Industry Book Reviews

I'm often reading industry-related books, blogs, and newsletters in an attempt to keep updated and educated on not only the search engine side of web marketing but also web marketing in general and the ins and outs of website design and development. In this section of my Blog, I will highlight, review, and rate many of the industry-related books that I've personally read, which by the way are either recommended to me or written by industry leaders.

You can view many of the the books I've read, and see how they stack-up against one another. I've included a lot of my personal insights, a 5-Klog scale (similar to that of a 5-Star scale), and a link to my review. I'm hoping that these 'reviews' will prove to be useful for those people looking to purchase industry-related reading.

The Tipping Point

Author: Malcolm Gladwell
Hardcover: 304 pages
Published: January 7, 2002
Publisher: Back Bay Books
Language: English
ISBN: 0316346624

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The Tipping Point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire. Just as a single sick person can start an epidemic of the flu, so too can a small but precisely targed push cause a fashio trend, the popularity of a new product, or a drop in the crime rate.

The New Rules of Marketing and PR

Author: Malcolm Gladwell
Hardcover: 304 pages
Published: June 4, 2007
Publisher: Wiley
Language: English
ISBN: 0470113456

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Though it may not yet have affected the value of 30 seconds of Super Bowl advertising, PR insider Scott argues that understanding the growing irrelevance of marketing's "old rules" is vital to thriving in the new media jungle. Already apparent in newspapers and magazines, radio and direct mail, the imminent fall of traditional mass media marketing means new opportunities for legions of smaller companies and independent professionals who need to reach niche markets cheaply and effectively.

Naked Conversations

Author: Robert Scoble and Shel Israel
Hardcover: 272 pages
Published: January 12, 2006
Publisher: Wiley
Language: English
ISBN: 047174719X

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According to experts Robert Scoble and Shel Israel, blogs offer businesses something that has long been lacking in their communication with customers -- meaningful dialogue. Devoid of corporate-speak and empty promises, business blogs can humanize communication, bringing companies and their constituencies together in a way that improves both image and bottom line.

Waiting for Your Cat to Bark?

Author: Bryan & Jeffrey Eisenberg
Hardcover: 240 pages
Published: June 13, 2006
Publisher: Thomas Nelson; Har/Com edition
Language: English
ISBN: 0785218971

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"Waiting for your cat to bark? This question is really our way of asking, "Are you waiting for your customers to respond the way they used to?" Many marketers are, and that's a problem." "Cats don't bark - and consumers today don't "salivate on command" like they seemed to a couple of decades ago. Consumers today behave more like cats than Pavlov's pooch. Times have changed - and so must we."

Permission Marketing

Author: Seth Godin
Hardcover: 256 pages
Published: May 6, 1999
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Language: English
ISBN: 0684856360

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Whether it is the TV commercial that breaks into our favorite program, or the telemarketing phone call that disrupts a family dinner, traditional advertising is based on the hope of snatching our attention away from whatever it is that we are doing. Seth Godin calls this Interruptions Marketing, and, as companies are discovering, it no longer works. Instead of annoying potential customers by interrupting their most coveted commodity, time, Permission Marketing offers incentives to accept advertising voluntarily.

Unleashing The Ideavirus

Author: Seth Godin
Paperback: 234 pages
Published: October 10, 2001
Publisher: Hyperion
Language: English
ISBN: 0786887176

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Counter to traditional marketing wisdom, which tries to count, measure, and manipulate the spread of information, Seth Godin argues that the information can spread most effectively from customer to customer, rather than from business to customer. Godin calls this powerful customer-to-customer dialogue the ideavirus, and cheerfully eggs marketers on to create an environment where their ideas can replicate and spread.

The Big Red Fez

Author: Seth Godin
Paperback: 112 pages
Published: January 15, 2002
Publisher: Free Press; Fireside edition
Language: English
ISBN: 0743227905

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In this supremely practical, cut-to-the-chase book, Godin identifies what it takes to create websites that satisfy visitors and keep them coming back for more. He's at his best using real-life examples to illustrate the essential truths and ridiculous fictions about how a website should work. Packed with insightful suggestions and compelling hands-on applications, this book is a must-have tool for anyone wanting their website visitors to find the "banana" they've been looking for.

1,001 Ways to Keep Customers Coming Back

Author: Donna Greiner and Theodore Kinni
Paperback: 288 pages
Published: October 20, 1999
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
Language: English
ISBN: 0761520295

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Imagine having the customer-service secrets of the world's most successful businesses right at your fingertips. With this book you can! Authors Donna Greiner and Theodore Kinni spent five years uncovering how Nordstrom, Southwest Airlines, Ritz-Carlton, American Express, and other world-class companies keep their customers for life. The result is 1,001 timely, entertaining, and brilliantly inventive customer-retention ideas.

The Big Moo

Author: Seth Godin and The Group of 33
Hardcover: 208 Pages
Published: October 20, 2005
Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover
Language: English
ISBN: 1591841038

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You can hear countless brainstorming meetings where people refer to purple cows and say things like, "That's not good enough. We need to create a big moo!" But how do you create a big moo? Godin worked with thirty-two of the world's smartest thinkers to answer this critical question. And the team-with the likes of Tom Peters, Malcolm Gladwell, Guy Kawasaki, Mark Cuban, Robyn Waters, Dave Balter, Red Maxwell, and Randall Rothenberg on board- created this incredibly useful book that's fun to read and perfect for groups to share, discuss, and apply.

Purple Cow

Author: Seth Godin
Hardcover: 160 Pages
Published: May 8, 2003
Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover
Language: English
ISBN: 159184021X

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Cows, after you've seen one, or two, or ten, are boring. A Purple Cow, though...now that would be something. Purple Cow describes something phenomenal, something counterintuitive and exciting and flat out unbelievable. Every day, consumers come face to face with a lot of boring stuff - a lot of brown cows - but you can bet they won't forget a Purple Cow. In Purple Cow, Seth Godin urges you to put a Purple Cow into everything you build, and everything you do, to create something truly noticeable. It's a manifesto for marketers who want to help create products that are worth marketing.

The Search

Author: John Battelle
Hardcover: 320 Pages
Published: September 8, 2005
Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover
Language: English
ISBN: 1591840880

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What does the world want? According to John Battelle, a company that answers that question (in all its shades of meaning) can unlock the most intractable riddles of both business and culture. The Search offers much more than the inside story of Google's triumph. It's also a big-picture book about the past, present, and future of search technology, and the enormous impact it is starting to have on marketing, media, pop culture, dating, job hunting, law, civil liberties, and just about every other sphere of human interest.

The Google Story

Author: David Vise and Mark Malseed
Hardcover: 336 Pages
Published: November 15, 2005
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Language: English
ISBN: 055380457X

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Here is the story behind one of the most remarkable Internet successes of our time. Based on scrupulous research and extraordinary access to Google, the book takes you inside the creation and growth of a company whose name is a favorite brand and a standard verb recognized around the world. In 1998, Moscow-born Sergey Brin and Midwest-born Larry Page dropped out of graduate school at Stanford University to, in their own words, "change the world" through a search engine that would organize every bit of information on the Web for free.