David Scott - The New Rules of Marketing and PR

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A few years ago I was considering buying a new surfboard. I’ve been mainly riding an 8′0″ Spyder Wright over the past several years, and I wanted to get a smaller board. In an article in Surfer magazine, I read about a trend back to wooden surfboards, so I thought I’d do a little research on wood as an option for my next purchase. Like billions of other consumers, I headed over to Google to start my research. I entered the phrase “wooden surfboard.” Then I followed the link at the top search result to Grain Surfboards at grainsurfboards.com.

I was not disappointed. The Grain Surfboards site drew me in immediately with beautiful images of the boards and excellent descriptions of how the company makes them. No wonder Grain Surfboards had the top search result for the most important phrase in their business.

I learned that while surfboards were originally made of solid wood a hundred or more years ago in Hawaii, for the past 60 years machine-made materials such as polyurethane or polystyrene foam have all but replaced wood. After all, wood is heavier and harder to work with.

However, along came Grain Surfboards. The company pioneered the idea of applying boatbuilding techniques to make a hollow wooden board that is light, beautiful, and eco-friendly. The Grain Surfboards site wasn’t just talking up their products. It was educating me about the history of my sport.

The lessons didn’t stop with history. In fact, the company details its building process on the web for all to see. The idea of sharing your best ideas is foreign to many marketers and entrepreneurs, because people don’t want their competitors to understand their business. Yet the more you educate a consumer, the more likely they are to buy.

Along the way, I learned that at Grain Surfboards, you can buy a build-it-yourself wooden surfboard kit that has everything you need, including detailed plans. I also learned that the company conducts classes most months in its Maine workshop and also has a traveling course (held recently in California). If building your own board doesn’t appeal to you, you can have the artisans at Grain Surfboards craft one for you.

Grain Surfboards perfectly illustrates a different way of doing business—the very method we will discuss in this book. Grain Surfboards understands that when you share your work on the web, you spread your ideas and grow your business as a result. Throughout these pages, we’ll discuss how to create content that educates and informs, just like Grain Surfboards does.

As I was poking around on the site, I found my way to the Grain Surfboards Facebook page (12,000+ likes) and the @GrainSurfboards Instagram feed (50,000+ followers). Grain Surfboards engages with fans and shares what’s new. Because fans are excited to be engaged, they naturally help spread the company’s ideas—without even being asked. On Instagram, for example, Grain Surfboards posts get hundreds of likes and many comments and shares. The team regularly posts images of the boards they are building, of customer-created work, and, of course, images of surfing enthusiasts shredding atop the company’s gorgeous boards.

In this book, you’ll learn how to use tools like Instagram and Facebook in your business too. Social networking platforms are easy, fun, and powerful to use. It just takes a minute or two to shoot a photo, manipulate it with the filters, and share it with your network. With Instagram, images and videos do the talking, so even writing-challenged people can create awesome content.

In about 10 minutes of research on the Grain Surfboards site, as well as their Facebook and Instagram feeds, I made up my mind to purchase one of their boards. But I did more than that. I signed up for the four-day class on building a wooden surfboard held at the factory in York, Maine. When I read this description, I just couldn’t refuse this empowering opportunity: “Four days in, beautiful board out! You’ll get right down to it in this four-day class, beginning on Day 1 with a board that has pre-installed (by us) frames, chine and one railstrip. You’ll pair up with another student to build the rails of your board in the morning and your classmate’s that afternoon. Spend the remaining three days completing, shaping and sanding your board. It’s fast, but it’s fun and in only four days, you’ve got a shaped and sanded board ready for glass.” Sign me up!