Many books fail to live up to what’s promised on their covers: exciting title, raving blurbs, boring content. But The Power of Strategic Commitment by Josh Leibner, Gershon Mader and Alan Weiss is just the opposite—it’s a vital and engaging guide to effective leadership, despite the yawn-inducing title.

Power is written for leaders at all levels of any size organization. After defining what they mean by “strategic commitment,” the authors explain why it is so crucial to organizational success.

Basically, most organizations operate at a sub-optimal level because employees are more concerned about protecting their status quo than with making bold changes that will propel the organization to higher levels of success. This isn’t because they are bad employees, but because they don’t have effective leadership. (As the writers note, “Only when leaders are willing to ‘own’ the current state of affairs, and admit to themselves that they have caused the current levels of apathy, resistance, or resignation, can they begin to address and improve the situation.”) The authors then outline explicitly why this is the case, and most importantly, what to about it.

Often, it isn’t so much what an organization does that determines success, but how it does it. As a case in point, the authors cite Apple’s retail stores: “Online purchasing has created a new legion of buyers who aren’t willing to wait for bored salespeople to attend to them inn retail outlets. Yet Apple, Inc. was able to create very successful retail outlets by assigning a salesperson to customers from their moment of entry, through all purchases, right up to departures. (As one woman shopper was heard to remark, ‘Life should be like this, with a man assigned to you for as long as you want him.’).” Ouch!

The authors contend that many books about execution, motivation, and leadership fail to provide the information needed to really move the needle because they deal with only single factors of organizational excellence. What’s needed is true employee engagement with the corporate mission; commitment, as distinct from compliance.

Noting, from their observations in years of business consulting, that “when strategy fails it is almost always due to poor implementation, not poor formulation,” the authors argue that consensus is not the same as commitment. “Consensus is not commitment. People agree to ‘live with’ something, but that doesn’t mean they would ‘die for’ it.” They point out that in highly effective organizations, there are often passionate disputes—but these organizations are not disrupted by internal politics.

Along the way, the authors enthusiastically skewer “flavor of the month” management fads:

“In the early 1990’s, process reengineering…was the most popular organizational business response to improve effectiveness…By the late 1990s, it had become apparent that you could improve processes until the cows came home, but if people and functions were not genuinely on board ad buying in, then productivity gains would be ephemeral at best…In a leading manufacturing organization, the CEO’s engineering background and belief in the ‘science’ of Six Sigma drove him to ensure his managers and employees were rigorously complying with the process rather than truly owning the need to improve quality and the customer experience. As a result, Six Sigma was pervasive but customer satisfaction levels continued to decline. No customer ever proclaimed ‘Wow, I love what they’re doing with Six Sigma,” or ‘Quality teams have really improved by loyalty!’”

The lesson they draw is: “Organizational commitment to a CEO’s strategy is…perhaps the key factor in the success of the strategy and its organizational objectives.” In a nutshell, they recommend dictatorship in setting objectives (the “what”) but democracy in determining the means to achieve them (the “how”), and conclude “Including and engaging employees so that they can fully commit to the strategy is the ultimate factor in whether strategy succeeds or not.”

Leibner, Mader and Weiss identify two key issues at the heart of strategic commitment: content and context. Content is “the plan.” To be effective, it must be valid (the correct path for the organization based on research and independent thought) and it must be clearly communicated so that everyone in the organization can “get on the same page.”

Context has four key drivers:

• • Credibility (are leaders and managers being straightforward and honest?)
• • Courage (do leaders have the resolve to see the strategy through? Do employees  believe that management will be “open to hearing the real, often negative feedback, and will they have the guts to deal with the real issues?”)
• • Competence (are the organization’s leaders capable of executing the strategy; do they know what they’re doing?)
• • Caring (do the leaders understand the impact that the plan will have on employees? Will they give employees the freedom to contribute, and recognition for those contributions? As the authors sum this up, “the more that people believe that management values them as resources and not as expenses, the more committed they tend to become.”)

Leiber and Mader are the founders of Quantum Performance, Inc., a strategic management consulting firm that has worked with numerous Global 1000 clients. Weiss is a consultant, speaker, author of 32 books, and head of Summit Consulting Group. The three bring years of experience to this book, and illustrate many of their points with true-life stories from name-brand clients. But the principals and guidance presented here apply to organizations of all sizes, and non-profit and government agencies as well as businesses.

The book closes with appendix containing several helpful tools, checklists and tips to help put the authors’ ideas into practice.

The Power of Strategic Commitment, despite the dry title, is an engagingly written and vital guide to developing leadership practices that enable higher levels of organizational success.

Pamela Slim’s Escape from Cubicle Nation: From Corporate Prisoner to Thriving Entrepreneur is the bible for the self-employed—and those burned out on the corporate world who’d like to become independent. Despite the ongoing recession, the book retains its timeliness. Though there may now be fewer people wishing to escape the corporate world and more wishing they could once again be part of it, the book remains important for those stuck in dead-end corporate positions as well as the unemployed looking for a way to thrive in the downsized economy. If you work independently, would like to work on your own, or see no other option than to build your own business, this book is indispensable.

Slim divides her book into four sections, but more broadly speaking there are just two: what I’d call the Excitement section and the Reality section. The first is more entertaining, but the second more essential.

In her opening chapter, “I Have a Fancy Title, Steady Paycheck, and Good Benefits. Why Am I So Miserable?,” Slim assures readers that they aren’t crazy for wanting something more or different. The myriad problems of the corporate world largely come down to a single element: poor leadership. Too many companies expect their people to give extraordinary effort and self-sacrifice in exchange for a dysfunctional work environment, endless stress and little if any long-term job security. Her “Open Letter to CXOs Across the Corporate World,” originally written as blog post (which caught the attention of Guy Kawasaki, who helped it go viral) on the inadequacies of corporate leadership, is worth the cost of the book on its own. A brief excerpt:

“Don’t spend millions of dollars to try and change your culture. Corporate culture is a natural thing that can’t be manufactured. No amount of posters, incentive programs, PowerPoint presentations or slogans on websites will affect the hearts and minds of your employees. If you want to see things change immediately, stop acting like an asshole. If you see one of your senior managers acting like an asshole, ask him to stop. If he doesn’t stop, fire him. You will be amazed at how fast the culture shifts.”

The remainder of section 1 is by turns frustrating, funny and exhilarating as Slim skewers corporate groupthink, addresses fears real and imagined, and helps the reader imagine a better world. But she notes that self-employment isn’t a magical path to happiness and isn’t right for everyone. I’d add that for some people unhappy in their current corporate roles, working to improve the situation internally, transferring to a different department or location, or getting a different job may be better alternatives than striking out on their own. How do you know?

On key test Slim provides is a quote from author Jim Collins:

“He referred to the ultimate work situation as your ‘sweet spot.’ This is the intersection of three interlocking circles:

• • The first circle is ‘what people will pay you to do’—marketable skills and abilities that you have developed over your working life.
• • The second is ‘that which you have great passion for’—areas of interest, hobbies, ideas, or causes that make your heart race.
• • The third, and most elusive, is ‘that which you are genetically encoded to do’—the things that you were brought on this earth to accomplish that no one else on the planet can do as well as you.”

For some people, that “sweet spot” will necessarily be found only as part of a larger organization (even if not with their current employer or employment situation). For others, however, independence is the answer. And it for those souls that the second section of the book is crucial.

The tone as well as the content in the second part of the book shifts. Actually making the move to self employment is far different from sitting in a gray cubicle and imagining it. And Slim has high goals for this book; it’s about creating a new life, not just a new career. “Your life plan lays out the specific ways that your life would be structured to provide for maximum enjoyment and productivity. When done well, it is not a pie-in-the-sky vision; it is a blueprint for designing a great business.”

The second section covers all of the key considerations those contemplating (or jumping into) self-employment need to address: choosing the right business idea, recruiting help (mentors and connections), writing a business plan, making financial adjustments, shopping for benefits and more. Among the highlights:

• • Great advice on how to determine whether you really have a great business idea (e.g.,  “you have a unique approach, skill, or capability that will allow you to serve this need better than anyone else…your target market not only is interested in what you have to offer, but has the money to pay for what you are selling”) or just an expensive hobby (“when you discuss the idea with people who would be the target market for your product or service, they are either overcome by an embarrassing silence or are direct like Michael Bolton from [the movie] Office Space and say ‘That is the worst business idea I have ever heard.’”).
• • How to recruit a team of advisors, connections and mentors who will help you make your business successful through investment, guidance, introductions and more. She calls this your “High Council of Jedi Knights.”
• • How to develop “natural networking” ability (another section that is worth the price of the book in itself). She expands on key approaches including being interested, noticing what’s important to the person you are networking with, asking for an introduction, and being nice to everyone. Much of may sound obvious, but it’s amazing how uncommon these skills really are.
• • How to write a business plan. Slim helpfully lays a series of “blocks” critical to any business plan that help organize thoughts,  create a natural flow, and include all of the essential elements needed to raise funds and simply make sure no important details are overlooked.
• • Ignore competitors. Okay, not completely of course, but don’t obsess about them. This is great advice not only for solopreneurs but for established businesses as well. Steve Jobs never worried about what his competitors were doing; he focused on creating things were new, cool and that customers would love. As Slim puts this, “When you shift your focus from understanding who your competitors are to spending half your time thinking about them, you have ceded your own power. In essence, you are choosing the role of follower and not leader. Focus on what is exciting, special, unique, and revolutionary about your own business.”
• • Avoid corporatespeak. The second section of the book, though more direct and down to earth than the first, isn’t without its own gems. Slim recommends getting a “gang member coach” (okay, perhaps not literally) to help you “keep it real.” Discussing a meeting where a corporate CXO was droning on in meaningless corporate buzzwords, she imagines having a gang member in the room:

“Joe, VP of Alliance Partnerships: ‘And as you can see from my deck, by creating a strategic partnership that focuses on key enablers of the new paradigm, we can leverage out-of-the-box thinking and deliver an integrated solution to our end-users.’

Juan, the Gang Member Coach: ‘Joe, what the f**k are you talking about?’

In five minutes or less, Joe, the stammering vice president, would have to explain in clear, plain terms what he was trying to say.”

Leaving the corporate world to pursue independence is not a move to be taken lightly, and Slim gives this decision the gravity it deserves, along with practical, comprehensive and thoughtful guidance on how to first determine if such a move is right for you, and then how to execute if the answer is “yes.” The grass isn’t greener on the other side of the fence, but it definitely tastes different. You’ll be giving up a steady paycheck, benefits and paid vacations for income diversification (having multiple clients means your entire income isn’t based on the fortunes of any single enterprise), scheduling flexibility, and no more rush hour commutes.

If you love the corporate world and the thought of striking out on your own scares the pants off you, this book isn’t for you. But if you are considering blazing your own trail or are new to working independently, Escape from Cubicle Nation: From Corporate Prisoner to Thriving Entrepreneur is a must-read vital resource.

Guest post by Kristin Zhivago

Tom is right. As he contended in Web Presence Optimization Reloaded, you should be “everywhere.” You have to appear in all the channels where your customers may be lurking.

But—and this is big—if you appear in those channels with a message that does not resonate with your potential buyers, it’s worse than not being there at all. You will be convincing potential buyers that you really don’t understand their issues, don’t know what they really care about, and aren’t really going to be able to solve their problems. You will be “unselling,” rather than selling.

Details about the revenue-growth method (including the questions you should be asking customers), are in Kristin's new book, Roadmap to Revenue: How to Sell the Way Your Customers Want to Buy.

How do you make sure your content—wherever it appears—is relevant and convincing?

You ask your current customers a tested set of questions that will result in you knowing exactly what you should be saying to your future customers. Using this method, you will actually be able to reverse-engineer your successful sales so you can produce new sales in quantity. Fortunately, you only have to interview 7 – 10 customers of any given type to see ironclad, bankable patterns emerge. These patterns will direct your company’s efforts going forward, and will result in higher revenue.

You should ask your questions on the phone, in a conversation. Your customers will be more relaxed and tell you more on the phone than they will in person. They will also give you more usable information than you’d ever get out of an emailed or webform survey. People tend to “clam up” when they’re typing something that could be used against them in some way. And “listening” to social media won’t tell you what their buying process was, or what they were thinking as they made the purchase. Even social media companies hire me to have these conversations with their customers.

The interviewing is just the first step to increasing your revenue. Equally important is what you learn, and what you do with the information after you have analyzed it and discussed it.

You will learn:

• Why they came looking for your solution—the problem they were trying to solve, and how they describe it. These words and phrases will become the magic words that resonate with customers. They won’t have to translate your internal jargon into the words and phrases they would naturally use.
• What their concerns were as they were trying to buy. I say “trying,” because only a few companies in the world actually make it easy for their customers to buy from them. Most companies place one barrier after another in front of buyers when they’re attempting to buy.
• What they like about your company, products, and services (which you should be promoting), and what simply isn’t working (which you should fix).
• What they wish you were selling. It could be a small tweak to your existing product line, a new service associated with your product line, a new way of packaging or supporting the product, or even a new product that would provide a new revenue stream.

Armed with what you’ve learned, you will then map out their buying process. You will create marketing and selling tools that make it easy for them to take the next step in their buying process, encouraged by what they see as they go.

Using this approach, all of your online and offline content—and the tools produced for salespeople—will resonate with customers. Your product developers will know exactly what they should be focusing on. Top executives will know what should be offered, how the business should be structured, and even what people are willing to pay for those products and services. You will know the promises that they want you to keep, and you will make the necessary changes to your company so you can keep those promises. You will create a revenue-growth action plan that lays out the steps you need to take to make all this happen. You won’t have to guess and experiment anymore.

As you make these changes to your website, marketing and selling tools, products, and services, customers will respond positively. They will buy more. And, they will tell others how great you are, which will increase your sales even more.

Kristin Zhivago is a revenue coach who helps CEOs and entrepreneurs sell more by understanding what their customers want to buy and how they want to buy it. She blogs at http://www.RevenueJournal.com.

There’s no question that search has dramatically altered the marketing landscape; the traditional yellow pages are now viewed as a colossal waste of paper as 70% (and climbing) of consumers go online to find local businesses and more than 90% of B2B purchase cycles start on the web. But is it reasonable to say that search has changed everything?

That’s the contention of Marketing in the Age of Google: Your Online Strategy IS Your Business Strategy by Vanessa Fox, formerly Google’s search engine spokesperson responsible for communicating how Google’s search algorithm works to website owners.

This is not just another “how to do SEO” book for practitioners. (There are plenty of excellent works in that category, including Website Optimization by Andrew King and The Truth About Search Engine Optimization by Rebecca Lieb.) Rather, this is highly informative, strategic overview of search written for executives who need to understand the business impact of search without unnecessary detail about the mechanics.

Fox makes a strong, meticulously researched case for the centrality of search to business strategy right out of the gate, noting that:

• • “86% of searchers start at a major search engine when shopping and 70% of those product-related queries are  for categories, such as digital cameras.”
• • “Online advertising triggers $6 to be spent offline for every dollar spent online and the in-store sales boost from search is three times greater than online display advertising.”
• • “In a WebVisible/Nielson survey, 82% of respondents said that they’ve used the internet to find local businesses; 80% say they’ve researched a product or service online before buying it locally. Yet, only 44% of small businesses even have a website.” (!) While those figures are now a couple of years old, it’s astounding that as recently as early 2009, more than half of small businesses still lacked a basic web presence.
• • “Most prepurchase activity involves generic terms and…brand searches tend to happen only close to purchase.”

Fox also makes a compelling case for using paid search (PPC advertising) and organic SEO in tandem:

• • “56% of Google queries show no paid ads at all, so if you’re counting on paid search to provide all of your visibility in searches, you could be missing half your audience.”
• • “When a brand appears in both the organic and paid results, the searcher clicked on that brand 92% of the time, compared to 60% of clicks when the brand appeared in only one location.” That’s why it’s important to buy branded terms in PPC campaigns—it increases clicks, plus the cost is generally low and the conversion rate high.

She points out that the largest expense associated with organic search is in developing original, relevant and useful content for your customers and prospects. This of course is not only helpful for increasing search traffic, but also helps your site visitors, builds your credibility as an industry expert, and ultimately increases sales.

Fox is a noted speaker and expert on the strategic use of search, and provides a wealth of insights in this book such as an outstanding taxonomy of search types (navigational, commercial/transactional, informational/research, prepurchase research and action); how smaller companies can capitalize on the use of Google Search Suggest to find popular but less competitive search phrases for targeting SEO efforts; how search engine users process search results (and why a well-written meta description tag is critical); and, quantitatively, how important first-page rankings are to driving search traffic.

Beyond making the business case for search, Fox explains—in high-level, non-nerdy terms—how to implement a search strategy, how to get your business strategy and SEO technology in sync, how to separate actionable information from the mass of search and web traffic data generated by analytics tools, how social media marketing affects search results, and key search trends on the horizon.

Her writing style is straightforward but engaging; there’s no flowery prose or cutesyness. Fox keeps the narrative moving along briskly, deftly navigating between being too superficial to add value and too technical for her executive business audience. She explains how search engines rank results, without getting too geeky about algorithms. She warns against black-hat SEO “professionals” who try to use manipulative tactics to game search results (as sites like J.C. Penny and wiseGEEK have recently discovered). She emphasizes the role of high-quality, original content for search success and how to evaluate searcher behavior and goals in order to develop valuable content.

Fox notes that “Marketing, social media and public relations can help your link profile considerably,” which is a core tenet of web presence optimization (and our agency’s approach to SEO and online marketing). Her clecklists for hiring SEO talent, whether in-house or through an agency, are helpful guides to the key criteria to consider (and what to avoid, such as “guarantees”). Her take on which metrics are unimportant in SEO reporting is questionable (the percentage of overall site traffic driven by search isn’t important?!), but what’s more critical is simply doing actionable reporting: according to Fox, “only 23% of sites have an analytics package installed, and only 1% are doing A/B or multivariate testing.”

There’s much more, on how to use social media effectively, how to use articles and forums to expand you web presence beyond your website, how online video affects search results, and Google’s plans for the future of search.

Fox has written a highly readable and informative book that can benefit several different audiences. SEO practitioners will gain strategic business perspective on the importance of their work. Marketers not directly involved in search will understand how they can contribute to the firm’s online visibility. Executives will find logical arguments and sound data on the importance of understanding search, at a high level, as a key component of overall business direction.  To return to Vanessa’s contention on the book’s cover: has search really changed everything? Read Marketing in the Age of Google: Your Online Strategy IS Your Business Strategy and decide for yourself.

Stumped for that last-minute Christmas idea? Books make great gifts, and there’s still time to order for pre-Christmas delivery.

Since you don’t want to take the chance of buying a sleeper however, or a book that’s inappropriate for the recipient, here are nine ideas—books reviewed on the Webbiquity blog this year.

Happy shopping!

Defy Gravity by Rebel Brown

In Defy Gravity: Propel Your Business to High-Velocity Growth, Rebel Brown shows business owners and executives how to shed the weight of legacy baggage, filter out the noise and focus on those opportunities which provide the best potential for profitable growth…

Social Media Marketing by Liana “Li” Evans

With Social Media Marketing: Strategies for Engaging in Facebook, Twitter & Other Social Media, the inimitable Liana “Li” Evans has provided the definitive handbook for social media marketers. From her no-nonsense, straight-to-the-point opening chapter on the basics of social media (“It’s Not Easy, Quick or Cheap”) through the final chapter on “Putting It All Together,” Evans tells anyone brave or foolhardy enough to venture into social media marketing what they need to know…

SNAP Selling by Jill Konrath

Don’t you love it when you pick up a book and realize in just the first few pages that the author really gets it? Even better, they don’t just get “it,” but offer a fresh and compelling approach to dealing with the specific problem, situation, condition of modern life, etc.? Well, SNAP Selling: Speed Up Sales and Win More Business with Today’s Frazzled Customers by Jill Konrath is that kind of book…

Social Media Marketing – An Hour a Day by Dave Evans

Despite its airy title, Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day by Dave Evans is anything but a lightweight treatment of this topic. At roughly 340 pages of text plus another 42 pages of worksheets, this is a meaty book, but the end result of following Dave’s hour-a-day guide is a solidly justified, strategic social media marketing plan…

Maverick Marketing by Tom Hayes

In Maverick Marketing: Trailride into the Wild West of New Marketing, Tom Hayes invites readers on a gallop through the new west of innovative marketing campaigns, to help generate new ideas to stand out from the herd…

The Truth About Search Engine Optimization by Rebecca Lieb

Despite being a quick, almost breezy read (how often do you read that said about a book on SEO?), The Truth About Search Engine Optimization packs a tremendous amount of valuable knowledge into a compact barely-200-page space…

eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale by Ardath Albee

Without a solid content strategy to support movement through the marketing and sales cycle, marketing automation software is just a nice email system. The brilliant Ardath Albee provides the missing piece, a reliable recipe marketing automation, demand generation and content marketing success in her new book, eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale…

The Perfection of Marketing by James Connor

Despite it’s ambitious title, The Perfection of Marketing is a surprisingly accessible and fast-paced read. The book is written in case study fashion, taking the reader through a realistic scenario of a midsized company struggling to build on its past success and take sales to the next level…

Website Optimization – Speed, Search Engine & Conversion Rate Secrets by Andrew King

Author Andrew King, president of Internet marketing firm Web Site Opimization, LLC has really done it. In Website Optimization: Speed, Search Engine & Conversion Rate Secrets, he gives away all the secrets of creating a website and search marketing program that effectively sells products and services…

Need more ideas? Check out the Webbiquity bookstore.

In Defy Gravity: Propel Your Business to High-Velocity Growth, Rebel Brown shows business owners and executives how to shed the weight of legacy baggage, filter out the noise and focus on those opportunities which provide the best potential for profitable growth. This is a critical guidebook for any business faced with shrinking margins, flatlined revenue, or worse–that is in freefall and in need of a turnaround strategy for survival.

To illustrate her points throughout the book, Rebel metaphorically uses the language of flight—gravity, lift, thrust, waypoints, trim tabs—much as Tom Hayes employed terms from the old west in Maverick Marketing. In the book’s first section, “Sources of Gravity,” Rebel details how old practices and beliefs can weigh a company down, preventing it from reaching its potential altitude of profitability and speed of growth. Most of these will be familiar to anyone with a few years of business experience behind them: “it’s our biggest seller!” (even though it’s rapidly becoming yesterday’s technology), “They’re our biggest customer” (highest revenue doesn’t always equate to most profitable), “but the other guys have it” (the fallacy of chasing the competition) and more.

On one particularly sensitive topic in this section—the drag that can be created by long-time employees clinging to the status quo rather than evolving with the company—is handled graciously. Loyal employees shouldn’t be discarded cavalierly with every change in the wind. Their knowledge and opinions matter; if they are resisting a change in direction, listen to make sure what they’re saying really is status quo baggage thinking, and not a prescient warning of hidden dangers in the new course of action. If it is truly resistance to needed change, give them a chance to get on board with the new flight plan. At that point, if they continue to be a source of drag, and worse, make an effort to persuade others to sabotage efforts at changing direction, it’s time to gracefully help them find a seat on another plane.

This a high-level strategy book written for leaders of any sized business. Though Rebel provide guidance on tactics to identify value and evaluate markets, she flies well above the tree tops throughout the book.

At its most basic level, her guidance is: identify your true sources of value—not the ones you think you have, but the ones your best customers (and potential customers) attribute to your company and offerings—and then focus all of your efforts on the most profitable (even if not always the largest in revenue terms) segments. That’s oversimplifying her message, but gets to the heart of it. As she summarizes at the end of chapter 12, “There are two primary sources of sustainable growth: true value and market opportunity. You can’t have one without the other and expect to reach full business velocity.”

She reminds us throughout the book, however, that as obvious as these recommendations may seem, they often fail in practice for a multitude of reasons. The most common is managing based on historical results—expecting the future to be a continuation of the past. Though this is not actually unusual in the business world, Rebel equates it to a pilot trying to fly a plane by looking at what’s behind him to show how absurd this is; no one would want to be on that flight. We want a pilot whose eyes are on the horizon in front of us; businesses run best when managed the same way, looking forward at changing market conditions and needs.

Among Rebel’s insights:

• • ”Market leaders recognize that their best seller isn’t a specific product or approach. They identify their sustainable value as customer benefit, not a specific product.” Take Apple as an example; though the company has lots of outstanding products, it’s core value isn’t a single product but rather cool technology that works reliably.
• • Every organization has three distinct types of value that it is critical to identify properly: company value (i.e., “the brand”), product value (why your customers buy your product or service) and market value (leadership, reputation, unique position). Company value is relatively unchanging, or at most slowly evolving, over time. Product value lasts only as long as product lifecycles.
• • ”Don’t be surprised if the sales reps are selling to a subset of what you believe are current market opportunities. Reps sell where they win, to, wherever they are winning, that’s your current market focus. You’ll find that your best sales reps do not waste time on the target markets you choose for them…Where they focus is your current market opportunity, whether you want to believe it or not. Pay attention.”
• • While you need to understand the competition you’re up against, “don’t start doing deep competitive analysis. That’s not what you need. You need to know the market positions of established market leaders–if there are any…For all markets, understanding the competitive landscape is key to a decision about your strategic course and focus. Just don’t follow your competitors. Think for yourself!”
• • ”One of the biggest mistakes we make in our growth strategies is to assume that we can create demand in the markets we select. That takes big money and lots of time. We’re better off focusing on a market that already has demand, capturing a ready-made opportunity instead of attempting to create a new market space.”
• • ”Leaders, it’s really important that you let folks know that you want real-world estimates. Too many employees are trained to say they can do more than they can, in reality, to look good and to please their managers. Change this behavior if you want to succeed and grow.” The head of the agency I’m with refers to this as “setting proper expectations” and it’s critical for properly allocating budget and effort, and producing results everyone is pleased with.

The strategy section at the end of the book is bit reminiscent of the classic Boston Consulting Group matrix, though Rebels observations and recommendations are more nuanced and advanced. Plus, it’s a lot more fun to talk about airplanes, waypoints and flight decks than dogs and cows. She richly illustrates her points throughout with a variety of case studies from the B2B and consumer marketing realms.

If your business is growing more rapidly and profitably than you ever dreamed, you can afford to ignore this book (at least for now). But if it’s more like the other 98% of businesses—struggling to keep up with the pace of market change and maintain profitable growth—Rebel Brown’s Defy Gravity may very well provide your flight plan for resumed or continued growth and success.

With Social Media Marketing: Strategies for Engaging in Facebook, Twitter & Other Social Media, the inimitable Liana “Li” Evans has provided the definitive handbook for social media marketers. From her no-nonsense, straight-to-the-point opening chapter on the basics of social media (“It’s Not Easy, Quick or Cheap”) through the final chapter on “Putting It All Together,” Evans tells anyone brave or foolhardy enough to venture into social media marketing not only what they want to know but more importantly what they need to know.

As she notes in her introduction, Li’s book is organized around four main themes:

Research: start by using search and social media monitoring tools to discover where your customers and prospects are congregating. Don’t automatically assume they use the most popular social networks. This saves time, effort and money in the long run, but it’s a step too many companies skip over.

Strategy: it isn’t just the tools you’ll be using, but also establishing goals for what you’d like to achieve in social media, and allocating time and resources to do the job.

Involvement: understand that everyone in your company has a stake in social media success and most of your employees are probably already members of at least one social network. Explain your goals and establish clear guidelines for any mention of the company on social media sites. This presents misunderstandings (at the least) and enlists your people beyond just the marketing and PR groups.

Measurement: as Li notes, “Measurement comes in many different forms, from website traffic to the number of retweets your content is getting.” Though measuring direct ROI is challenging, a successful social media program should increase engagement with customers and prospects, provide direct website traffic and increase branded search traffic. Choose metrics that make the most sense for the tactics you’re employing, and monitor results to determine which activities to increase and where a change of course may be needed.

Li really “gets” social media from the social, search and business perspectives, and this shows throughout the book. I wore out a highlighter on this one, but here are a sampling of representative quotes:

“The difficult part of finding success in social media is dedicating the resources and time to your social media strategy. This hard work behind the scenes makes the ‘overnight’ successes seem so easy.”

“Participating in social media isn’t just about creating a page, making a blog post, posing a question, or tweeting. You can’t just ‘leave your mark’ and expect success…Members of social media communities are no longer swayed by a coupon for 10% off or an invitation to try a new product. Instead, they want to connect. That is why social media marketing is not a quick process—it takes time to nurture relationships into conversations and create those solid, trusted connections…these real conversations lead to real relationships,and those trusted relationships lead to referrals and sales. These real conversations also produce some of your most loyal fans and greatest evangelists.”

“Diving into social media without a strategy in place is the best way to set your company’s efforts up for failure.”

And those are just from the first chapter. Li addresses social media at all levels, from grand strategy to nitty gritty tactics. She provides an excellent taxonomy of the social media landscape, categorizing the different types of social media tools into:

• • Social News Sites (Digg, Reddit, Kirtsy, etc.)
• • Social Networking (Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, etc.)
• • Social Bookmarking (Delicious, Diigo, Bmaccess; the distinction from social news sites is s bit blurry)
• • Social Sharing (YouTube, Flickr, SlideShare, etc.)
• • Social Events (e.g., Eventful, Meetup, Upcoming, etc.)
• • Blogs
• • Microblogging (Twitter, Jaiku, Identi.ca; Li helpfully notes that “the power of microblogging for a business can be huge, if you add personality into your Twitter stream and not just allow it to be automated.” Amen!)
• • Wikis (Wikipedia, hundreds of specific topic-focused wikis)
• • Forums and Message Boards (the oldest and second-most commonly used forms of social media)

In chapter 3, Li notes importantly that “with social media, there’s no direct click to purchase.” Too many companies focus only on measuring the traffic back to their own site driven by social media, rather than focusing on and valuing the engagement on social media sites themselves. Sure, social media can in some cases drive lead generation and even direct sales (so can PR), but that isn’t its strength or its primary purpose. Confusion over these measurements has fueled the social media ROI debate. Her detailed descriptions of what can be measured on each type of social media site alone is worth the price of the book (at least).

And there’s so much more. Chapter 6 details the importance of social media conversation. Chapter seven provides an excellent outline for a corporate social media policy. Chapter seventeen notes the importance of providing not just a policy, but social media training for all employees so that the understand the policy, the power, and the potential dangers of social media. Chapter 19 addresses the “personal branding” issue that many companies struggle with in social media. Chapters 36-39 present a great outline of web presence optimization, though Li doesn’t use that term.

It’s difficult to find anything to quibble with in this outstanding book, and what quibbles there are, are minor ones. Li comes down a bit hard on PR agencies; true, most of them are ham-handed when it comes to social media, mass-blasting out press releases to bloggers (Li offers an excellent guide to conducting blogger outreach the right way in chapter 11) and generally treating social media like a broadcast channel. But the best ones take the time to understand their clients’ businesses, help craft social media policies and plans, and can even productively engage on their clients’ behalf. In chapter 14, she drops the phrase “social media campaign,” though this may have been an inadvertent slip; she demonstrates throughout the book a clear understanding of words that shouldn’t be used with social media.

Finally, as wonderful as the book is, its a tad long. For example, she devotes six pages to why companies shouldn’t rely on interns for their social media strategy or execution. Her advice is spot-on, but shes beats this fallacy beyond death. She states that “link baiting isn’t social media marketing”—which is true, though it doesn’t mean that link baiting is an unethical or ineffective tactic. In chapter 37, she almost seems to defend the insidious nofollow tag, which has outlived whatever useful life it once had and should be banished. Particularly in social media, let the community decide what content has value and what is spam.

Minor quibbles aside, Social Media Marketing is an essential handbook for anyone involved in business social media, or anyone who manages those people. And in fairness to Li, in chapter 31, she questions how “social” Seth Godin’s blog is; a gutsy but admirable move. She gets the details right as well as the overall strategy, noting that “it’s no longer ‘traditional’ versus ‘online’ types of marketing. Smart companies realize that it’s all integrated marketing now.” That may be the most important point of all; companies can’t afford to ignore social media, but they also can’t treat it as a silo. The smartest companies integrate social media tightly into other marketing and PR efforts. And the smartest social media marketers will be those who’ve read this book.

Other reviews of Social Media Marketing by Li Evans:

Karl Ribas

Dana Larson | Expert Bits

Rich Meyer

Don’t you love it when you pick up a book and realize in just the first few pages that the author really gets it? Even better, they don’t just get “it,” but offer a fresh and compelling approach to dealing with the specific problem, situation, condition of modern life, etc.?

Well, SNAP Selling: Speed Up Sales and Win More Business with Today’s Frazzled Customers by Jill Konrath is that kind of book. As Jill notes in the book’s introduction, today’s buyers are crazy busy. She brilliantly describes the life of the modern business worker this way:

Before even fully awake, “you’re on the computer checking what seems like an endless stream of email. When you look at your to-do list, you wonder how you’ll be able to get everything done. You have a dozen people to follow up with on the phone, three meetings, and a proposal that needs to be finished…Rather than take a break for lunch, you grab a quick sandwich at the vending machine and eat it at your desk. That way you can update your files and take care of paperwork that needs to be processed. Then you head out for that presentation that you wish you’d had more time to prepare for. After the presentation, you have a ton of questions that now need to get answered before the end of the week…By the time you get home, you’re tired. But rather than turning in for the day, you work on a proposal for a while, then finish up by checking your email one last time. The next day you get up and do it all over again.”

People are reluctant to add anything more to their frenetic schedules, least of all spending time listening to a sales pitch. No matter how compelling the value proposition for the product or service, it involves change, more work, and more time out of an already overburdened schedule. As Jill notes, for sales (and marketing) people in this environment, “what worked before doesn’t work anymore…the advice of many ‘traditional’ sales gurus is now hopelessly outdated…(and) things are never going to to go back to the way they used to be.” SNAP Selling is Jill’s answer to how to market and sell in this overworked and overstressed modern world of business.

According to Jill, today’s buyers make three distinct decisions that sales pros need to aware of. The first is when they evaluate your approach and determine whether it’s even worth their time to meet with you. Once past that hurdle, their next decision is determining if making the change required is worth the cost, time and effort required. Finally, the third decision is, having committed to making a change, selecting the best product / service / vendor for their company.

Jill describes the SNAP selling process as:

Simple (eliminate as much complexity and effort as possible from the decision-making process)

iNvaluable (products and services can be copied; your expertise can’t)

Aligned (it’s crucial to be relevant — always)

Priority (maintain a sense of urgency)

Before delving into the detail behind the SNAP model, Jill notes that “Knowing as much as you can about your targeted prospect is more important than your knowledge of your own product, service, or solution. Most sellers don’t realize this, but it’s true…(but by implementing SNAP selling processes) you won’t have to work as hard as your today to achieve significantly better results.” Now that’s a compelling value proposition!

After describing the SNAP method in more detail, the book walks you through the application of these principals and practices to achieve success in each of the three major decisions (and all of the smaller decisions involved in keeping the buying process moving forward).

Though written primarily for sales professionals, SNAP Selling is equally valuable to b2b marketers who support their sales teams. In the most successful organizations, the efforts of the sales and marketing teams are closely aligned. While the detailed work of implementing SNAP processes will fall on sales, marketing groups can certainly help in areas like research, development of content to support the SNAP process (such as industry-specific white papers and case studies), and even tools to help the sales team execute at specific points in the process. This teamwork is more challenging and rewarding for both the marketing and sales teams that simple mass lead generation and follow up.

In short, SNAP Selling is an invaluable guide to effectively marketing and selling to today’s stressed out, overworked and time-starved business buyers, and beating the competition, by providing relevant and compelling business value at a personal level.

Despite its airy title, Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day by Dave Evans is anything but a lightweight treatment of this topic. At roughly 340 pages of text plus another 42 pages of worksheets, this is a meaty book, but the end result of following Dave’s hour-a-day guide is a solidly justified, strategic social media marketing plan. This isn’t a tactical, do-this-on-Facebook-and-then-that-on-Twitter type of roadmap either, but rather a sequence of exercises to explore, monitor, justify, plan and measure a social media program.

While many types of marketing and PR pros will find value in the book, it is aimed primarily at mid-level marketers (entry-level staff will lack the business acumen to pull this off, while senior executives will delegate it) at midsize to large organizations, possibly in b2b but more likely in the b2c space.

Author Dave Evans (@evansdave) once worked as a systems analyst for the Voyager deep space exploration program with the Jet Propulsion Laboratories/NASA. Yes, this really is rocket science. From there, as Strategy Director GSD&M IdeaCity, he developed integrated communications programs for clients like Microsoft, Hewlett Packard, Southwest Airlines, AARP, the PGA Tour, Chili’s and other big brands. Later, he founded his own marketing technology consultancy. He’s a ClickZ columnist, frequent speaker, and has served on advisory boards for ad:tech and the Word of Mouth Marketing Association. In short, he’s an extremely smart guy, though with an analytics-heavy, big organization background that shows through in this book.

The book begins with a fascinating trip through the early days of the web and the foundations of social media. Evans reminds us that the web grew from approximately 6,000 sites in 1992 to one million websites by the mid-nineties. One million websites. How quaint that number now seems! (Google currently indexes more than 10 billion sites.) Spam email led to a consumer backlash over unwanted advertising and the rise of ad-voidance. Technologies such as the iPod, DVRs, pop-up blockers, do-not-call registries and spam filters have empowered consumers to take control over the commercial messages they see. Marketers can no longer rely on interrupting prospective customers in order to get their attention; they need to earn it by producing content that people want and then making that content findable when buyers are searching.

Evans also makes an incredibly strong case for social media participation: “Your customers are already talking about you. The fact that you aren’t participating is your implicit endorsement of whatever it is that they are saying…You cannot choose whether or not your customers will see you on the social web. They will, because they will put you there. You can only choose whether or not you will join them there.” By not participating in social media, you embolden your critics while ignoring your fans. Research shows that two out of three word-of-mouth conversations reference a brand, product or service—and these conversations are increasingly moving online through social media.

From there, Evans’ hour-a-day plan is laid out, starting with an exploration of the different forms of social content (blogs, video, podcasting etc.). consumer-generated media, touchpoint analysis, measurement and metrics, planning a campaign (ugh, social media campaign?), using branded social media platforms, and social media monitoring, wrapping it all up with preparing and presenting your social media plan. This makes the book an excellent guide to developing a social media plan and justifying resource allocation in a large organization environment, if somewhat short on actual execution.

There are a few questionable statements in the book. For one, Evans cites the notoriously anti-business Wikipedia as “an example of why social media is useful to you as a marketer.” At another point, the author advises readers to spend 5-10 minutes “surveying” YouTube and “if you’ve never transferred content from a digital camera to the Internet, take a break now and try it.” Uh, at this point, if you don’t know what’s on YouTube or how to upload a file, perhaps social media marketing isn’t your ideal career choice.

One risk of writing a book like this is the speed at which the social media landscape is changing; though Social Media Marketing came out less than two years ago, at the time of publication the now long-dead social bookmarking site Ma.gnolia was still active, and MySpace still drew five times as much traffic as Facebook.

He writes that participating in social media is essential for building trust with customers, then insists on developing robust ROI calculations for any social activity; which is it? The book focuses primarily on using social media to engage in brand conversations with consumers; certainly a critical application, but little acknowledgment is given to other uses of social media marketing including content sharing, media outreach and influencing the influencers. Evans claims that “there are so many good reasons to buy a hybrid other than pure fuel economy” without saying what any of those reasons are; perhaps the sporty styling? Finally, at one point, he actually recommends using an intern for social media data collection and metrics. Argh.

Still, quibbles aside, Evans is a sophisticated writer who brings great depth of insight his topic. He wisely notes that “on the social web, you can’t directly control the conversation. Instead, you influence it by setting an appropriate expectation and then delivering on it.” The book covers an incredibly wide range of social media sites, including some that many readers may not be familiar with. For those who haven’t read The Ultimate Question: Driving Good Profits and True Growth, Evans provides a concise yet workable explanation of the Net Promoter Score developed by Fred Reichheld. The book is rich in case study examples from companies like Southwest Airlines and Harley Davidson. Noting the importance of active participation, Evans writes:

“The social web demands an active presence…if your profile isn’t up to date, if you’re not commenting, if you’re not making connections, you don’t exist. ‘Lights on, but no one home’ and you won’t get the results that you otherwise might. That seems obvious, but I point it out because I see a lot of profiles across a lot of social networks…evidently abandoned and now home to what look like virtual zombies taking up residence in so many empty storefronts.”

Regarding urgency: “Whether attracting and retaining key employees or attracting and retaining key customers, part of the challenge you face in tapping the social web is getting it done today.” While recognizing that measuring ROI from social media is challenging and requires skill and judgment, Evans provides a rich set of tools and models for keeping tabs on business results.

In short, Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day is an outstanding guide to social media program design and measurement for brand managers, product managers and marketing directors at any firm or organization large enough to have people talking about your brand online in significant numbers. Sole practitioners and managers at smaller companies can also get some value from it, but will generally be interested more in simplified planning with a greater emphasis on execution.

In Maverick Marketing: Trailride into the Wild West of New Marketing, Tom Hayes invites readers on a gallop through the new west of innovative marketing campaigns, to help generate new ideas to stand out from the herd. Written for creative types and marketing strategists on both the agency and client sides of the fence, the book highlights edgy tactics and concepts that have enhanced brand success. Although the examples come primarily from b2c campaigns, b2b marketers may pick up some useful creative ideas here as well.

Hayes, Managing Partner and Principal at the New England Consulting Group, draws on his experience working with midsize to large clients across healthcare, consumer packaged goods, retail, energy and other sectors to illustrate both the theory and real-world examples of trailblazing marketing campaigns and practices. Along the way, he explains why maverick marketing is becoming essential, citing research from Yankelovich that 60% of adults say they feel overwhelmed by commercial messages, are interested in skipping or blocking ads, and feel the volume of marketing  is “out of control.” In this landscape, maverick marketing practices are required to reach consumers in a manner that will be welcomed rather than viewed as just another advertising intrusion.

Traditional television advertising, for example, comes under the whip. A study by the Association of National Advertisers revealed that three-fourths of large marketers believe their television advertising is less effective now than it was just a few years ago. Another study from McKinsey concluded that traditional TV advertising has lost a third of its effectiveness over the last 20 years. Hayes concludes that “media, and particularly television, is taking on the role of General George Custer of the Little Big Horn, glorified as a past hero…but under attack.” He notes that going beyond reaching to actually engaging consumers is a much more complex and difficult task than traditional advertising, an observation that applies equally well to b2c and b2b marketers.

Hayes notes that as the six-gun was the great equalizer of the Old West, putting small farmers and townsfolk on equal footing with the biggest, baddest cowboys, so the Internet today significantly equalizes the marketing power of small firms with large global brands. Hayes writes that “Many marketing experts…concur that a brand should not even contemplate national advertising without a $20 million war chest for television and $10 million in print. This creates an effective barrier to entry to many marketers and startups. In contrast, with the Net, tiny niches and slivers of segments can be reached in an affordable manner for smaller ‘mavericks.’” The New England Consulting Group even coined a name for this phenomenon: “Netralization,” the equalization of marketing power between big and small firms enabled by the Web. And as with the six-shooter, the results can even be fatal; online music services like iTunes killed giant music retailer Tower Records, and NetFlix has wounded–perhaps mortally, time will tell–video rental chains like Blockbuster and Hollywood Video.

In the author’s analysis, a maverick marketing program “must include at least three of seven key components: marketing innovation, consumer engagement, buzz or public relations, new media usage, a viral aspect, promotion, or opt-in marketing. Tying this back to his Old West theme, Hayes notes that pioneers learned there were two ways to hunt: you could aggressively march through the forest hoping to flush your game (traditional marketing), or you could, like the Indians, study the feeding habits of your prey, set out bait, and then wait for the target to come to you (maverick marketing).

Even if Hayes didn’t share so many valuable marketing insights here, the book may be worth buying just for its trivia value. For example, after noting the ubiquity of brand names Motorola and Gatorade on the sidelines of every NFL game, the author points out that “Motorola does not even make headsets, and Gatorade is not necessarily in those green buckets.” And there’s much more:

• Viagra was originally developed as a heart medicine, but when its most notable, er, side effect, became apparent, its marketing was reoriented. Erecticle dysfunction was not a medically acknowledged disorder at that point, but it become one due to Pfizer’s marketing efforts.
• Research has shown that the average lifetime value of a customer acquired through search is roughly 70% higher than for customers acquired through other channels.
• Although most consumer marketing is geared toward younger age cohorts, retirees control two-thirds of all the wealth in the U.S.
• Coca Cola failed as a cough syrup before becoming the world’s most popular soft drink. Post-Its were the result of research into extra-strength adhesive tape, and Kevlar was originally developed as a material for panty hose.

Intentionally or not, Hayes hilariously points out the hypocrisy and outright stupidity of many in the “green” movement with reference to Ben & Jerry’s and, most entertainingly, Whole Foods: “Whole Foods smartly (?) takes the offense (with regard to not stocking live lobsters in its stores) and wraps itself in a flag of `ethical sourcing.’ It utilized a study from a European Animal Authority, think PETA, which indicates that lobsters may have feelings and can learn. This is despite the great weight of evidence from biologists and oceanographers, from numerous prestigious marine science universities, who point out that lobsters have no brains and only an insect-crude nervous system…In expressing its `animal compassion,’ (by selling only frozen lobsters, which are often sourced from large, migratory lobster breeders rather than small lobster operations), Whole Foods’ action very well have the unintended impact of harming the entire species. In fact in Maine, it is illegal to sell these ‘breeders,’ which are most likely to be sold, frozen, by Whole Foods.”

Hayes maintains his Old West theme throughout the book, frequently illustrating his points by throwing in references to wagon trains, life on the prairie, square dances, saloons, Boot Hill, the town marshal, horseshoes, lariats, sarsaparilla, cookouts, the general store, smoke signals, the open plains, etc. In the hands of a lesser writer, this style could quickly become irritating, but Hayes is deft enough to weave these references through his narrative in a manner than illuminates and entertains but never annoys. Each chapter helpfully concludes with a list of “trail markers,” the key points and takeaways from the chapter.

The book has a few faults. The sections on social networking are dated. He states at one point that “no ‘promotional consideration given’ notification is required on the Net,” which is no longer true. As a byproduct of being continually updated and produced using print-on-demand technology rather than traditional publishing, the book contains numerous typos. Only 22% of consumers read blogs (the actual figure exceeds 70%). Most bizarre is the claim that Google receives 25.7 million unique views per week; the true figure is close to 1 billion per day.

Still, such minor errors aside, Maverick Marketing is an entertaining, insightful and worthwhile read for any marketer in search of strategies for success on the new frontier of participative marketing.