David Meerman Scott did all the right things to make me want to read his new book, THEW NEW RULES OF MARKETING AND PR, including having the foreword be by Robert Scoble, and telling me he’s going to talk about blogging and podcasting as ways to reach buyers directly. A quick scan of the Table of Contents told me the book was going to work out just fine for me. Mind you, the only marketing books I’ve ever read were by Seth Godin (pretty much all of them), so David had a huge act to follow.
The First 100 Pages
In my estimation, the first 100 pages were for people who maybe needed convincing that the web was the way to go. It told the story of why blogs are amazing, and why podcasts bring audience and drive awareness. It was all great stuff, meant to give to that executive or potential client who didn’t yet “get it.” Surely, a well-written hardcover book on the topic would be a little bit of validation on this being a good thing, all this social media and networking, right?
And Then… POW!
Scott goes into an action plan on how you might use all these new tools to reach out to potential buyers. He gives marketing plans to consider, discusses how to brand yourself as a thought leader, and which of the various social networking tools might be useful to your cause. In all cases, the advice is geared towards helping you bring home more buyers.
Worth the Read
I’m happy with the book. There are some great 101 concepts in here. Nothing in this book will blow your head off, but it will certainly provide a sound and rounded bit of information for you to use as reference, or at least framing for your use of social media and social networking tools for marketing and PR reasons.
Of course, with the speed of the Internet, I found myself wondering where the Twitter and Facebook chapters were. The book came out fairly recently, but as the publishing process isn’t especially speedy, David Meerman Scott’s book ends around the time of MySpace and Squidoo being the prospective new places to find interesting social networks. No fault of Scott’s. It’s just the speed of the Net. In fact, it made me think even harder on whether I’ll write a paper book, or produce an e-book, if I choose to write about the topic of social networks.
A very good read, and worth picking up, if you’ve got someone who’s not yet ready to believe that all these nifty social media tools work.
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