Book: Marketing in the Groundswell by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff
Rating: good
Lesson Learned: How do you get people talking
I read the truncated version given to me by my chairman and it was great. It is an easy read and helps you begin to think about the strategy needed to reach people who have co-opted your brand.
Rating: Meh
Lesson Learned: think different
He was just writing to the extreme so that people would think differently. Is branding by any other name not branding?
Rating: Great
Lesson Learned: how to go from the early adopters to the mainstream
Moore discusses the market as a bell curve where the early adopters are at one end and at the other is the laggards. When a disruptive product is introduced into the market there is always a jump that has to be made between the early adopters and the early majority. Moore explains ways on how to cross this chasm effectively so your product becomes ‘the’ product. It was an interesting read and even after being written decades ago it is still applicable.
Book: Exploiting Chaos: 150 Ways to Spark INnovation During Times of Change by Jeremy Gutsche
Rating: Cool
Lesson Learned: Trend Spotting
Jeremy Gutsche runs the website TrendHunterand wrote this book as a way to describe what he has learned about spotting trends. The book is fun because it is written like a 200 page exciting PowerPoint. It provides an excellent explanation of how to spot and create trends. The lessons he teaches are substantive and the way the book was published is as unique as Bell’s Velvet Elvis. (I’m talking about the Velvet Elvis- pre-weird guy falling on the cover.)
Book: Six Pixels of Separation: Everyone is Connected. Connect Your Business to Everyone by Mitch Joel
Rating: Meh
Lesson Learned: The internet has closed the gap
This was a good book and would have been a fantastic book had I read it at the beginning of my quest to learn everything about online marketing and building brand awareness. However, I didn’t and so I was re-reading a lot of stuff I had already heard. It seems like the new deal for marketing agencies is to have their higher ups write really good books. I’m down with that. I think the real story here is that if this book was published there are still people out there that don’t know and understand the power of the internet.
Don’t misunderstand me the book is worth reading if you are beginning your exploration into online marketing and understanding electronic community, but if you are in your 20s you have grown up with this stuff.
Book: Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith
Rating: okay
Lesson Learned: be authentic
If you are a big company and don’t get the whole ‘net youth culture’ this is a good book. I enjoyed reading it because the lessons seem so intrinsic to me since this is the time I grew up in. There isn’t anything here revolutionary unless you really don’t understand the power of blogs and the potential for your brand to spread online following simple rules.
Book: The Brand Called You by Peter Montoya with Tim Vandehey
Rating: 2 stars for a marketer, 5 stars for a small business owner
Lesson Learned: Your brand is everything you do.
The Brand Called You was a thorough explanation of all the things you can do as a small business owner, or free agent to build your brand. So many times people think being a good salesman, or net-worker, or whatever will help their small business grow, but it won’t. There are plenty of people who are good salespeople that fail. I believe what sets people apart is their recognition that when they are presenting a business or their work they are presenting themselves and it takes more than just being smooth.
Book: Brand Warfare: 10 Rules for Building the Killer Brand by David D’Alessandro
Rating: Stupid
Lesson Learned: Read through the book before you buy it
This guy actually talks about using the tv and sports sponsorships to build a brand and he wrote it in 2001. He seemed way out of touch with modern marketing technique…and how do you have 10 rules and not include the Internet? The book was way bad and a waste of time to read. I’m sure he is real nice, but the book was awful.
Book: The Big Red Fez: How to Make Any Web Site Better by Seth Godin
Rating: Wonderful
Lesson Learned: Simplicity
Easy read with real suggestions on how to perfect websites. The key is keep it simple and always make the ask clear.
Book: Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to be Persuasive by Noah J. Goldstein, Steve J. Martin, and Robert B. Cialdini
Rating: Worth handing out to a sales team
Lesson Learned: persuasiveness
I bought this book thinking I would be reading a lot of gimmicks that I used when I sold cars, but that wasn’t the case at all. Well, it kind of was, but the book was much more professional. There are certain things you can do or say which will profoundly change the way people interact with you. I think being a natural sales person means you know these things on an almost instinctual level. The book will give you special insight on how to tweak the things you say and do in a negotiation process. If you cannot sale you need to not make excuses about it and learn to master the art. In an economy that rewards entrepreneurship it is the only way to real success because you can champion your own ideas.
