The Tao of Twitter: Changing Your Life and Business 140 Characters at a Time
by Mark W. Schaefer
Twitter is a “non-intuitive communication platform” but Mark Schaefer has figured it out and experienced tangible results. “My four largest customers, five most important collaborators, and my teaching position at Rutgers University all came to me via Twitter connections.”
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Pyramids Are Tombs
by Joe Phelps
Pyramids Are Tombs covers two major topics: organizational structure and integrated marketing communications.
Many companies claim to be focused on the customer, but Joe Phelps walks the walk. His marketing agency is structured around “self-directed, client-centered teams” which he describes as “the optimum model for today’s knowledge workers.”
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Rethinking Reputation: How PR Trumps Marketing and Advertising in the New Media World
by Fraser P. Seitel and John Doorley
This book gets off to a weak start. Chapter one is not about reputation management. It’s about how a couple of NYU students launched a shoe company on a shoestring budget. (Hint: Find a patent attorney who will work for you without charge.) Chapters three and five sound like they could have been written by publicists for Merck and Johnson & Johnson. In fact, coauthor John Doorley has held positions at both firms (and he teaches at NYU). The chapter on T. Boone Pickens’ energy independence campaign states that he spent $100 million “with more than half focused on paid media.” That seems to undermine premise of the subtitle.
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You Can’t Win a Fight with Your Client and 49 Other Rules for Providing Great Service
by Tom Markert
This book is about managing client relationships in a service economy, with a focus on the role of the account manager. The author was CEO of a market research firm serving Fortune 500 clients. To illustrate the importance of the account manager role, he quotes the CEO of a consumer goods company which derives 40% of its business from Wal-Mart: “If we are not servicing them just right… our business is dead.” The book offers 50 tips, each presented in an easily digestible two or three page chapter.
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Making Ads Pay: Timeless Tips for Successful Copywriting
by John Caples (1900-1990)
John Caples was a pioneer of direct-response copywriting. In Chapter 8 he presents as series of paired ads which were tested, followed by analysis of why the winning ads outperformed. The winner often outperformed the other by a wide margin—up to five times as many responses.
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Break From the Pack: How to Compete in a Copycat Economy
by Oren Harari
Break-from-the-pack companies are analogous to the small cluster of runners at the front of a marathon. The Copycat Economy is analogous to the majority of runners who lag behind. In the words of former IBM CEO Sam Palmisano, “Either you innovate or you’re in commodity hell. If you do what everybody else does, you have a low-margin business.”
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My Life in Advertising and Scientific Advertising
by Claude C. Hopkins (1866-1932)
Claude C. Hopkins was a pioneer in the advertising industry. This volume consists of his two books: Scientific Advertising, written in 1923, and My Life in Advertising, written in 1927. NBC and CBS were founded around the time of Hopkins’ retirement, so his work predated the broadcasting era. The media of his time were newspapers, magazines, and direct mail.
“Salesmanship-in-print is exactly the same as salesmanship-in-person.” If the purpose of advertising is to sell, then its effectiveness can be measured by resulting sales volume. Hopkins tested ads on a small scale before risking money on a large-scale campaign. He also compared results using different headlines in order to discover the best performing approach.
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The Experience Economy: Work is Theatre & Every Business is a Stage
by B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore
The Experience Economy is about the progression of economic value:
“Commodities are fungible, goods are tangible, services intangible, and experiences memorable… The easiest way to turn a service into an experience is to provide poor service.”
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The Thank You Economy
by Gary Vaynerchuk
The Thank You Economy is about connecting with customers through social media, but it is not a book about Facebook, Twitter, or any other specific technology. It’s about creating a culture of caring relationships, like when your great-grandmother shopped with local merchants. Those relationships disappeared as the economy evolved from mom-and-pop shopkeepers to big box stores, but social media offers a means of restoring that human touch in a scalable way.
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The Impact Equation: Are You Making Things Happen or Just Making Noise?
by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith
The Impact Equation explains how to rise above the clutter, particularly in the cluttered world of social media. Here’s the formula:
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The Key Point 