I thought it might be interesting to keep track / share thoughts on some of the books that we’re reading,   in the  hope that we can distill / impart  some of the wisdom’s therein (or not).

I am catching up on David Meerman Scott’s The New Rules of Marketing & PR at the moment.  To sum up where I am thus far, ( in the words of La Meerman):

“The skills that worked offline to help you buy or beg your way in are the skills of interruption and coercion. Success online comes from thinking like a journalist and a thought leader.”

An elegant summing up from the Women’s iBusiness Journal of the main thrust of the book;

A couple of the old Marketing and PR  rules are:

• Marketing simply meant advertising and branding
• Advertising was one-way: company to consumer
• Companies had to have significant news before they were allowed to write a press release
• The only way that buyers would learn about the press release content was if the media picked it up

A sampling of the new rules include:

• You are what you publish
• People want authenticity, not spin
• People want participation, not propaganda
• Marketing is about delivering content at just the precise moment your audience needs it
• Blogs, podcasts, e-books, new releases and other forms of online content let organizations communicate with buyers in a form they appreciate

Have any of you read it? Like / dislike?

Interesting article in The Age today claiming Facebook will be merely a footnote in social networking’s history and for those who doubt the impact social networking will have, those who are are “just waiting for this social media fad to pass” and “making sure it proves itself before we get involved”, this video I saw on Craig Wilson’s post this morning about this video from Socialnomics might be of interest (nb sources aren’t quoted but maybe they are in the book?).

It’s quite long so if you don’t make it to the end, here’s some highlighted stats:

Radio took 38 years to reach 50 million listeners

TV took 13 years to reach 50 million viewers

Internet took 4 years to reach 50 million users

Facebook in 9 months added 100 million users

25% of search results for the world’s top 20 brands are links to user-generated content

>200 million blogs / 34% post opinions about brands / 78% consumers trust peer recomedations / 14% trust advertising

more than 1.5 milion pieces of content (web links, blog posts, news stories etc) are uploaded to Facebook daily

I found a great resource today: The Top 100 Best Social Media Books, ever by Jurgen Appelo which is a pretty impressive feat considering he’scovered everything the novice to the expert might be intersted in and rated them all against several criteria.

I came across this list thanks to David Meerman Scott, who has no less than two books in the top 10 and (for our Australian readers) will be out in Aus in September to conduct social media masterclasses - a great opportunity to hear from the author of bestselling World Wide Rave and the new rules of Marketing and PR.
Great to see Melbournian, Darren Rowse, come in at Number 14 with Pro-Blogger: Secrets for blogging your way to a six figure income - a must for anyone who’s serious about making money out of blogging.

But if you are intersted in learning about social networks from a business and corporate point of view and how to use these tools to build and manage your reputation online you might want to have a look at Chris Brogan’s Trust Agents which I’m looking forward to reading when it arrives on my doorstep from Amazon. He’ll also be speaking this September (it’s a busy month down under) with Darren Rowse, and a heap of other other social media gurus like Laurel Papworth aka silkcharm, at the Marketing Now! conference.