and the groups in which they work—are on the edge of becoming obsolete, so they'd better learn how marketing is really going to work in the future.”

—BNET, “The Best & Worst Business Books”

“When I read the New Rules for the first time, it was a ‘eureka’ moment for me at HubSpot. David nailed the fundamental shifts going on in the buyer-seller relationship and wrote the classic text to help marketers take advantage of them.”

—Brian Halligan, HubSpot CEO and Co-Author of Inbound Marketing

“I've relied on The New Rules of Marketing & PR as a core text for my New Media and Public Relations course at Boston University for the past eight years. David's book is a bold, crystal-clear, and practical guide toward a new (and better) future for the profession.”

—Stephen Quigley, Boston University

“What a wake-up call! By embracing the strategies in this book, you will totally transform your business. David Meerman Scott shows you a multitude of ways to propel your company to a thought leadership position in your market and drive sales—all without a huge budget. I am a huge fan and practitioner of his advice.”

—Jill Konrath, Author of Snap Selling, and Chief Sales Officer, SellingtoBigCompanies.com

“The New Rules of Marketing & PR has inspired me to do what I have coached so many young artists to do: ‘Find your authentic voice, become vulnerable, and then put yourself out there.’ David Meerman Scott expertly and clearly lays out how to use many great new tools to help accomplish this. Since reading this book, I have been excited about truly connecting with people without the filter of all the ‘old PR’ hype. It has been really energizing for me to speak about things that I really care about, using my real voice.”

—Meredith Brooks, Multi-Platinum Recording Artist, Writer, and Producer, and Founder of record label Kissing Booth Music

“David is a leading expert on how the digital age has dramatically changed marketing and PR. A great guide for large and small companies alike to navigate the ‘new rules.’”

—Martin Lindstrom, New York Times Bestselling Author of Buyology: The Truth and Lies about Why We Buy

“The Internet is not so much about technology as it is about people. David Meerman Scott, in his remarkable The New Rules of Marketing & PR, goes far beyond technology and explores the ramifications of the web as it pertains to people. He sets down a body of rules that show you how to negotiate those ramifications with maximum effectiveness. And he does it with real-life case histories and an engaging style.”

—Jay Conrad Levinson, Father of Guerrilla Marketing and Author, Guerrilla Marketing series of books

“The New Rules of Marketing & PR teaches readers how to launch a thought leadership campaign by using the far-reaching, long-lasting tools of social media. It is an invaluable guide for anyone who wants to make a name for themselves, their ideas, and their organization.”

—Mark Levy, Co-Author, How to Persuade People Who Don't Want to Be Persuaded, and Founder of Levy Innovation: A Marketing Strategy Firm

“Revolution may be an overused word in describing what the Internet has wrought, but revolution is exactly what David Meerman Scott embraces and propels forward in this book. He exposes the futility of the old media rules and opens to all of us an insiders' game, previously played by a few well-connected specialists. With this rule book to the online revolution, you can learn how to win minds and markets, playing by the new rules of new media.”

—Don Dunnington, President, International Association of Online Communicators (IAOC); Director of Business Communications, K-Tron International; and Graduate Instructor in Online Communication, Rowan University, Glassboro, New Jersey

“The history of marketing communications—about 60 years or so—has been about pushing messages to convince prospects to take some action we need. Now marketing communications, largely because of the overwhelming power and influence of the web and other electronic communications, is about engaging in conversation with prospects and leading or persuading them to take action. David Meerman Scott shows how marketing is now about participation and connection, and no longer about strong-arm force.”

—Roy Young, Chief Revenue Officer, MarketingProfs.com, and Co-Author, Marketing Champions: Practical Strategies for Improving Marketing's Power, Influence, and Business Impact

“David Meerman Scott not only offers good descriptions of digital tools available for public relations professionals, but also explains strategy, especially the importance of thinking about PR from the public's perspectives, and provides lots of helpful examples. My students loved this book.”

—Karen Miller Russell, Associate Professor, Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Georgia

“This is a must-read book if you don't want to waste time and resources on the old methods of Internet marketing and PR. David Meerman Scott reviews the old rules for old times' sake while bridging into the new rules for Internet marketing and PR for your cause. He doesn't leave us with only theories, but offers practical and results-oriented how-tos.”

—Ron Peck, Executive Director, Neurological Disease Foundation

“The New Rules of Marketing & PR is all about breaking the rules and creating new roles in traditional functional areas. Using maverick, nontraditional approaches to access and engaging a multiplicity of audiences, communities, and thought leaders online, PR people are realizing new value, influence, and outcomes. We're now in a content-rich, Internet-driven world, and David Meerman Scott has written a valuable treatise on how marketing-minded PR professionals can leverage new media channels and forums to take their stories to market. No longer are PR practitioners limited in where and how they direct their knowledge, penmanship, and perception management skills. The Internet has multiplied and segmented a wealth of new avenues for directly reaching and activating key constituencies and stakeholders. A good book well worth the read by all marketing mavens and aging PR flacks.”

—Donovan Neale-May, Executive Director, CMO Council

“The New Rules of Marketing & PR provides a concise action plan for success. Rather than focusing on a single solution, Scott shows how to use multiple online tools, all directed toward increasing your firm's visibility and word-of-mouth awareness.”

—Roger C. Parker, Author of The Streetwise Guide to Relationship Marketing on the Internet and Design to Sell

“Once again we are at a critical inflection point on our society's evolutionary path, with individuals wresting away power and control from institutions and traditional gatekeepers who control the flow of knowledge and maintain the silo walls. As communications professionals, there is little time to figure out what has changed, why it changed, and what we should be doing about it. If you don't start doing things differently and start right now, you may as well start looking for your next career path. In a world where disruption is commonplace and new ways of communicating and collaborating are invented every day, what does it take for a hardworking, ethical communications professional to be successful? David Meerman Scott's book, The New Rules of Marketing & PR, is an insightful look at how the game is changing as we play it and some of the key tactics you need to succeed in the knowledge economy.”

—Chris Heuer, Co-Founder, Social Media Club

1. The New Rules of Sales and Service: How to Use Agile Selling, Real-Time Customer Engagement, Big Data, Content, and Storytelling to Grow Your Business
2. Marketing the Moon: The Selling of the Apollo Lunar Program (with Richard Jurek)
3. Real-Time Marketing & PR: How to Instantly Engage Your Market, Connect with Customers, and Create Products That Grow Your Business Now
4. Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead: What Every Business Can Learn from the Most Iconic Band in History (with Brian Halligan)
5. Newsjacking: How to Inject Your Ideas into a Breaking News Story and Generate Tons of Media Coverage
6. World Wide Rave: Creating Triggers That Get Millions of People to Spread Your Ideas and Share Your Stories
7. Tuned In: Uncover the Extraordinary Opportunities That Lead to Business Breakthroughs (with Craig Stull and Phil Myers)
8. Cashing In with Content: How Innovative Marketers Use Digital Information to Turn Browsers into Buyers
9. Eyeball Wars: A Novel of Dot-Com Intrigue

You're not supposed to be able to do what David Meerman Scott is about to tell you in this book. You're not supposed to be able to carry around a $250 video camera, record what employees are working on and what they think of the products they are building, and publish those videos on the Internet. But that's what I did at Microsoft, building an audience of more than four million unique visitors a month.

You're not supposed to be able to do what Stormhoek did. A winery in South Africa, it doubled sales in a year using the principles discussed here.

Something has changed in the past 10 years. Well, for one, we have Google now, but that's only a part of the puzzle.

What really has happened is that the word-of-mouth network has gotten more efficient—much, much more efficient.

Word of mouth has always been important to business. When I helped run a Silicon Valley camera store in the 1980s, about 80 percent of our sales came from it. “Where should I buy a camera this weekend?” you might have heard in a lunchroom back then. Today that conversation is happening online. But instead of only two people talking about your business, now thousands and sometimes millions are either participating or listening in.

What does this mean? Well, now there's a new medium to deal with. Your PR teams had better understand what drives this new medium (it's as influential as the New York Times or CNN now), and if you understand how to use it, you can drive buzz, new product feedback, sales, and more.

But first you'll have to learn to break the rules.

Is your marketing department saying you need to spend $80,000 to do a single video? (That's not unusual, even in today's world. I just participated in such a video for a sponsor of mine.) If so, tell that department, “Thanks, but no thanks.” Or even better, search Google for “Will it blend?” You'll find a Utah blender company that got six million downloads in less than 10 days. Oh, and 10,000 comments in the same period of time. All by spending a few hundred bucks, recording a one-minute video, and uploading that to YouTube.

Or study what I did at Microsoft with a blog and a video camera. The Economist magazine said I put a human face on Microsoft. Imagine that. A 60,000-employee organization, and I changed its image with very little expense and hardly a committee in sight.

This advice isn't for everyone, though. Most people don't like running fast in business. They feel more comfortable if there are lots of checks and balances or committees to cover their asses. Or they don't want to destroy the morale of PR and marketing departments due to the disintermediating effects of the Internet.

After all, you can type “OneNote Blog” into Google, Bing, or Yahoo! and you'll find the OneNote team at Microsoft. You can leave a comment and tell them their product sucks and see what they do in response. Or even better, tell them how to earn your sale. Do they snap into place?

It's a new world you're about to enter, one where relationships with influentials and search engine optimization strategy are equally important, and one where your news will be passed around the world very quickly.

You don't believe me?

Look at how the world found out I was leaving Microsoft for a Silicon Valley start-up.

I told 15 people at a videoblogging conference—not A-listers, either, just everyday videobloggers. I asked them not to tell anyone until Tuesday—this was on a Saturday afternoon, and I still hadn't told my boss.

Well, of course, someone leaked that information. But it didn't pop up in the New York Times. It wasn't discussed on CNN. No, it was a blogger I had never even heard of who posted the info first.

Within hours, it was on hundreds of other blogs. Within two days, it was in the Wall Street Journal, in the New York Times, on the front page of the BBC website, in BusinessWeek, in the Economist, in more than 140 newspapers around the world (friends called me from Australia, Germany, Israel, and England, among other countries), and in other places. Waggener Edstrom, Microsoft's PR agency, was keeping track and said that about 50 million media impressions occurred on my name in the first week.

All due to 15 conversations. Whoa, what's up here? Well, if you have a story worth repeating, bloggers, podcasters, and videobloggers (among other influentials) will repeat your story all over the world, potentially bringing hundreds of thousands or millions of people your way. One link on a site like Digg alone could bring tens of thousands of visitors.

How did that happen? Well, for one, lots of people knew me, knew my phone number, knew what kind of car I drove, knew my wife and son, knew my best friends, knew where I worked, and had heard me in about 700 videos that I posted at http://channel9.msdn.com on behalf of Microsoft.

They also knew where I went to college (and high school and middle school) and countless other details about me. How do you know they know all this? Well, they wrote a page on Wikipedia about me at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Scoble—not a single thing on that page was written by me.

What did all that knowledge of me turn into? Credibility and authority. Translation: People knew me, knew where I was coming from, knew I was passionate and authoritative about technology, and came to trust me where they wouldn't trust most corporate authorities.

By reading this book, you'll understand how to gain the credibility you need to build your business. Enjoy!

—Robert Scoble

Co-author, Naked Conversations

@scobleizer