If you’re a regular Twitter user, Scott Stratten can be hard to miss at times (ok, always). The self-proclaimed “Jedi for social media,” with a big online mouth and an even bigger following, Scott provokes strong reactions from people. I’ve known him for a while and, while I always enjoy sparring with him, I consider him a friend so readily agreed to take a look at his new book – UnMarketing: Stop Marketing. Start Engaging –  when he offered to send me an advance version.

Right from the first word, UnMarketing is an easy read, written in simple, plain language that is easy to digest and has made Scott so many friends online. The blunt approach might put a few people off, but frankly it’s refreshing to see someone finally put in print the responses that people *should* hear to bone-headed push-driven marketing ideas.

UnMarketing veers sharply back and forth between different marketing-focused topics, which is both a good thing and a challenge as you work your way through it.

On one hand the varied content makes for an interesting read that never gets dull. From the evils of the approaches taken to telemarketing and how many marketers have adopted similar approaches in other forms of communications, to what Scott calls the “experience gap” (similar in some ways to Gap Theory but simplified), there’s plenty to think about.

On the flip side, there are times where it sometimes feels like a series of blog posts strung together. Still, it’s also well-formatted for the gnat-sized attention spans of many people nowadays, and it’s easy to digest a chapter or two on the way to work.

The book is also replete with examples of companies who have “done it right” – from Cirque du Soleil’s Jessica Berlin, to the Freshbooks RV tour, to the culture of customer delight created at Zappos, there are plenty of anecdotes of companies adopting tactics which just “feel” right. They’re also held up against examples of companies doing it wrong which, while it may not make Scott friends at those companies, is refreshing.

If there’s one weakness here, it’s that there are relatively few examples of results to back up these examples (my issue with many social media-focused books) – you’re left to rely on the warm feeling generated by the empirical examples rather than the broader business results of these techniques over the longer term. The language is very much “within the bubble” – it’s written for people who know understand basic social media terms, rather than those who are completely new to things. While there’s nothing massively complex within, if you’re completely new then you may want to check out Shiv Singh’s Social Media Marketing for Dummies or something similar before diving into this book.

Scott’s sense of humour shines through throughout the book, which does a huge amount for the book as it could run the risk as coming across as arrogant and condescending were it not for that. Instead, Scott’s humour humanizes the book and he comes across as an everyday guy who has made mistakes, learned from them and – which is all to rare nowadays – is willing to share them with the rest of us. The footnotes throughout the book are simply hilarious, too. Believe it or not, they’re a highlight of the whole book, and had me laughing out loud in the middle of packed subway cars numerous times (thanks for that, Scott)

UnMarketing is aimed squarely at people who are new to social media, rather than people who’ve been around the block, and primarily at small businesses rather than larger corporations. For people in that bracket, UnMarketing is an easy and enjoyable read. Those people should pick up a copy today.

When I think of examples of companies known for successful adoption of social media tools, a few names always come to mind – Dell, Radian6, Freshbooks… and Zappos.

(On a related note, all of those companies have gained a reputation for good service via social media – a topic for a future post, perhaps…)

So, when a colleague remarked that she was enjoying a book that charted the course of Zappos so far, I promptly added it to my 2010 reading list.

Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose traces the story of CEO Tony Hsieh from his childhood through to the present day, in his own words. While the book isn’t an autobiography per se, the majority of the book tells a chronological tale beginning with tales of how Hsieh managed to avoid practicing four musical instruments every day (he would play tape recordings of himself practicing) and ending with the acquisition of Zappos by Amazon in mid-2009.

More than a simple tale, though, Delivering Happiness is full of useful business tips and insights. A few that stood out to me:

• The company employs a ‘pipeline’ system to career management, clearly structured so that any employee has the opportunity to become a senior leader within seven years of joining the company.
• Zappos requires that employees complete specific courses in order to be promoted to certain levels, creating a clear path to advancement.
• The company has implemented a “skill sets” system, with a small bump in pay associated with improving each of the skill sets. Pay rises are thus tied to skills growth.
• An idea for recommending good business books led to the Zappos library with over a hundred books, some of which became required reading for employees.
• The company launched a monthly newsletter named “Ask Anything,” in which employees could do exactly that, to create transparency around the business for employees.
• The levels to which Zappos empowers employees to focus on customer service would terrify a lot of the more staid, bureaucratic companies out there. There are no call centre scripts, and reps are permitted to do things such as upgrade customers’ shipping requests for free as part of regular business.

These are just a few of the nuggets hidden within Hsieh’s story. To make things even better, the book is written in a very informal, easy-to-consume style, and is made all the more personal by Hsieh’s frequent admission of his own mistakes. I think it was primarily due to this that I plowed through Delivering Happiness in just over a week.

It’s not all roses, of course. While it’s one of the most revealing parts of the book, the section on Zappos’ core values comes across as a little self-aggrandizing. The book also seems a little top-level from some perspectives, as it fails to draw a conclusive line between the firms’s growth and its customer service focus (Hsieh himself admits that growth only took off when the selection of shoes increased, not when the customer service focus began). It feels like there’s more to be heard there, and the “other side” (that of the prior board of directors) is only given lip service.

Still, these are minor gripes about a thoroughly engaging book. As I mentioned, I tore through it in short order and will probably do so again fairly soon. Overall, Delivering Happiness is a fascinating tale of the first chapter in the life of Zappos, and demonstrates a focus on employees, culture and customer service to which we should all aspire.

Highly recommended.

Ever wonder what Isaac Newton might have said if Twitter had been around in his time? How about Alexander the Great or Billy the Kid?

Well, in case you were wondering, here they are:

“Took an hour to get that bird crap out of my hair. Think I’ll change it to “apple” when I tell the story.” – Isaac Newton
 
“Accomplishments just earned me title “Alexander the Good.” Must work harder.” – Alexander the Great
 
“Realizing my nickname doesn’t bode well for my longevity.” – Billy the Kid

I read a lot of “serious” books, so when Random House recently sent me a copy of Historical Tweets: The Completely Unabridged and Ridiculously Brief History of the World, by Alan Beard and Alec McNayr, I was intrigued.

This book is far from a thinker (although you’ll find yourself scratching your head searching for the reference from time to time), but for casual “passing the time” reading, Historical Tweets is a hoot. It essentially walks through historical (and mythical) figures, through to futuristic tweets, providing comical guesses at the kind of things they would have tweeted.

From “@God OMY! I’m naked” (Adam) to “Visit us at our new home: twitter.google.com” (Twitter – sent from “exit strategy”), this book is great for when you have a couple of moments spare and want a chuckle.

I’ve shown Historical Tweets to numerous people now, and every one of them has found different things to laugh at. That’s a winner in my book. I wasn’t sure to expect and it’s certainly not a thinker, as I said, but I was pleasantly surprised by this book. I’ve enjoyed every moment of reading it so far, and will likely continue to do so for a while.

Great coffee table reading for geek-filled households.

When I pulled together my reading list for 2010 (side note: two months down, four books read. Rawk!), there were a few different types of books on the list:

• New books I wanted to check out
• Fictional books to lighten the load
• Older books highly recommended by others

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini certainly fits into the last of those categories. Person after person recommended this book, so it was a shoe-in on the list.

Having now read it, I’ll add my voice to that chorus. This is a book that, if you work in any form of communications, is a must-read.

As the title suggests, Influence… is based around the psychology behind the tools used by what Cialdini describes as “compliance professionals” (from salesmen to fundraisers to advertising folks). Despite the potentially dense subject matter, Cialdini approaches it in easy-to-understand terms which you don’t need a Ph.D. to absorb.

The book covers six “weapons of influence” in turn, doing a deep dive on the variations and nuances within each before examining how to avoid their effects:

1. Reciprocation – giving a little in order to take more
2. Commitment and consistency – playing off our internal need to be consistent with ourselves
3. Social proof – the power of what other people are doing
4. Liking – positive associations
5. Authority – amazing what we’ll do for someone who appears to be in authority
6. Scarcity – we want things more when they are few

One of my biggest complaints about many books I read nowadays is their tendency to make broad, sweeping claims about complex principles with no supporting materials. Thankfully, this is one area in which Influence… is a clear winner. From start to finish, the book is jam packed with case study after case study to both make Cialdini’s case for each “weapon” and support it many times over. To data-focused people (like me), this was a god-send and added great credibility to the book’s contents.

One of the great points about this book is that, even after just the first few pages, you become very aware of people using these psychological tools around you. From store salespeople to advertisements in the media, I’ve found myself constantly thinking “ah yes, they’re using the rejection-then-retreat principle” or the like. By demonstrating how people use the tools, Cialdini better prepares you to deal with them.

Of course, the flip side to this is that, for communications professionals, learning about these principles helps us to use them more effectively. Many are common nowadays (social media often leans heavily on social proof, for example… think “Facebook Connect fan boxes“).

If there’s a down-side to this book it’s that Cialdini can be a little long-winded on occasion. Every so often some of the repetition feels a little redundant. Bizarrely, on the flip side there seems to be a bit of a tendency to over-generalize on some of the concepts, leading to “huh? really?” moments. However, these moments are certainly in the minority.

So, should you buy this book? If you work in any facet of communications, then yes! Even if you don’t, this book is a worthwhile read. Two thumbs up.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about my 2010 reading challenge – reading 26 books over the next 52 weeks – and asked for your help in fleshing-out my reading list for the remainder of the year. I’ve now pulled together the suggestions of people who commented, to form my 2010 reading list.

On Monday I posted my review of Feeding Frenzy by John Harmon (in summary: read it!) – the first of those 26 books (I’ve almost finished the next book – The Whuffie Factor – too).

Here is my planned reading list for the rest of 2010. You’ll note that, with the two I already mentioned, there are way more than 26 here so I’ll either have to speed up or prioritise – there are just too many books I want to read!

1. The Fall Of Advertising And The Rise Of PR – Al Ries and Laura Ries
2. Influence: The Psychology Of Persuasion – Robert Cialdini
3. In Search of Excellence – Tom Peters and Robert Waterman Jr
4. Twitterville – Shel Israel
5. Outliers: The Story of Success – Malcolm Gladwell
6. Beyond Bullet Points – Cliff Atkinson
7. What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures – Malcolm Gladwell
8. Predictably Irrational – Dan Ariely
9. Drive – Daniel H. Pink
10. The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking Is the Next Competitive Advantage – Roger Martin
11. Chief Culture Officer: How to Create a Living, Breathing Corporation – Grant McCracken
12. Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives – Nicholas Cristakis
13. Baked In: The Power Of Aligning Marketing and Product Innovation – Alex Bogusky
14. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide – Henry Jenkins
15. The Age of the Unthinkable: Why the New World Disorder Constantly Surprises Us And What We Can Do About It – Joshua Ramo
16. The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari: A Fable about Fulfilling Your Dreams and Reaching Your Destiny – Robin Sharma
17. The Butterfly Hunter: Adventures of People Who Found Their True Calling Way Off the Beaten Path – Chris Ballard
18. What Would Google Do? – Jeff Jarvis
19. Love Is the Killer App: How to Win Business and Influence Friends – Tim Sanders
20. The Starbucks Experience: 5 Principles for Turning Ordinary Into Extraordinary – Joseph Michelli
21. The Ten Faces of Innovation: IDEO’s Strategies for Defeating the Devil’s Advocate and Driving Creativity Throughout Your Organization – Tom Kelley
22. Less Is More – Jason Jennings
23. Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die – Chip Heath and Dan Heath
24. The High Road – Terry Fallis (not yet available)
25. Groundswell – Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li
26. Putting the Public Back in Public Relations – Brian Solis and Deirdie Breakenridge
27. Superfreakonomics – Stephen D. Levitt and Steven J. Dubner
28. Here Comes Everybody – Clay Shirky
29. 1984 – George Orwell

I’m sure this list will change, especially given the increasing number of books I’m being pitched to review, so I’m using Goodreads to organize my reading for the year. Feel free to connect with me over there (thanks to Amy Mengel, Tamara Gruber and Amanda Laird for the tip on Goodreads).

What do you think of the list?