The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing and Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly is a roadmap to navigating the world of online marketing. Author David Meerman Scott provides tips and techniques on how to market your product, your idea, or your services using the power of social media, blogs, news releases, online video, and viral marketing to reach your target market directly. And reading this book could help you outline an online marketing campaign for your business. Perhaps, you are doing quite well at creating compelling content for your website, but could learn from the section on using press releases to get your business found.

Unless you are a well rounded online marketer you’ll quite likely learn some important tips from this book. However, if you are looking for step-by-step detail on how to use video to market your business online than this is not the book for you as it doesn’t go into great detail about how to implement each phase of that campaign. It does however, help new marketers understand basic tools such as RSS feeds and YouTube videos.

It starts out coming “How to Web Has Change the Rules of Marketing and PR.” That section provides valuable insight for those who do not fully understand how marketing online differs from offline marketing, and how trying to use the old marketing methods can really hurt your business online.

The next section talks about how to use “Web-Based Communications to Reach Buyers Directly.” It covers using social media to reach your target audience, the benefit of blogs, the benefits of using audio and video to drive action, how to use press releases, the importance of creating a content-rich web site, and how some marketing campaigns spread throughout the interent.

Section three  is designed to help you develop an action plan. It covers:

• Building your marketing and PR plan.
• Using thought leadership to develop your organization into a trusted Resource.
• How to write for your specific audience.
• How internet content influences the buying process and how to help that process along.
• The importance of using social networking sites as part of your overall marketing campaign.
• How to reach your buyers through blogging.
• How to use video and podcasting as part of your overall marketing campaign.
• How to use news releases. The benefits of having an online media room and best practices in creating one.
• How reaching the media has changed. Use that information to create a new media relations plan.
• Search engine marketing and why it is important.

• And tips on how to make it all happen.

Each of the topics above are covered in one chapter. But let’s face it, entire books have been written about each one of those topics. So this isn’t a step-by-step how to guide, but it is a good overview of how to make it all work for you and your business.

I have been marketing online for years, and I learned some new tips that I will use to market online. I give this book a four star rating and overall recommend this book to anyone who needs to develop an online marketing campaign for their their services, their products, or their ideas.

The New Rules of Marketing and PR is available at Amazon.

• Genre: Marketing
• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Wiley (June 4, 2007)
• ISBN-10: 0470113456
• ISBN-13: 978-047011345