Book Reviews

Book Reviews / Social Media — 1 Comment
8
Nov 08

Book Review: Problogger

Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett draw upon their wealth of experience with blogs and give us this comprehensive blogging primer.

While the book is mostly focused on making money from blogs, it starts from the beginning: by explaining what is a blog and how to set one up. This takes about three chapters (if you have already started a blog, you can just skim through those sections).

Intermediate bloggers will enjoy the book more from chapter 4 on, when Darren and Chris talk about how and what to write (helpful to overcome the all-too-common “writer’s block”) and how to make money from your blog (both directly, like with advertising, and indirectly, as with partnerships, speaking engagements, etc).

The last few chapters deal with a topic that was completely new to me: buying and selling blogs. Darren and Chris do a very good job at spelling out the caveats you must take into account when buying and selling blogs, to avoid scams and costly mistakes.

The comprehensive nature of this book makes it difficult for the authors to go into much detail about any particular topic. The good news is that Darren’s blog (problogger.net) is chock full of how-to articles that may give you the specific information that you won’t find in the book.

Overall, I found this book to be a very good blogging primer, one that I will keep in my bookshelf for future and constant reference.

Book Reviews — 2 Comments
21
Oct 08

How Was Your Day? A Review of “Tribes”

tribes.jpg

In his new book “Tribes” Seth Godin the marketing guru gives way to Seth Godin the life coach. In this thoroughly engaging book, Seth urges us to live a life of purpose, to become leaders, and to throw ourselves wholeheartedly to the pursuit of our dreams.

He builds upon the premises laid out in his previous books to underscore the fact that traditional interruption marketing doesn’t work any more, and that business models based on hierarchical organizations, top down marketing messages and large advertising budgets are a thing of the past.

What this means is good news for you. Seth gives us example after example of how the Internet is allowing ordinary people to speak out, get noticed and connect with each other, in a way and scale that was simply unthinkable even a decade ago.

Blogs are free and can be set up in minutes. People (your tribe) can start following you by just clicking on the RSS icon. Tools like Twitter and Facebook make building communities of like-minded people a snap. If you can’t find a publisher for your book, you can publish it yourself. All the barriers to entry that could have served as a valid excuse years ago no longer apply.

But tools mean nothing if we are not willing to use them to effect change. To make sure we get the point, Seth doesn’t spare nudges. One that I found particularly powerful is this (paraphrasing): instead of taking two weeks off so that you can forget the other fifty, wouldn’t it make more sense to design a life that you don’t have to escape from? How do you react when someone asks you: how was your day?

If the answer is anything but ‘great’, if you’re stuck facing a dead end in your career, or if you are afraid to take the first step and start leading, you owe it to yourself to pick up a copy of Tribes.

Reactions from around the blogosphere:

P.S. You can also download the audio version of “Tribes” free from Audible.com .

Book Reviews / Social Media — 4 Comments
16
Apr 08

Problogger (the Book) and the Value of Compiling Content

Darren Rowse, publisher of the wildly successful Problogger blog, has recently written a book . Problogger is all about making money online, has 45,000+ subscribers and features more than 4,000 posts. Probably most of the content in the book can be found by reading and digging deep into the blog (a real treasure trove of information). So, if you can read Darren’s blog, why buy the book?

The answer is simple: in the information age value can be created by simply aggregating and compiling information. We don’t have time to hunt for information. We want it fast and in a format that’s easy to consume: why browse through 4,000 posts when we can get a selected, condensed, organized and neatly packaged version of that content? That is why Darren will sell a ton of books.

Have you thought of all the possible components of your value curve? Are you addressing all the ways in which your customers may want to consume your product or service? Are you packaging your expertise in a way that’s easy to communicate and spread?

Book Reviews — 3 Comments
24
Mar 08

Presentation Zen: Book Review

presentationzen.jpgIn this age of information overload and short attention spans, the ability to deliver clear and concise presentations is one of the most important skills.

Instead, business presentations today are mostly long, unfocused and boring. In a typical PowerPoint presentation, the audience is forced to sit through slide after slide of charts, bullet points and text while the presenter reads from the screen.

As a result, both presenter and audience feel stressed and disengaged, and everybody ends up wasting their time (this common situation is also referred to as Death by PowerPoint).

Garr Reynolds’ quest to end PowerPoint as we know it started years ago when, riding on the express train from Tokyo to Osaka, he had his epiphany: after watching a Japanese businessman nervously flip through a printout of poorly designed PowerPoint slides in an obvious state of confusion, he decided to launch his Presentation Zen blog, now the most popular presentation design site on the web.

Presentation Zen (the book) is organized in three main sections:

  • Preparation
  • Design
  • Delivery

In the way of the true classics, this book is more than a simple step by step tutorial. It outlines an approach, a strategy to solve the complex communication issues of today. It not only tells us how to do a presentation, but instead takes us on a journey to discover what is it that we need to communicate in the first place, and how to make it resonate with our audience.

Here are some of the things I learned:

  • How to discover your core message (the one thing, and only one, that you want your audience to remember).
  • The importance of having quiet time to think. Busyness kills creativity. We all need some quiet time alone to come up with our best ideas.
  • To use pencil and paper to brainstorm the content and outline of a presentation.
  • To use two often forgotten PowerPoint tools: notes (so you don’t have to read from the screen) and handouts (so you don’t have to cram all the data on your slides).
  • Less is more: remove from slides every single element that doesn’t add to our core message.
  • PowerPoint is not a document creation tool. It’s job is to provide a visual aid to our presentation. The slides themselves are not the presentation.
  • Images are more powerful than words.

Garr has packed this book with visual examples of great (and not so great) presentations, so we can see the difference. Also, he summarizes the most important ideas at the end of each chapter, and links to great presentation resources on the web (my favorite is TED, where you can see the great presenters of our time in action).

This book is not for everyone. Those readers who are looking for a few quick tips on how to do a PowerPoint presentation may get impatient with the author’s frequent and lengthy references to the Zen philosophy and concepts.

However, if you bear with him, you will learn more than just do a presentation. You will learn to analyze and solve complex communications problems, to see the big picture from your customers’ perspective, and how to effectively position products and services in the marketplace.

If you have to do presentations for a living (and who doesn’t these days?) read this book and keep it handy for future reference. And, while you’re at it, add Presentation Zen (the blog) to your blogroll or favorites.

Book Reviews / Marketing / Social Media — 6 Comments
19
Feb 08

Book Review: Meatball Sundae

I just finished reading Meatball Sundae, Seth Godin’s latest book. It is mainly an account of what happens when old school companies try to use social media to sell commodity products.

Commodity products (the meatballs) and social media (the frosting and the cherry) don’t mix very well and the result is a mess (a meatball sundae).

The book, however, goes deeper than that. It talks at length about the new rules of marketing and the fourteen trends that are shaping the way products and ideas are communicated and sold:

  • Direct communication and commerce between producers and consumers
  • Amplification of the voice of the consumer and independent authorities
  • The need for an authentic story as the number of sources increases
  • Extremely short attention spans due to clutter
  • The Long Tail
  • Outsourcing
  • Google and the dicing of everything
  • Infinite channels of communication
  • Direct communication and commerce between consumers and consumers
  • The shifts in scarcity and abundance
  • The triumph of big ideas
  • The shift from “how many” to “who”
  • The wealthy are like us
  • New gatekeepers, no gatekeepers

Some of these trends deserve a more comprehensive treatment, so it wouldn’t be surprising if they end up as main topics of future books by Seth.

In Meatball Sundae, the author draws heavily from three of his previous books: Permission Marketing, Purple Cow and All Marketers are Liars, and successfully explains how the concepts covered in those books are now more relevant than ever thanks to the multiplying effect of new media like blogs and social networks.

For example he describes how, due to information overload and the possibility of getting almost anything at the click of a mouse, scarcity is shifting from product to attention. He then emphasizes that the best way to adapt to this new reality is to build a “permission asset” (basically the privilege to deliver anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who want to get them).

Another clear point made in the book is that social media have the power to amplify word of mouth like never before, and that a product or idea is only going to spread in social networks is if it is truly remarkable (a Purple Cow). Press releases of boring products will never show up in Digg…

Seth also cites a couple of well known examples: George Allen’s infamous “macaca” incident, and the case of the sleeping Comcast repairman, to emphasize the importance of telling authentic stories. Whether you like it or not, blogs and Youtube will keep you honest, since anything you say or do has the potential to be seen, heard or read by millions of people almost instantly.

Meatball Sundae is an engaging read, full of case studies and examples that give support to the author’s main points. There is also a helpful executive summary, and each chapter is preceded by a takeaway box containing its main highlights.

Early in the book, Godin confesses that his short books usually outsell his longer ones, and that he made Meatball Sundae long on purpose. Why? Because he wants us to understand that just dabbling in New Marketing is not going to cut it, and that companies and products must now be built from scratch to adapt to the New Marketing and not the other way around. But, most importantly, he wants us to act on it.

Book Reviews / Social Media — 3 Comments
31
Dec 07

E-Book Review: Getting to First Base – A Social Media Marketing Playbook

firstbasepng.pngWith so many blogs covering social media and so much disjointed information about it floating around, I had been trying to find a resource that talked about social media within an organized framework, from the basics to more advanced topics and concepts.

Fortunately, in their recently published ebook Getting to First Base: A Social Media Marketing Playbook (PDF format – 104 pages), Darren Barefoot and Julie Szabo take a good swing at it (no pun intended) and give us a comprehensive overview of social media, from its definition down to strategic and tactical advice drawn from their experience running Capulet Communications, their social media marketing company.

The first few pages are dedicated to explaining who is the intended audience of the book. After reading the book, I concluded that the people who would mostly benefit from it are those who have some basic knowledge of PR, advertising or Internet marketing, for example:

  • People who were already active in Web 1.0 running a static site, email newsletter, etc. and want to take the leap to Web 2.0 but don’t know where to start.
  • People who have started a blog but don’t know how to promote it or use it effectively to build their brand.
  • People with experience in traditional marketing and PR but little awareness of the possibilities that social media may offer.

This book is not for Internet marketing novices, nor for people who are already proficient in blogging and/or are advanced users of the different social networking or social bookmarking sites.

The three sections I enjoyed the most (and found most useful) are:

  • The explanation of the differences between social media and traditional, mainstream media.
  • The detailed diagrams that outline the scope of the social media environment.
  • The recommendations on how to approach influential bloggers and how to make a pitch. I particularly appreciated the real-life examples provided by the authors, who candidly share their experiences (both successful and unsuccessful) with actual customers.

The book may leave you yearning for more when it talks about the main social networking and social bookmarking sites. Not all sites are profiled (for example, MySpace is left out) and those who are included are not dealt with in a very detailed manner. This is understandable, though, since the objective of the book is to present a broad overview of social media and not to go too deep into any particular subject.

Overall, this book will help you achieve a better understanding of the landscape of social media, make your site social media ready, launch a social media relations campaign, and identify the risks and pitfalls of social media marketing.

I particularly liked the authors’ writing style, from the tongue-in-cheek title selection (Getting to First Base) to the different metaphorical references to dating, like “courting” influential bloggers, the”dating” stage of social media, etc.. This choice of words really helps convey the core message of the book, namely that social media marketing is all about developing authentic, transparent long term relationships (with readers, customers and other bloggers).

I believe this book fulfills its promise to take you to first base in your social media marketing efforts. I also found more than enough value to justify the book’s price point (the real life examples and the sound advice on how to pitch influential bloggers are alone probably worth much more). When you also factor in that the book will be constantly updated, and that the updates will be sent to you automatically and free of additional charges, the book is a real bargain at $29.

Book Reviews / Branding — No Comments
29
Oct 07

BrandSimple: Book Review

In “BrandSimple: How the Best Brands Keep it Simple and Succeed“, Allen Adamson, managing director of world-class brand consultancy Landor and Associates, distills his insights of 25 years of experience working with the world’s top brands in one simple phrase: the most successful brands are those that have found a unique and relevant way to differentiate themselves, that is at the same time simple to understand and communicate. Getting to that simple idea, though, is not that simple.

Contrary to other books about branding, usually heavy on jargon and muddy theory, Adamson writes in plain English and provides plenty of real life examples that show how everyday brands have tackled the task of coming up with their very own simple brand idea, and why some have succeeded where others failed. This wide array of case studies makes the book a fascinating and engaging read.

BrandSimple doesn’t stop with the examples, though, and also shows us, step by step, how companies of any size can uncover their simple brand idea, articulate it in a few powerful words (brand driver) and design the most powerful branding signals to communicate that idea to their target customers.

While the author’s experience has been forged with large corporations, the concepts he talks about are relevant and applicable to either the Fortune 500 company with money to spend on Superbowl ads, or the home-based business that must rely on blogging and low cost social media to build its brand.

Like if it wanted to reinforce the book’s central message, BrandSimple’s cover is in itself an exercise on simplicity: there are none of the distracting graphics, background textures or call-out blurbs common in today’s business books. The typesetting is also clear and understated, in a color that provides subtle contrast with the background.

Adamson also makes things simple when he offers a list of his top 10 takeaways at the end of the book. This list is a comprehensive summary of the most important topics covered in the previous 220 pages, and something that readers will want to keep handy and refer to often.

I am greatly impressed by this book and wouldn’t hesitate in calling it the best book on branding I have ever read. I would strongly recommend it to all marketing professionals and especially to small business owners and entrepreneurs who want to stay relevant and competitive.

Book Reviews — No Comments
2
Oct 07

All Marketers are Liars: Book Review

‘All Marketers Are Liars‘ is a provocatively entertaining book about marketing and human nature. Seth Godin has once again applied his reliable formula for publishing success:

  1. Pick a traditional and well accepted marketing concept
  2. Write about it from a totally new perspective
  3. Make the book easy to read and include a lot of examples
  4. Give the book an intriguing title
  5. Sell a lot of books

In ‘Purple Cow’ the basic concept was differentiation (nothing new in itself, after all, people had been talking about positioning and unique selling propositions for decades). In ‘All Marketers are Liars’ Seth’s premise is based on these two well established marketing concepts:

  1. It is harder to make something and then try to sell it, than it is to first find out what people want and then give it to them.
  2. It is very difficult (and expensive) to try to change people’s perception once it is already formed.

The new ‘angle’ being explored, though, is that most of the time those perceptions are based on emotions that go against objective facts. The recipe for successful marketing, says Godin, is to find a large enough group of people with a particular world view, and offer them a product that caters and reinforces that world view.

Judging by some reader reviews, some people seem to have taken offense to Seth’s thesis, implying that it encourages dishonesty in marketing. I don’t subscribe to that point of view. Giving people exactly what they want, even though objective facts suggest that they should want something else is not being dishonest.

To illustrate Seth’s thesis I’ll give you an example: suppose that you have two identical watches, one of them is made in Switzerland and the other one is made in China. If you ask people which one is better, I bet that nine out of ten will answer ‘the Swiss watch’.

The objective of the Swiss watch maker is to sell watches. Are they supposed to go around telling everybody that the Chinese watch is as good as theirs? Of course not. The Swiss watch maker’s advertising will most likely make extensive use of marketing signals that reinforce the world view of the nine people who picked the Swiss watch: their magazine ads will probably display pictures of their watch with a backdrop of a quaint Swiss village surrounded by the Alps and the Swiss cross prominently displayed somewhere on the page.

Now, if the Swiss watch maker decided to relocate their manufacturing plant to China and continued to use the same marketing signals in their advertising their customers would cry foul. If they also intentionally and openly lied about the country of origin of the watch they would be committing fraud. Seth Godin voices a strong opinion against these two scenarios, the first one because it would be “unauthentic” and the second one because it would be outright illegal and unethical.

All Marketers are Liars’ is a quick and entertaining read (you can probably breeze through it from cover to cover on your average plane ride) and it will leave you with a valuable takeaway on which to base your marketing strategy.

Book Reviews / Branding / Marketing — 2 Comments
20
Sep 07

Book Review: Purple Cow

Purple Cow is a remarkable little book about the current state of marketing. Seth Godin makes the convincing case that selling ordinary products using traditional advertising no longer works.

Ordinary products are easy to make these days, most of us have everything we need, and we’re pretty satisfied with it. No amount of money spent on ads is going to make us change our mind. If customers don’t have the problem you’re trying to solve, they will not even listen. You are invisible.

Instead, Godin argues, smart companies now spend their money in product design, so that they can come up with remarkable products (purple cows) that influential early adopters can then “sell” to other people through word of mouth. In Purple Cow products, the product and the message are one and the same: the product tells a story that people naturally want to share.

Recently, I was sitting next to a friend during lunch and, while we were waiting to be served he pulled out his new iPhone. I couldn’t help but to make a remark about how sleek it looked; he then answered by giving me a passionate demonstration of all of the phone’s features. If I were more of a gadget-head, I would have left the restaurant and go buy one immediately. This is a perfect example of a Purple Cow at work.

How does one make a Purple Cow? Seth doesn’t have the answer, but offers a good suggestion: look for the edges, explore the limits. Find a product that is “too” something for most people, but absolutely irresistible for a small (but big enough to be profitable) group of people, who will in turn evangelize your product to others.

As usual, Seth uses plenty of compelling case studies to make his points, and writes down his takeaways at the end of each chapter, which makes the concepts covered in the book easier to digest. At 160 small-format pages, the book is a quick and entertaining read, ideal for when you have a couple of hours to kill on a plane or airport.

Read More:

Fast Company article about the Purple Cow
Dosh Dosh Purple Cow Review

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