DreamGrow Social Media

Best selling social media marketing books

I got cold and some idle time. To pass time I browsed Amazon to check out what’s hot on the social media marketing shelf. Get some of these and you will get new ideas and tactics you can implement right now.

Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion by Gary Vaynerchuk, rating 4.5/5. This book isn’t interested in making unrealistic promises while glossing over the work involved. Making a living by building content around your passion isn’t simple and it doesn’t happen overnight. What it is, however, is fulfilling and in most cases just as profitable, if not more so, than your previous job.

Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs (The New Rules of Social Media) by Brian Halligan, Dharmesh Shah, rating 4.9/5. Stop pushing your message out and start pulling your customers in. People are now increasingly turning to Google, social media, and blogs to find products and services. Inbound Marketing helps you take advantage of this change by showing you how to get found by customers online.

The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing and Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly by David Meerman Scott, rating 4.6/5. 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.

The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools, and Strategies for Business Success by Lon Safko, David K. Brake, rating 4.7/of 5. The book will show you how to build or transform your business into a social media—enabled enterprise where customers, employees, and prospects connect, collaborate, and champion your products, your services, and your way of doing business.

Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies by Charlene Li, Josh Bernoff, rating 4.6/5. Two of Forrester Research’s top analysts show you how to turn the force of customers connecting to your own advantage. Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li show how leading companies are gaining insights, generating revenues, saving money, and energizing their own customers.

Socialnomics: How social media transforms the way we live and do business by Erik Qualman, rating 4.6/5. Social Media isn’t just for the Next Generation – it’s for every generation. Whether you’re an entrepreneur, a media professional, a college student or a mom, social media will shape your future. Don’t be overwhelmed by it; read Qualman’s book instead.” – Jane Wooldridge, The Miami Herald

Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us by Seth Godin, rating 4.1/5. Tribes will make you think (really think) about the opportunities for leading your fellow employees, customers, investors, believers, hobbyists, readers. . . . It’s not easy, but it’s easier than you probably imagine.

The Social Media Marketing Book by Dan Zarrella, rating 4.8/5. This book guides you through the maze of communities, platforms, and social media tools so you can decide which ones to use, and how to use them most effectively.

Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day by Dave Evans, rating 4.5/5. Put the buzz about your business to work for you. This comprehensive, perfectly paced guide will teach you how to make social media an active part of your marketing plan so that you can turn customer conversations about your brand, product, service, and company into a sustainable competitive advantage.

Secrets of Social Media Marketing: How to Use Online Conversations and Customer Communities to Turbo-Charge Your Business! by Paul Gillin, rating 4.6/5. A handbook for marketers and business owners to use in deciding how to employ the new social media for online marketing.

Image credit Zsuzsanna Kilian

Interview with Seth Godin

This is an interview I did with Seth Godin when the Tribes book came out. Until now it resided on our Estonian web site as we didn’t have the English site. I decided to copy it here so that all our English content could be found on the same site. If you haven’t seen it before, enjoy.

Seth Godin is the marketing guru who talks about how marketeers shouldn’t spam people and how we should gain permission to communicate by being remarkable. He predicts that average products for average people will become invisible as mass media advertising loses effectiveness. He has written a lot of insightful books on the subject. Some of them are free Unleashing th Ideavirus and Knock Knock.

On 22 October 2008 Seth introduced his new book Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us. The presentation was excellent in helping to better understand the the idea behind the book. It is not just a marketing book. It’s about leadership. How leading a tribe is a much more rewarding activity than just trying to yell at them. You can find the audio of the presentation here and the slides here (slides are with notes). If you take marketing seriously check these out. It is a time well spent.

Few weeks ago you helped us to put together a bunch of questions for Seth and here are the answers:

Priit Kallas: Your last book about tribes is leadership-marketing-motivational. Are product/marketing related tribes created or they just happen? If marketer tries to create a tribe, isn’t that just another trick to push his product?

Seth Godin: No one accidentally joins a tribe, and if we’re tricked into it, we won’t stay for long. But yes, it’s clear that some politicians and marketers are able to intentionally create tribes.

Priit Kallas: Marketers are afraid that if they let people to talk freely then a lot of negative will be said, that will erode the brand and all kinds of bad thins will happen. How would you respond to that?

Seth Godin: They’re right. Things will be said. If you create a movement that’s honest and a product that matters, those things will be largely positive. The only other choice is to be ignored, and we know that this doesn’t work very well.

Priit Kallas: It seems to me that to be remarkable and gain permission you need to know what people want, but for that you need to talk to people who haven’t yet given permission. Do you just do something hoping it will be a hit rather than a miss?

Seth Godin: I think the art is in understanding what people want, not running a focus group and having them tell you what they want. Smart marketers have an empathy that allows them to do this.

Priit Kallas: In small markets (like Estonia) some tribes fail due to the fact that there just isn’t enough people to keep the tribe going. But with spam you could reach enough people to turn a profit. Do you have examples how to deal with that.

Seth Godin: Spam always works in the short run, but it fades out very quickly. The long term win is in building a tribe, and since it’s not limited by geography any longer, that tribe can be larger than Estonia.

Priit Kallas: You have said that we need meatballs (average products for average people). To market meatballs you need to do things the old way and spam people. This is going to be less and less effective so the meatball model won’t work and we don’t have metaballs… Do you see some kind of equilibrium developing between old and new (spam and permission)?

Seth Godin: I think it’s likely that society will accept a certain amount of spam as background noise. It won’t ever go away. The opportunity for growth, though, doesn’t lie in doing something that people merely tolerate. The real wins will come, over and over, from marketers who are welcomed, not shunned.

Priit Kallas: TV-Industrial complex is/was a repeatable model. What can you say about a new model emerging to replace that. Is there a model? Do this, then that, profit?

Seth Godin: Do something worth talking about. Word spreads. Make a profit. Repeat. Along the way, earn permission to make it easier to spread the word next time.

Priit Kallas: Media is atomizing. Currently you can buy ads in a TV channel, a news paper and a few billboards. If we need to use thousands of channels to deliver relevant message is this going to be all automatic (like Google AdSense).

Seth Godin: I think ad buying is not ready for a one-stop shop, but there’s no doubt that much of it will be consolidated and automated….

Priit Kallas: What will happen to the traditional media?

Seth Godin: Media doesn’t go away, it just evolves.

Priit Kallas: Are you wearing mis matching socks all the time or just on the events?

Seth Godin: I wear mismatched socks every single day. It’s a nice reminder.

Priit Kallas: What we need to do to get you to Estonia?

Seth Godin: Alas, it’s just too far to travel.

Questions from our blog and email:

Lembi Sander: How to market a DVD of a small theater, so that it would get attention and be remarkable?

Seth Godin: The question isn’t how to market the DVD. The question is how to change the theater. What would the theatre have to become in order to earn the expectation that people would talk about it?

Silja Oja: The market is down, sales are down and the company is in the red. What would you suggest to a marketer, where to focus their efforts?

Seth Godin: This is a great opportunity to build relationships, to lead a tribe, to create a movement. Everyone else is scared and quiet, looking for leadership. That should be you.

Peep Laja: What do you think is the best way to develop relationships (online) with potential and current clients?

Seth Godin: Do things for people. Relentlessly. Be helpful, be generous. Don’t ask for anything in return!

Lead

Stand up in front of strangers.
Propose an idea that might fail.
Challenge the status quo.
Resist the urge to settle.

via Seths Blog: Thanks for leading.