Unmarketing: Stop Marketing. Start Engaging
I first heard of Scott Stratten on Twitter where he goes by the handle “unmarketing.” He tweets some interesting things and I recommend you follow him.
What really made him stand out to me was his keynote address at PubCon South last year. He is an engaging speaker and shares his ideas (which are quite good, by the way) with humor and enthusiasm. I wrote up a summary of his comments from that keynote as well as the keynote panel he was part of at PubCon Vegas 2010. Those two events plus the excellent TEDx talk he gave last year made me want to check out his book.
Great Lessons and Great Illustrations
Unmarketing is a collection of Scott’s thoughts about how companies should engage with customers. The first story is his experience at Wynn Las Vegas, the retelling of which I summarized in my own article about the resort. From there he takes the reader on a journey of ”unmarketing” done well and not-so-well. He sprinkles his observations with excellent stories which illustrate his ideas. Scott presents some great lessons wrapped around real-life stories. He writes rather like he speaks, so the stories come to life and you can feel his passion in the words.
The ideas, lessons and tips garnered from the work can be applied to any business, small and large. They can help you learn to do what you do better if you’re willing to take a step back and start doing things a little differently.
One of Many Actionable Ideas
Scott wrote how Vistaprint runs their social media presence. They “sign on” their Twitter account at the beginning of the day and “sign off” when no one is actively monitoring their stream. I manage my employer’s Twitter account and I think this is a great idea to let people know when we’re paying the most attention. I realize that I can catch people’s “@” messages when I get in the office and respond when I can, but I believe letting people know there’s a “live person” at the other end of the Twitter stream can encourage better interaction between us and our customers.
If you are in business and you’re looking for ways to improve how you relate to your customers, I recommend you check out Unmarketing by Scott Stratten (Amazon Affiliate Link).
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Thanks for the rundown on this book! Michael Vogel turned me on to your site and I must admit I’ve spent way too much time on here
Love your posts and your voice. Very real and genuine – Can’t wait to get more!
Thank you for stopping by, Shannon, and thank you for the very kind words. I’m glad you find it useful and enjoyable. I appreciate your feedback.
I enjoyed meeting Michael last week. We had a very nice conversation over lunch.
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