How to create a global bestseller book or product

Today, I had the pleasure of hearing Tim Ferris, Author of the bestselling book The 4-Hour Workweek, speak at the Mediabistro Circus event.  Tim shared his “secrets” on how he leveraged Social Media to create a global best seller product….book or otherwise.

Data is KING

Tim measures and tests EVERYTHING… He says “from wording to read time…test it all”…learning as much as you can about your user will help you serve your audience better and help you make more sound promotional decisions. Tim uses Crazyegg.com tool to figure out user click patterns on his sites.

Determine your target market

Before he started marketing his book, Tim decided on the demographic he was going after…first, 18-25 tech savvy males and secondly 18-25 tech savvy females.  He advised to identify your demographic well because if you try to target too many people you won’t sell anything.

Go Where the Bloggers Go

Tim spent $25,000 on the book launch. $18,000 was “wasted on a PR firm”…the PR firm he worked with was not “accountable or measurable”. He spent the rest of his budget meeting people in person as “the e-mail channel is too crowded”.

To learn about blogging, he attended the CES expo.  He would join blogger conversations by listening and if he did not understand a term, he would ask.  Although that made him seem ignorant, eventually people asked him what he did and he would tell them that he was writing a book.  He would not pitch the book or himself and in fact, never asked the them to review the book….he just elicited questions and EMPHASIZED that he did not think the book would appeal to them, except for about five pages of it.  Tim says “Nobody has time to read the whole book but everyone has time to read 5 pages”.  His goal was to obtain 20,000 evangelists — not customers but avid fans, 3 months before the launch of the book.

Sell around the product

To create a fast-acting meme, Ferris says you need to do the following:

• Phenomenize: “identify and name a legitimate societal shift or new phenomenon….to best spread a message or product, sell around it by discussing larger issues surrounding its creation: the person (himself in this case), the changing social landscape, and emerging trends.  No one cares about your new software, but the reasons it needs to exist might ‘make for a great TV segment on 20/20.’”
• Polarize: “Good stories and trend-spotting, told unapologetically, will create both supporters (”That’s the solution!”) and attackers (”It’s a fraud!”). The battle and ongoing debate this generates is the fuel needed for word-of-mouth wildfire”.
• Communitize: Ferris encourages community creation for your online users. He encouraged his readers to create their own communities on the social networking site Ning and there are currently 12 different mini-communities that were formed to date.

Tim left us with two inspirational parting thoughts “Plan big but test assumptions and Doing the unthinkable is easier than you think”.

This session set the tone for what would turn out to be a great day 1 at the MediaBistro Circus hearing great insights about open source publishing, the future of books, magazines, newspapers, blogging, and the distribution and consumption of content, how customer behavior is evolving around technology, the best way to employ data so your company makes money, integrated marketing partnerships and of course meeting some really great people.