I’ve been reading The Age of the Platform: How Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google Have Redefined Business (affiliate link), which is about how “the Gang of Four”, Apple, Amazon, Facebook & Google, have successfully built platforms which allow them to leverage new products and technologies in ways not previously possible. When we look at an amazing successful product, say Apple’s iphone, we recognize it’s sleek and intuitive design, but it’s also the platform of the App Store which has allowed Apple to provide more applications than they could develop, while profiting from the increased value that having those applications provides. In his book, Phil Simon, discusses each of the four companies, and also talks about ways to build platforms to help your company succeed. Here’s an excerpt from the Introduction of the book: [Read more...]
Excerpt from Phil Simon’s The Age of the Platform
Book Review: Startup from the Ground Up: Practical Insights for Entrepreneurs by Cynthia Kocialski
Book Review: Nothing to Lose, Everything to Gain by Ryan Blair
Book Review: The New Small by Phil Simon
Technology can be the determining factor any business, but especially for small businesses where budgets are much tighter and much can be gained from cost savings or making processes more efficient. Phil Simon calls small companies who know how to use technology to their benefit “The New Small”. In his book, The New Small: How a New Breed of Small Businesses Is Harnessing the Power of Emerging Technologies
Book Review: Enterprise Social Technology by Scott Klososky
The market is flooded with books that try to tell you how to use social media for your company. Most have pretty good ideas, but when it comes to implementation, it can be difficult to figure out how to apply all these ideas to YOUR organization. Scott Klososky’s book, Enterprise Social Technology, is the most comprehensive book I’ve read so far to help organizations roll up their sleeves and start using social media. Scott already assumes that you understand the basics of social technologies (what Twitter, Facebook and blogging are) and instead helps you understand how to set attainable goals, build an internal team to tackle strategy and implementation, and how to measure results (my kind of guy!). While the book is jam-packed with great information, I want to focus on the chapter on integrating social media with the rest of your web presence…. [Read more...]
Book Review: The Skinny on the Art of Persuasion by Jim Randel
Persuasion is a skill required for success in, not only business, but life in general. If you have ideas you want to get across, you need to persuade others that they are good ones. Persuasion comes in especially handy in marketing and sales, since you’re trying to persuade someone to buy from you. Jim Randel has written a book, The Skinny on the Art of Persuasion: How to Move Minds
[Read more...]
Video Book Review of Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuk #crushitbook
I just finished reading Gary Vaynerchuk’s new book, Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion
(amazon link), and I wanted to share my thoughts with you via video:
I think this is a great book to read if you own a business and are wondering how to use social media.
Have you read this book? What do you think?
If you’re interested in reading the book, here’s the link:
- Buy the book: Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion
(Amazon link)
About Gary, from his blog, http://garyvaynerchuk.com:
Gary Vaynerchuk has captured attention with his pioneering, multi-faceted approach to personal branding and business. After primarily utilizing traditional advertising techniques to build his family’s local wine business into a national industry leader, Gary rapidly leveraged social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook to promote Wine Library TV, his video blog about wine. As his viewership swelled to over 80,000 a day, doors opened to a book deal, several national TV appearances, and a flurry of speaking engagements around the world. Gary’s dual identity as both business guru and wine guy has made him the “Social Media Sommelier.”
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Book Review: Marketing Management – The Big Picture by Christie L. Nordhielm
Most marketing textbooks are hundreds of pages long and are filled with term definitions that hardly anyone remembers. When it comes to implementing a marketing strategy, it’s difficult to remember the 4P’s (or 5 or 6 or whatever you follow) so it’s hard to put together a strategy that will work for the particular product/brand/company. Businesses are hungry for information on how to market effectively and this book takes a hands-on, step-by-step, easy-to-measure results approach to creating a marketing strategy that has been proven to work even at very large companies. Marketing Management: The Big Picture
Book Review – Purple Cow: Transform Your Business By Being Remarkable by Seth Godin
Seth Godin’s blog is a regular read for me. I don’t always find use for everything he says, but I think he has a lot of great ideas and certainly can stir up some new ways to think. So picking up Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable
Book Review – Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies
Ever wonder how to effectively use social media for your business? Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, of Forrester Research, provide real-world information and data on how to make it social media work for your business in their book, groundswell: winning in a world transformed by social technologies
If you’re not sure exactly why social media is important to business, Li and Bernoff start off explaining why it is – they term the emergence of social media technologies into the mainstream as the “groundswell.” Once you understand exactly what the groundswell is, they explain how it can be tapped to help your organization. The last part of the book focuses on how using the groundswell will change your company and what the future looks like.
One of the strengths of this book is that it doesn’t have a one-size-fits all social media strategy that works for all organizations and companies. Instead, it examines the use of social media on a behavorial level – different types of people interact with social media in different ways. Some types will login to a social site every day but never actually interact. Others post regularly. Understanding what types of people you have in your particular target audience is key for crafting a social media strategy that will actually work. The book runs through the different types of people and their typical interactions with social media and how to use this information to craft a winning strategy.
While this book is a year old, the underlying information is still extremely valuable to anyone looking to tie social media in with business measurements, such as ROI. There’s also a website which provides updated information via a blog and some tools for understanding the possible makeup of your target audience, based on industry and age groups. I highly recommend this book to anyone considering using social media for their business – it will give you a good idea of what needs to be done to be successful and the twenty-five cases provide good real-world examples of possible ways to use social media for your business.
If you’ve read this book, I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies
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