We've ranked the best digital marketing books using expert recommendations, sales data, and millions of reader ratings. At Shortform, we know books. Our book guides are the best in the world. Learn why.
Influence, the classic book on persuasion, explains the psychology of why people say "yes"—and how to apply these understandings. Dr. Robert Cialdini is the seminal expert in the rapidly expanding field of influence and persuasion. His thirty-five years of rigorous, evidence-based research along with a three-year program of study on what moves people to change behavior has resulted in this highly acclaimed book.
You'll learn the six universal principles, how to use them to become a skilled persuader—and how to defend yourself against them. Perfect for people in all walks of life, the principles of Influence will move you toward profound personal change and act as a driving force for your success.
Major New York Times bestseller Winner of the National Academy of Sciences Best Book Award in 2012 Selected by the New York Times Book Review as one of the best books of 2011 A Globe and Mail Best Books of the Year 2011 Title One of The Economist's 2011 Books of the Year One of The Wall Street Journal's Best Nonfiction Books of the Year 2011 2013 Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient
In the international bestseller, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman, the renowned psychologist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. The impact of overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the profound effect of cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning our next vacation—each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems shape our judgments and decisions. Engaging the reader in a lively conversation about how we think, Kahneman reveals where we can and cannot trust our intuitions and how we can tap into the benefits of slow thinking. He offers practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both our business and our personal lives—and how we can use different techniques to guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble. Winner of the National Academy of Sciences Best Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and selected by The New York Times Book Review as one of the ten best books of 2011, Thinking, Fast and Slow is destined to be a classic.
A few months ago, Mr. Obama read “Thinking, Fast and Slow,” by Daniel Kahneman, about how people make decisions — quick, instinctive thinking versus slower, contemplative deliberation. For Mr. Obama, a deliberator in an instinctive business, this may be as instructive as any political science text. [source]
Captivating dive into human decision making, marred by inclusion of several/many? psychology studies that fail to replicate. Will stand as a cautionary tale? [source]
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The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses
Most startups fail. But many of those failures are preventable. The Lean Startup is a new approach being adopted across the globe, changing the way companies are built and new products are launched.
Eric Ries defines a startup as an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty. This is just as true for one person in a garage or a group of seasoned professionals in a Fortune 500 boardroom. What they have in common is a mission to penetrate that fog of uncertainty to discover a successful path to a sustainable business.
The Lean Startup approach fosters companies that are both more capital efficient and that leverage human creativity more effectively. Inspired by lessons from lean manufacturing, it relies on "validated learning," rapid scientific experimentation, as well as a number of counter-intuitive practices that shorten product development cycles, measure actual progress without resorting to vanity metrics, and learn what customers really want. It enables a company to shift directions with agility, altering plans inch by inch, minute by minute.
Rather than wasting time creating elaborate business plans, The Lean Startup offers entrepreneurs - in companies of all sizes - a way to test their vision continuously, to adapt and adjust before it's too late. Ries provides a scientific approach to creating and managing successful startups in a age when companies need to innovate more than ever.
At Asana, we've been lucky to benefit from the author's advice firsthand; this book will enable him to help many more entrepreneurs answer the tough questions about their business. [source]
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Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World
The New York Times bestselling author and social media expert returns with hard-won advice on how to connect with customers and beat the competition by mastering social media marketing
When managers and marketers outline their social media strategies, they often plan for the "right hook"-their next highly anticipated sale or campaign that's going to put the competition out for the count. Even companies committed to jabbing-patiently engaging with customers to build the relationships so crucial to successful social media campaigns-still yearn to land the powerful, bruising swing that will knock out their opponent or their customer's resistance in one tooth-spritzing, killer blow. Right hooks, after all, convert traffic to sales. They easily show results and ROI. Except when they don't.
In the same passionate, street-wise style readers have come to expect, Gary Vaynerchuk is on a mission to improve marketers' right hooks by changing the way they fight to make their customers happy, and ultimately to compete. Thanks to the massive change and proliferation in social media platforms in the last four years, the winning combination of jabs and right hooks is different now. Communication is still key, but context matters more than ever. It's not just about developing high-quality content, but developing high-quality content perfectly adapted to specific social media platforms and mobile devices-content tailor-made for Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, and Tumblr. A mash-up of the best elements of Crush It! and The Thank You Economy with a 2013 spin, here is a blueprint to social media marketing strategies that really works.
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Recommended by Daymond John, Marvin Liao, Aaron Agius, and 35 others.
Marvin Liao
Partner/500 Startups
My list would be (besides the ones I mentioned in answer to the previous question) both business & Fiction/Sci-Fi and ones I personally found helpful to myself. The business books explain just exactly how business, work & investing are in reality & how to think properly & differentiate yourself. On the non-business side, a mix of History & classic fiction to understand people, philosophy to make sense of life and Science fiction to picture what the future could be like (not always utopian). [source]
Alex Circei
Question: What five books would you recommend to young people interested in your career path & why? Answer: Screw It, Let's Do It: Lessons In Life by Richard Branson Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone To Take Action by Simon Sinek The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers by Ben Horowitz Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not! by Robert T. Kiyosaki [source]
Auston Bunsen
I’ve got a few, one book that really impacted me early on as someone coming from a middle-class family was “Rich dad, Poor dad”. [source]
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Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
If you want to build a better future, you must believe in secrets.
The great secret of our time is that there are still uncharted frontiers to explore and new inventions to create. In Zero to One, legendary entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel shows how we can find singular ways to create those new things.
Thiel begins with the contrarian premise that we live in an age of technological stagnation, even if we’re too distracted by shiny mobile devices to notice. Information technology has improved rapidly, but there is no reason why progress should be limited to computers or Silicon Valley. Progress can be achieved in any industry or area of business. It comes from the most important skill that every leader must master: learning to think for yourself.
Doing what someone else already knows how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar. But when you do something new, you go from 0 to 1. The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine. Tomorrow’s champions will not win by competing ruthlessly in today’s marketplace. They will escape competition altogether, because their businesses will be unique.
Zero to One presents at once an optimistic view of the future of progress in America and a new way of thinking about innovation: it starts by learning to ask the questions that lead you to find value in unexpected places.
Why do our headaches persist after taking a one-cent aspirin but disappear when we take a 50-cent aspirin?
Why does recalling the Ten Commandments reduce our tendency to lie, even when we couldn't possibly be caught?
Why do we splurge on a lavish meal but cut coupons to save twenty-five cents on a can of soup?
Why do we go back for second helpings at the unlimited buffet, even when our stomachs are already full?
And how did we ever start spending $4.15 on a cup of coffee when, just a few years ago, we used to pay less than a dollar?
When it comes to making decisions in our lives, we think we're in control. We think we're making smart, rational choices. But are we?
In a series of illuminating, often surprising experiments, MIT behavioral economist Dan Ariely refutes the common assumption that we behave in fundamentally rational ways. Blending everyday experience with groundbreaking research, Ariely explains how expectations, emotions, social norms, and other invisible, seemingly illogical forces skew our reasoning abilities.
Not only do we make astonishingly simple mistakes every day, but we make the same "types" of mistakes, Ariely discovers. We consistently overpay, underestimate, and procrastinate. We fail to understand the profound effects of our emotions on what we want, and we overvalue what we already own. Yet these misguided behaviors are neither random nor senseless. They're systematic and predictable--making us "predictably" irrational.
From drinking coffee to losing weight, from buying a car to choosing a romantic partner, Ariely explains how to break through these systematic patterns of thought to make better decisions. "Predictably Irrational" will change the way we interact with the world--one small decision at a time.
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Recommended by Max Levchin, Vinod Khosla, Vinod Khosla, and 22 others.
Max Levchin
Co-founder/PayPal, CEO/Affirm, Investor
Max Levchin recommended this book as an answer to "What business books would you advise young entrepreneurs read?" [source]
Andra Zaharia
'While I was thinking of the best books to add to this short list, I realized that not even half of them are directly related to digital marketing. This is because I believe that the best marketers are people who understand human nature deeply and aim to bring out the best in it. Call me naive, but that’s how I see it. If I were to want to pursue a career in marketing, I’d read … Predictably Irrational. [source]
Chris Goward
Here are some of the books that have been very impactful for me, or taught me a new way of thinking: … Predictably Irrational. [source]
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Dotcom Secrets: The Underground Playbook for Growing Your Company Online
If you are currently struggling with getting traffic to your website, or converting that traffic when it shows up, you may think you ve got a traffic or conversion problem. In Russell Brunson's experience, after working with thousands of businesses, he has found that s rarely the case. Low traffic and weak conversion numbers are just symptoms of a much greater problem, a problem that s a little harder to see (that s the bad news), but a lot easier to fix (that s the good news). DotComSecrets will give you the marketing funnels and the sales scripts you need to be able to turn on a flood of new leads into your business."
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Recommended by Alvin Lindsay and 1 others.
Alvin Lindsay
CEO of ClickFunnels GIVES away his best 7 funnels! he just paid for your book (where do you want it shipped?) https://t.co/meFLMLNrb0 😃 https://t.co/97R3MPo3yd [source]
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Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - The instant classic about why some ideas thrive, why others die, and how to improve your idea's chances--essential reading in the "fake news" era.
Mark Twain once observed, "A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can even get its boots on." His observation rings true: Urban legends, conspiracy theories, and bogus news stories circulate effortlessly. Meanwhile, people with important ideas--entrepreneurs, teachers, politicians, and journalists--struggle to make them "stick."
In Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath reveal the anatomy of ideas that stick and explain ways to make ideas stickier, such as applying the human scale principle, using the Velcro Theory of Memory, and creating curiosity gaps. Along the way, we discover that sticky messages of all kinds--from the infamous "kidney theft ring" hoax to a coach's lessons on sportsmanship to a vision for a new product at Sony--draw their power from the same six traits.
Made to Stick will transform the way you communicate. It's a fast-paced tour of success stories (and failures): the Nobel Prize-winning scientist who drank a glass of bacteria to prove a point about stomach ulcers; the charities who make use of the Mother Teresa Effect; the elementary-school teacher whose simulation actually prevented racial prejudice.
Provocative, eye-opening, and often surprisingly funny, Made to Stick shows us the vital principles of winning ideas--and tells us how we can apply these rules to making our own messages stick.
@conorgil My all-time favorite example of research communication is The Selfish Gene. Astonishingly effective at explaining deep research ideas/findings to a lay reader. A book with great advice: https://t.co/QD1sM2o0z6 (It isn't specific to research but still super valuable.) [source]
Bill Liao
The Book "Made to Stick" combined with "The Poetics" by Aristotle really helped me to see the power of telling great stories with surprises in them and every time I meet a start-up I can always make a contribution to their pitch. [source]
Cristian-Dragos Baciu
I highly recommend all the books written by the Heath brothers, especially Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive And Others Die. This one's a must-read for marketers. The reason I enjoyed their work so much is because they offer real-life stories and insights that makes it so much easier for the reader to imprint that information in his mind [source]
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The 1-Page Marketing Plan: Get New Customers, Make More Money, And Stand out From The Crowd
To build a successful business, you need to stop doing random acts of marketing and start following a reliable plan for rapid business growth. Traditionally, creating a marketing plan has been a difficult and time-consuming process, which is why it often doesn't get done.
In The 1-Page Marketing Plan, serial entrepreneur and rebellious marketer Allan Dib reveals a marketing implementation breakthrough that makes creating a marketing plan simple and fast. It's literally a single page, divided up into nine squares. With it you'll be able to map out your own sophisticated marketing plan and go from zero to marketing hero.
Whether you're just starting out or are an experienced entrepreneur, The 1-Page Marketing Plan is the easiest and fastest way to create a marketing plan that will propel your business growth.
In this groundbreaking new book you'll discover: • How to get new customers, clients, or patients and how make more profit from existing ones. • Why “big business” style marketing could kill your business and strategies that actually work for small and medium-sized businesses. • How to close sales without being pushy, needy, or obnoxious while turning the tables and having prospects begging you to take their money. • A simple step-by-step process for creating your own personalized marketing plan that is literally one page. Simply follow along and fill in each of the nine squares that make up your own 1-Page Marketing Plan. • How to annihilate competitors and make yourself the only logical choice. • How to get amazing results on a small budget using the secrets of direct response marketing. • How to charge high prices for your products and services and have customers actually thank you for it.
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The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon
The definitive story of Amazon.com, one of the most successful companies in the world, and of its driven, brilliant founder, Jeff Bezos.
Amazon.com started off delivering books through the mail. But its visionary founder, Jeff Bezos, wasn't content with being a bookseller. He wanted Amazon to become the everything store, offering limitless selection and seductive convenience at disruptively low prices. To do so, he developed a corporate culture of relentless ambition and secrecy that's never been cracked. Until now. Brad Stone enjoyed unprecedented access to current and former Amazon employees and Bezos family members, giving readers the first in-depth, fly-on-the-wall account of life at Amazon. Compared to tech's other elite innovators--Jobs, Gates, Zuckerberg--Bezos is a private man. But he stands out for his restless pursuit of new markets, leading Amazon into risky new ventures like the Kindle and cloud computing, and transforming retail in the same way Henry Ford revolutionized manufacturing.
The Everything Store will be the revealing, definitive biography of the company that placed one of the first and largest bets on the Internet and forever changed the way we shop and read.
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Recommended by Doug McMillon, Aaron Watson, Alan Pierce, and 10 others.
I read and give this book because you need to understand what you’re up against. [source]
Aaron Watson
Amazon is going to rule the world unless governments decide to break them up. It just makes sense to understand the most powerful company on the planet. Also, there is a (small) chance that Amazon sets up HQ2 in my hometown (Pittsburgh). [source]
Alan Pierce
This was an amazing glimpse into one of the most disruptive companies in history as well as the past and future trajectory of e-commerce and retail. It is also a testament to unwavering self-belief. The thing that impressed me the most is that Jeff Bezos intentionally built an entire department dedicated to making his primary business obsolete which allowed him to take the lead in the next development, e-books. His foresight is extraordinary and he is an inspirational big thinker. [source]
How do successful companies create products people can’t put down?
Why do some products capture widespread attention while others flop? What makes us engage with certain products out of sheer habit? Is there a pattern underlying how technologies hook us? Nir Eyal answers these questions (and many more) by explaining the Hook Model—a four-step process embedded into the products of many successful companies to subtly encourage customer behavior. Through consecutive “hook cycles,” these products reach their ultimate goal of bringing users back again and again without depending on costly advertising or aggressive messaging.
Hooked is based on Eyal’s years of research, consulting, and practical experience. He wrote the book he wished had been available to him as a start-up founder—not abstract theory, but a how-to guide for building better products. Hooked is written for product managers, designers, marketers, start-up founders, and anyone who seeks to understand how products influence our behavior.
Eyal provides readers with:
• Practical insights to create user habits that stick. • Actionable steps for building products people love.
• Fascinating examples from the iPhone to Twitter, Pinterest to the Bible App, and many other habit-forming products.
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Recommended by Andrew Chen, Nir Eyal, Ken Norton, and 41 others.
Matt Mullenweg
Founder & CEO/Automattic
Hooked gives you the blueprint for the next generation of products. Read Hooked or the company that replaces you will. [source]
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten
The book everyone in Silicon Valley is talking about. [source]
Chandini Jain
One of the five books Chandini would you recommend to young people interested in her career path. [source]
New York Times bestseller and named Best Marketing Book of 2014 by the American Marketing Association
What makes things popular? Why do people talk about certain products and ideas more than others? Why are some stories and rumors more infectious? And what makes online content go viral?
If you said advertising, think again. People don't listen to advertisements, they listen to their peers. But why do people talk about certain products and ideas more than others? Why are some stories and rumors more infectious? And what makes online content go viral?
Wharton marketing professor Jonah Berger has spent the last decade answering these questions. He's studied why New York Times articles make the paper's own Most E-mailed List, why products get word of mouth, and how social influence shapes everything from the cars we buy to the clothes we wear to the names we give our children. In this book, Berger reveals the secret science behind word-of-mouth and social transmission. Discover how six basic principles drive all sorts of things to become contagious, from consumer products and policy initiatives to workplace rumors and YouTube videos.
Contagious combines groundbreaking research with powerful stories. Learn how a luxury steakhouse found popularity through the lowly cheese-steak, why anti-drug commercials might have actually increased drug use, and why more than 200 million consumers shared a video about one of the seemingly most boring products there is: a blender. If you've wondered why certain stories get shared, e-mails get forwarded, or videos go viral, Contagious explains why, and shows how to leverage these concepts to craft contagious content. This book provides a set of specific, actionable techniques for helping information spread - for designing messages, advertisements, and information that people will share. Whether you're a manager at a big company, a small business owner trying to boost awareness, a politician running for office, or a health official trying to get the word out, Contagious will show you how to make your product or idea catch on.
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Recommended by Vinod Khosla, Vinod Khosla, Andrew Medal, and 10 others.
Andrew Medal
The world is #CONTAGIOUS ☢️☢️☢️ • • My dog and I love this book. I read to him when he wants to learn about marketing techniques. The last time I read this book was in 2013. If you want a read that dissects how and… https://t.co/6v0ckSnSQe [source]
Ee Ling Lim
Contagious by Jonah Berger is another interesting one for those trying to figure out how to market their business. In Contagious, Jonah identifies what makes some things go viral, and narrowed it down to 6 principles STEPPS: Social currency (content that makes people look good when they talk about it), Triggers (top of mind topics), Emotion (content that we care about, especially high arousal ones like anger, awe, excitement and humor), Public, Practical and Stories. [source]
Erik Cheong
Explains why certain products and ideas become popular while others fail. It reveals the secret science behind word-of-mouth and social transmission. Discover how six basic principles drive all sorts of things to become contagious, from consumer products and policy initiatives to workplace rumors and YouTube videos. [source]
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Purple Cow, New Edition: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable--Includes new bonus chapter
You're either a Purple Cow or you're not. You're either remarkable or invisible. Make your choice.
What do Starbucks and JetBlue and KrispyKreme and Apple and DutchBoy and Kensington and Zespri and Hard Candy have that you don't? How do they continue to confound critics and achieve spectacular growth, leaving behind former tried-and true brands to gasp their last?
Face it, the checklist of tired 'P's marketers have used for decades to get their product noticed -Pricing, Promotion, Publicity, to name a few-aren't working anymore. There's an exceptionally important 'P' that has to be added to the list. It's Purple Cow.
Cows, after you've seen one, or two, or ten, are boring. A Purple Cow, though...now that would be something. Purple Cow describes something phenomenal, something counterintuitive and exciting and flat out unbelievable. Every day, consumers come face to face with a lot of boring stuff-a lot of brown cows-but you can bet they won't forget a Purple Cow. And it's not a marketing function that you can slap on to your product or service. Purple Cow is inherent. It's built right in, or it's not there. Period.
In Purple Cow, Seth Godin urges you to put a Purple Cow into everything you build, and everything you do, to create something truly noticeable. It's a manifesto for marketers who want to help create products that are worth marketing in the first place.
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Recommended by Joe Gebbia, Vinod Khosla, Vinod Khosla, and 21 others.
Joe Gebbia
Co-founder/Airbnb
Make something that’s distinct enough that people want to talk about it. [source]
Marvin Liao
Partner/500 Startups
My list would be (besides the ones I mentioned in answer to the previous question) both business & Fiction/Sci-Fi and ones I personally found helpful to myself. The business books explain just exactly how business, work & investing are in reality & how to think properly & differentiate yourself. On the non-business side, a mix of History & classic fiction to understand people, philosophy to make sense of life and Science fiction to picture what the future could be like (not always utopian). [source]
A few months ago, I was drinking a Noah’s Mill whiskey (cute) with my good buddy Brian Balfour and talking about life... During the conversation, we got on the topic of books that changed our lives. I want to share them with you. I judge a book's success if a year later I'm still using at least 1 thing from the book. [source]
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Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream Customers
The bible for bringing cutting-edge products to larger markets--now revised and updated with new insights into the realities of high-tech marketing
In Crossing the Chasm, Geoffrey A. Moore shows that in the Technology Adoption Life Cycle--which begins with innovators and moves to early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards--there is a vast chasm between the early adopters and the early majority. While early adopters are willing to sacrifice for the advantage of being first, the early majority waits until they know that the technology actually offers improvements in productivity. The challenge for innovators and marketers is to narrow this chasm and ultimately accelerate adoption across every segment.
This third edition brings Moore's classic work up to date with dozens of new examples of successes and failures, new strategies for marketing in the digital world, and Moore's most current insights and findings. He also includes two new appendices, the first connecting the ideas in Crossing the Chasm to work subsequently published in his Inside the Tornado, and the second presenting his recent groundbreaking work for technology adoption models for high-tech consumer markets.
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Recommended by Andrew Chen, Drew Houston, Ev Williams, and 28 others.
Drew Houston
CEO/Dropbox
It’s about how do technology products make their way from early adopters t the mainstream. [source]
Ron Conway
Bestselling guide that created a new game plan for marketing in high-tech industries. [source]
This is a key component in my Purple Cow thinking, but with a twist. I'm not as worried about the chasm as I am about the desire of marketers to go for the big middle. [source]
Even the smartest among us can feel inept as we fail to figure out which light switch or oven burner to turn on, or whether to push, pull, or slide a door. The fault, argues this ingenious—even liberating—book, lies not in ourselves, but in product design that ignores the needs of users and the principles of cognitive psychology. The problems range from ambiguous and hidden controls to arbitrary relationships between controls and functions, coupled with a lack of feedback or other assistance and unreasonable demands on memorization. The Design of Everyday Things shows that good, usable design is possible. The rules are simple: make things visible, exploit natural relationships that couple function and control, and make intelligent use of constraints. The goal: guide the user effortlessly to the right action on the right control at the right time.
In this entertaining and insightful analysis, cognitive scientist Don Norman hails excellence of design as the most important key to regaining the competitive edge in influencing consumer behavior. Now fully expanded and updated, with a new introduction by the author, The Design of Everyday Things is a powerful primer on how—and why—some products satisfy customers while others only frustrate them.
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Recommended by Andrew Chen, Marissa Mayer, Nir Eyal, and 23 others.
Grey Baker
I mainly read to decompress and change my state of mind, so it’s hard to point to an insight I read that helped me. Reading fiction has pulled me out of a bad mood more times than I can count, though, and always reenergises me to attack problems that had stumped me again. That said, I read and loved Norman Norman’s “The Design of Everyday Things”, and it’s helped me think through design problems ever since. [source]
Julia Enthoven
For people interested in designing or building software products: The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman and The Lean Product Playbook by Dan Olsen. Both books have informed my product sense and helped me make decisions about great UX. [source]
Kaci Lambe
These three books are about how people actually use design in their lives. They helped me understand this very basic idea: There are no dumb users, only bad designers. Take the time to create based on how your design will be interacted with. Test it. Iterate. That's how you become a good designer. [source]
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Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen
New York Times bestselling author Donald Miller uses the seven universal elements of powerful stories to teach readers how to dramatically improve how they connect with customers and grow their businesses.
Donald Miller’s StoryBrand process is a proven solution to the struggle business leaders face when talking about their businesses. This revolutionary method for connecting with customers provides readers with the ultimate competitive advantage, revealing the secret for helping their customers understand the compelling benefits of using their products, ideas, or services. Building a StoryBrand does this by teaching readers the seven universal story points all humans respond to; the real reason customers make purchases; how to simplify a brand message so people understand it; and how to create the most effective messaging for websites, brochures, and social media. Whether you are the marketing director of a multibillion dollar company, the owner of a small business, a politician running for office, or the lead singer of a rock band, Building a StoryBrand will forever transform the way you talk about who you are, what you do, and the unique value you bring to your customers.
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Recommended by Dave Ramsey, Nick Loper, Sa El, and 1 others.
Dave Ramsey recommended this book on his website. [source]
Nick Loper
I just finished Building a StoryBrand, and need to fill in the worksheets and re-think my homepage as a result. That's the mark of a good business book — homework! [source]
Sa El
This book is all about telling the story of your business to your customers to that they know exactly what you offer and how to make them the hero in the journey. If you want to build a smart site, with a strong call to action, this book is essential. [source]
Most business books give you the same old advice: Write a business plan, study the competition, seek investors, yadda yadda. If you're looking for a book like that, put this one back on the shelf.
Rework shows you a better, faster, easier way to succeed in business. Read it and you'll know why plans are actually harmful, why you don't need outside investors, and why you're better off ignoring the competition. The truth is, you need less than you think. You don't need to be a workaholic. You don't need to staff up. You don't need to waste time on paperwork or meetings. You don't even need an office. Those are all just excuses.
What you really need to do is stop talking and start working. This book shows you the way. You'll learn how to be more productive, how to get exposure without breaking the bank, and tons more counterintuitive ideas that will inspire and provoke you.
With its straightforward language and easy-is-better approach, Rework is the perfect playbook for anyone who’s ever dreamed of doing it on their own. Hardcore entrepreneurs, small-business owners, people stuck in day jobs they hate, victims of "downsizing," and artists who don’t want to starve anymore will all find valuable guidance in these pages.
Unperturbed by conventional wisdom, the authors start fresh and rewrite the rules of business. Their approach turns out to be as successful as it is counter-intuitive. [source]
If given a choice between investing in someone who has read Rework or has an MBA, I'm investing in Rework every time. This is a must read for every entrepreneur. [source]
Tony Hsieh
CEO/Zappos.com
The wisdom in these pages is edgy yet simple, straightforward, and proven. Read this book multiple times to help give you the courage you need to get out there and make something great. [source]
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Hacking Growth: How Today's Fastest-Growing Companies Drive Breakout Success
The definitive playbook by the pioneers of Growth Hacking, one of the hottest business methodologies in Silicon Valley and beyond.
It seems hard to believe today, but there was a time when Airbnb was the best-kept secret of travel hackers and couch surfers, Pinterest was a niche web site frequented only by bakers and crafters, LinkedIn was an exclusive network for C-suite executives and top-level recruiters, Facebook was MySpace's sorry step-brother, and Uber was a scrappy upstart that didn't stand a chance against the Goliath that was New York City Yellow Cabs.
So how did these companies grow from these humble beginnings into the powerhouses they are today? Contrary to popular belief, they didn't explode to massive worldwide popularity simply by building a great product then crossing their fingers and hoping it would catch on. There was a studied, carefully implemented methodology behind these companies' extraordinary rise. That methodology is called Growth Hacking, and it's practitioners include not just today's hottest start-ups, but also companies like IBM, Walmart, and Microsoft as well as the millions of entrepreneurs, marketers, managers and executives who make up the community of GrowthHackers.com.
Think of the Growth Hacking methodology as doing for market-share growth what Lean Start-Up did for product development, and Scrum did for productivity. It involves cross-functional teams and rapid-tempo testing and iteration that focuses customers attaining them, retaining them, engaging them, and motivating them to come back and buy more. An accessible and practical toolkit that teams and companies in all industries can use to increase their customer base and market share, this book walks readers through the process of creating and executing their own custom-made growth hacking strategy. It is a must read for any marketer, entrepreneur, innovator or manger looking to replace wasteful big bets and "spaghetti-on-the-wall" approaches with more consistent, replicable, cost-effective, and data-driven results.
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Recommended by Nir Eyal, Eric Ries, Annabell Satterfield, and 6 others.
Nir Eyal
Author/Hooked
It used to be that designers and engineers were responsible for developing new products, data teams were responsible for number-crunching reports, and marketers were responsible for acquiring and monetizing as many customers as possible. But today’s companies can’t afford to be slowed down by organizational silos. Here, growth-hacking pioneers Ellis and Brown show how to break down those traditional barriers and marry powerful data analysis, technical know-how, and marketing savvy to quickly devise and test ways to fuel breakout growth. [source]
In an increasingly erratic business landscape where new competition can emerge overnight, customers’ loyalties can shift unexpectedly, and markets are constantly being disrupted, finding growth solutions fast is crucial for survival. Hacking Growth provides a compelling answer to this urgent need for speed, offering companies a methodology for finding and optimizing new strategies to increase their market share and quickly. [source]
Annabell Satterfield
Hacking Growth is the definitive guide to building authentic, sustainable, compounding growth for your company. If you want to know how proven growth practitioners at fast-growing companies do what they do-- pick up this book. [source]
A candid and indispensable primer on all aspects of advertising from the man Time has called "the most sought after wizard in the business". 223 photos.
I thought I might put my money where my mouth is. I keep whining that young people are not in touch with some essential books on advertising that have helped me shape the way I practise my trade today, but I never did anything about it. So I am starting here the ultimate books to read list. I will add to it as I get suggestions and as more good books get written. [source]
Brian Tracy, one of the top professional speakers and sales trainers in the world today, found that his most important breakthrough in selling was the discovery that it is the "Psychology of Selling" that is more important than the techniques and methods of selling.
Tracy's classic audio program, The Psychology of Selling, is the best-selling sales training program in history and is now available in expanded and updated book format for the first time. Salespeople will learn: "the inner game of selling" how to eliminate the fear of rejection how to build unshakeable self-confidence
Salespeople, says Tracy, must learn to control their thoughts, feelings, and actions to make themselves more effective.
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Recommended by Geoffrey James.
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21
Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability
Steve Krug
4.5
Since Don’t Make Me Think was first published in 2000, over 400,000 Web designers and developers have relied on Steve Krug’s guide to help them understand the principles of intuitive navigation and information design.
In this 3rd edition, Steve returns with fresh perspective to reexamine the principles that made Don’t Make Me Think a classic-–with updated examples and a new chapter on mobile usability. And it’s still short, profusely illustrated…and best of all–fun to read.
If you’ve read it before, you’ll rediscover what made Don’t Make Me Think so essential to Web designers and developers around the world. If you’ve never read it, you’ll see why so many people have said it should be required reading for anyone working on Web sites.
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Recommended by Brian Armstrong, Jeff Atwood, Ken Norton, and 13 others.
Anoop Anthony
Krug was teaching usability two decades ago when UX wasn't a buzzword, and the WWW was still in its nascent stages. (The first edition of this book was published in 2000!) I cut my teeth on Don't make me think back when I first started out in the industry. It is now in its third edition and still relevant — it offers compelling insights into building great user experiences into websites and applications. [source]
Auston Bunsen
I’m actually a self-taught programmer, so these books have really helped me with practical skills that I could put to use & yield results. The return on investment for these kinds of books is off the charts for me! [source]
Chris Goward
Here are some of the books that have been very impactful for me, or taught me a new way of thinking: … Don't Make Me Think. [source]
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22
Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers
Business Model Generation is a handbook for visionaries, game changers, and challengers striving to defy outmoded business models and design tomorrow's enterprises. If your organization needs to adapt to harsh new realities, but you don't yet have a strategy that will get you out in front of your competitors, you need Business Model Generation. Co-created by 470 -Business Model Canvas- practitioners from 45 countries, the book features a beautiful, highly visual, 4-color design that takes powerful strategic ideas and tools, and makes them easy to implement in your organization. It explains the most common Business Model patterns, based on concepts from leading business thinkers, and helps you reinterpret them for your own context. You will learn how to systematically understand, design, and implement a game-changing business model--or analyze and renovate an old one. Along the way, you'll understand at a much deeper level your customers, distribution channels, partners, revenue streams, costs, and your core value proposition.
Business Model Generation features practical innovation techniques used today by leading consultants and companies worldwide, including 3M, Ericsson, Capgemini, Deloitte, and others. Designed for doers, it is for those ready to abandon outmoded thinking and embrace new models of value creation: for executives, consultants, entrepreneurs, and leaders of all organizations. If you're ready to change the rules, you belong to -the business model generation!-
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Recommended by Nir Eyal, Steve Blank, Alexandra Stroe, and 3 others.
Alexandra Stroe
I'd recommend The Lean Startup by Eric Ries, Business Model Generation by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur and Zero to One by Peter Thiel when they are in the starting phase of a business that needs to validate its business model. [source]
Ashley Hathaway
I could probably name a dozen books here, but I’ll point out The Business Model Generation and Value Prop Design from Strategyzer. I steal from these constantly and are engrained in my work process. These books put into practice really taught me how to think. As soon as I saw that everything should have a foundation of empathy, what good user-testing looks like, how to test and iterate it changed everything. After that any problem could be solved. It wasn’t solving one big monolithic problem. It was going through a process. [source]
Kaci Lambe Kai
This was a great book, because it opened up the idea of what a business model is supposed to be vs what it can be. It doesn't have to be a stuffy, boring document. [source]
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Stories That Stick: How Storytelling Can Captivate Customers, Influence Audiences, and Transform Your Business
The moment you take control of your stories, you take control of your business and your life.
You keep hearing how story is the latest-and-greatest business tool, and that storytelling can do everything—from helping leaders better communicate to motivating sales teams and winning customers away from competitors.
But what stories do you need to tell? And how do you tell them?
In Stories That Stick, Kindra Hall, professional storyteller and nationally-known speaker, reveals the four unique stories you can use to differentiate, captivate, and elevate:
the Value Story, to convince customers they need what you provide; the Founder Story, to persuade investors and customers your organization is worth the investment; the Purpose Story, to align and inspire your employees and internal customers; and the Customer Story, to allow those who use your product or service to share their authentic experiences with others.
Telling these stories well is a simple, accessible skill anyone can develop. With case studies, company profiles, and anecdotes backed with original research, Hall presents storytelling as the underutilized talent that separates the good from the best in business. She offers specific, actionable steps readers can take to find, craft, and leverage the stories they already have and simply aren’t telling.
Every person, every organization has at least four stories at their disposal. Will you tell yours?
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24
This Is Marketing: You Can't Be Seen Until You Learn to See
Real marketing isn't about racking up clicks and tweets; it's about connection, empathy, and making a difference.
Over the past quarter century, Seth Godin has taught and inspired millions of entrepreneurs, marketers, leaders, and fans from all walks of life, via his blog, online courses, lectures, and bestselling books. He is the inventor of countless ideas and phrases that have made their way into mainstream business language, from Permission Marketing to Purple Cow to Tribes to The Dip.
Now, for the first time, Godin offers the core of his marketing wisdom in one accessible, timeless package. At the heart of his approach is a big idea: Great marketers don't use consumers to solve their company's problem; they use marketing to solve other people's problems. They don't just make noise; they make the world better. Truly powerful marketing is grounded in empathy, generosity, and emotional labor.
This book teaches you how to identify your smallest viable audience; draw on the right signals and signs to position your offering; build trust and permission with your target market; speak to the narratives your audience tells themselves about status, affiliation, and dominance; spot opportunities to create and release tension; and give people the tools to achieve their goals.
It's time for marketers to stop lying, spamming, and feeling guilty about their work. It's time to stop confusing social media metrics with true connections. It's time to stop wasting money on stolen attention that won't pay off in the long run. THIS IS MARKETING offers a better approach that will still apply for decades to come, no matter how the tactics of marketing continue to evolve.
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Recommended by Seth Godin, Aaron Watson, and Deke Bridges.
Nobody had written the definitive book of the post-advertising age. It needed to be able to explain everything from Airbnb to Trump to the success of Instagram. If there’s going to be a coherent, unified theory of marketing, it will not only explain what we see, but give us the tools to create our own change in the world. [source]
Aaron Watson
This book is my favorite thing he has produced. Unlike most non-fiction books, This Is Marketing does a good job of not going on too long or belaboring the point. Seth deliver succinct actionable insights, some of which I’ve already implemented with the Piper and Going Deep brands. [source]
Deke Bridges
Up late re-reading some of this book again. Seth Godin's book THIS IS MARKETING is so much more than branding, marketing, advertising, and growth. It really makes you think about how to review life. Fantastic book... all his works make your brain click. Got my copy at @Powells. https://t.co/46hSB0Fhv3 [source]
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Blue Ocean Strategy: How To Create Uncontested Market Space And Make The Competition Irrelevant
Winning by not competing! This international best seller upends traditional thinking with principles and tools to make the competition irrelevant. In an audiobook that challenges everything you thought you knew, W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne assert that tomorrow's leading companies will succeed, not by battling their rivals for market share in the bloody "red ocean" of a shrinking profit pool, but by creating "blue oceans" of untapped new market spaces ripe for growth.
Based on a study of 150 strategic moves, spanning more than 100 years and 30 industries, they provide a systematic approach that every company can use to render rivals obsolete and unleash new demand:
Reconstruct market boundaries Focus on the big picture Reach beyond existing demand Get the strategic sequence right Overcome organizational hurdles Build execution into strategy
Recommended by Daymond John, Steve Blank, Danielle Morrill, and 13 others.
Daymond John
Founder/FUBU
There are the normal ones that everybody loves. There would be "Rich Dad Poor Dad," "Who Moved My Cheese?;" I love all the Dale Carnegie books; "The One Minute Manager." I love newer ones like "Blue Ocean Strategy" and all the "Freaknomics" books. [source]
I don’t remember who originally told me to read Blue Ocean Strategy but I’m glad they did because this simple recommendation would substantially shape the course of my life and my career. [source]
Ayush Kumar
One doesn't necessarily need to take from others to fill their glass & you can always build a successful business in any industry. [source]
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Crush It!: Why Now Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion
Do you have a hobby you wish you could indulge in all day? An obsession that keeps you up at night? Now is the perfect time to take that passion and make a living doing what you love. In Crush It! Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion, Gary Vaynerchuk shows you how to use the power of the Internet to turn your real interests into real businesses. Gary spent years building his family business from a local wine shop into a national industry leader. Then one day he turned on a video camera, and by using the secrets revealed here, transformed his entire life and earning potential by building his personal brand. By the end of this book, readers will have learned how to harness the power of the Internet to make their entrepreneurial dreams come true. Step by step, Crush It! is the ultimate driver’s manual for modern business.
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Recommended by Eric Schmidt, Tony Hsieh, Ryan Hoover, and 8 others.
Tony Hsieh
CEO/Zappos.com
Gary Vaynerchuk is one of those entrepreneurs who has discovered the secret to combining passion with business. He is always an inspiration and always entertaining. You owe it to yourself to read this book! [source]
For anyone interested in my career path, I’d recommend books in various genres. On a real practical level, I’d certainly recommend reading any and all plant/mushroom/tree/ecology/nature books you can acquire. It’s even more helpful to read the books that pertain specifically to your ecosystem and bioregion. Additionally, I’d also recommend reading a plethora of business and marketing books — both old and new alike. Think And Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuk, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini, and anything by Seth Godin would be my top recommendations. And of course, every book I mentioned in the previous answers are strongly recommended as well. [source]
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Ca$hvertising: How to Use More Than 100 Secrets of Ad-Agency Psychology to Make BIG MONEY Selling Anything to Anyone
Barely one in a hundred businesspeople knows these facts about creating powerful advertising. Do You?
FACT! Sixty percent of people read only headlines. Your headline must stop them or your advertising will likely fail. FACT! Captions under photos get 200 percent greater readership than non-headline copy. FACT! Ads with sale prices draw 20 percent more attention. FACT! Half-page ads pull about 70 percent of full-page ads; quarter-page ads pull about 50 percent of full-page ads. FACT! Four-color ads are up to 45 percent more effective than black and white.
New York's biggest ad agencies use dozens of these little-known secrets every day to influence people to buy. And now--thanks to Cashvertising--you can, too. And it won't matter one bit whether you're a corporate giant or a mom-and-pop pizza shop. These techniques are based on human psychology. They work no matter where you're located, no matter what kind of product or service you sell, and no matter where you advertise. In fact, most don't cost a penny to use.
Like a wild roller-coaster ride through the streets of Madison Avenue, Cashvertising teaches you the tips, tricks, and strategies that New York's top gun copywriters and designers use to persuade people to buy like crazy. No matter what you sell--or how you sell it, this practical, fast-paced book will teach you:
How to create powerful ads, brochures, sales letters, Websites, and more
How to make people believe what you say
"Sneaky" ways to persuade people to respond
Effective tricks for writing "magnetic" headlines
What mistakes to avoid...at all costs!
What you should always/never do in your ads
Expert formulas, guidance, tips and strategies
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Recommended by Roger Dawson.
Roger Dawson
Cashvertising is a virtual blueprint for persuading the consumer mind. It's fast, fun, and a must-read for businesses in all industries. [source]
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Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers Into Friends And Friends Into Customers
The man Business Week calls "the ultimate entrepreneur for the Information Age" explains "Permission Marketing"—the groundbreaking concept that enables marketers to shape their message so that consumers will willingly accept it.
Whether it is the TV commercial that breaks into our favorite program, or the telemarketing phone call that disrupts a family dinner, traditional advertising is based on the hope of snatching our attention away from whatever we are doing. Seth Godin calls this Interruption Marketing, and, as companies are discovering, it no longer works.
Instead of annoying potential customers by interrupting their most coveted commodity—time—Permission Marketing offers consumers incentives to accept advertising voluntarily. Now this Internet pioneer introduces a fundamentally different way of thinking about advertising products and services. By reaching out only to those individuals who have signaled an interest in learning more about a product, Permission Marketing enables companies to develop long-term relationships with customers, create trust, build brand awareness -- and greatly improve the chances of making a sale.
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Recommended by Steve Blank, Noah Kagan, Foti Panagio, and 1 others.
A few months ago, I was drinking a Noah’s Mill whiskey (cute) with my good buddy Brian Balfour and talking about life... During the conversation, we got on the topic of books that changed our lives. I want to share them with you. I judge a book's success if a year later I'm still using at least 1 thing from the book. [source]
Foti Panagio
Honestly, it’s not really as simple as following a career path, at least not anymore. I’d recommend instead reading books on innovation and leadership because that can give you the confidence you need to blaze your own trail and to take your career as it comes. I’d suggest that a good background reading list would include … Permission Marketing by Seth Godin [source]
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All Marketers Are Liars: The Underground Classic That Explains How Marketing Really Works - and Why Authenticity Is the Best Marketing of All
Seth Godin’s three essential questions for every marketer: “What’s your story?” “Will the people who need to hear this story believe it?” “Is it true?” All marketers tell stories. And if they do it right, we believe them. We believe that wine tastes better in a $20 glass than a $1 glass. We believe that an $80,000 Porsche is vastly superior to a $36,000 Volkswagen that’s virtually the same car. We believe that $125 sneakers make our feet feel better—and look cooler—than a $25 brand. And believing it makes it true.
As Seth Godin showed in this controversial book, great marketers don’t talk about features or even benefits. Instead, they tell a story—a story we want to believe, whether it’s factual or not. In a world where most people have an infinite number of choices and no time to make them, every organization is a marketer, and all marketing is about telling stories.
Marketers succeed when they tell us a story that fits our worldview, a story that we intuitively embrace and then share with our friends. Think of the Dyson vacuum cleaner, or Fiji water, or the iPod.
But beware: If your stories are inauthentic, you cross the line from fib to fraud. Marketers fail when they are selfish and scurrilous, when they abuse the tools of their trade and make the world worse. That’s a lesson learned the hard way by telemarketers, cigarette companies, and sleazy politicians.
But for the rest of us, it’s time to embrace the power of the story. As Godin writes, “Stories make it easier to understand the world. Stories are the only way we know to spread an idea. Marketers didn’t invent storytelling. They just perfected it.”
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Recommended by Joe Gebbia, Steve Blank, Alan Webber, and 1 others.
Joe Gebbia
Co-founder/Airbnb
I remember something that the author says in there which I never forgot, which is to make something people want to talk about. [source]
Alan Webber
Founder/Fast Company
If Seth Godin didn't exist we'd need to invent him. [source]
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Crushing It!: How Great Entrepreneurs Build Their Business and Influence-and How You Can, Too
Gary Vaynerchuk
4.4
Recommended by Casey Neistat, Carolina Millan, and Dave Isbitski.
so much congrats to my friend @garyvee on the release of his new book. out now! do yourself a favor a pick up a copy [source]
Carolina Millan
Crushing It! by @garyvee is one of my favorite books. So inspiring! 🎊 This book offers new lessons and inspiration drawn from the experiences of dozens of influencers and entrepreneurs who rejected the predictable corporate path in favor of pursuing their dreams. 🏆🎟 https://t.co/Ww5Hmuja8m [source]
Dave Isbitski
Thanks @garyvee on the new Crushing It! book. Really helping me focus on some of the brand building I've built past decade. So much I've done wrong, there is lots of insight here. I love how much of the book is others personal journeys. https://t.co/ub4lrIPF0V [source]
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Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are
Blending the informed analysis of The Signal and the Noise with the instructive iconoclasm of Think Like a Freak, a fascinating, illuminating, and witty look at what the vast amounts of information now instantly available to us reveals about ourselves and our world—provided we ask the right questions.
By the end of an average day in the early twenty-first century, human beings searching the internet will amass eight trillion gigabytes of data. This staggering amount of information—unprecedented in history—can tell us a great deal about who we are—the fears, desires, and behaviors that drive us, and the conscious and unconscious decisions we make. From the profound to the mundane, we can gain astonishing knowledge about the human psyche that less than twenty years ago, seemed unfathomable.
Everybody Lies offers fascinating, surprising, and sometimes laugh-out-loud insights into everything from economics to ethics to sports to race to sex, gender and more, all drawn from the world of big data. What percentage of white voters didn’t vote for Barack Obama because he’s black? Does where you go to school effect how successful you are in life? Do parents secretly favor boy children over girls? Do violent films affect the crime rate? Can you beat the stock market? How regularly do we lie about our sex lives and who’s more self-conscious about sex, men or women?
Investigating these questions and a host of others, Seth Stephens-Davidowitz offers revelations that can help us understand ourselves and our lives better. Drawing on studies and experiments on how we really live and think, he demonstrates in fascinating and often funny ways the extent to which all the world is indeed a lab. With conclusions ranging from strange-but-true to thought-provoking to disturbing, he explores the power of this digital truth serum and its deeper potential—revealing biases deeply embedded within us, information we can use to change our culture, and the questions we’re afraid to ask that might be essential to our health—both emotional and physical. All of us are touched by big data everyday, and its influence is multiplying. Everybody Lies challenges us to think differently about how we see it and the world.
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Recommended by Jj. Omojuwa and Ron Fournier.
Jj. Omojuwa
@SympLySimi Lol. Read this book. You’d love it. https://t.co/d2cLOyoiZ9 [source]
Ron Fournier
Just finished, “Everybody Lies” by @SethS_D, which in addition to being a tremendous education on Big Data, includes the best conclusion to a non-fiction book I’ve ever read. Read it. -30- [source]
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Launch (Updated & Expanded Edition): How to Sell Almost Anything Online, Build a Business You Love, and Live the Life of Your Dreams
A tribe is any group of people, large or small, who are connected to one another, a leader, and an idea. For millions of years, humans have been seeking out tribes, be they religious, ethnic, economic, political, or even musical (think of the Deadheads). It's our nature.
Now the Internet has eliminated the barriers of geography, cost, and time. All those blogs and social networking sites are helping existing tribes get bigger. But more important, they're enabling countless new tribes to be born—groups of ten or ten thousand or ten million who care about their iPhones, or a political campaign, or a new way to fight global warming. And so the key question: Who is going to lead us?
The Web can do amazing things, but it can't provide leadership. That still has to come from individuals—people just like you who have passion about something. The explosion in tribes means that anyone who wants to make a difference now has the tools at her fingertips.
If you think leadership is for other people, think again—leaders come in surprising packages. Consider Joel Spolsky and his international tribe of scary-smart software engineers. Or Gary Vaynerhuck, a wine expert with a devoted following of enthusiasts. Chris Sharma leads a tribe of rock climbers up impossible cliff faces, while Mich Mathews, a VP at Microsoft, runs her internal tribe of marketers from her cube in Seattle. All they have in common is the desire to change things, the ability to connect a tribe, and the willingness to lead.
If you ignore this opportunity, you risk turning into a "sheepwalker"—someone who fights to protect the status quo at all costs, never asking if obedience is doing you (or your organization) any good. Sheepwalkers don't do very well these days.
Tribes will make you think (really think) about the opportunities in leading your fellow employees, customers, investors, believers, hobbyists, or readers. . . . It's not easy, but it's easier than you think.
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Recommended by Andrew Youderian, Bogdana Butnar, Michael Herrmann, and 2 others.
Andrew Youderian
The book "Tribes" by Seth Godin has been helpful as I've learned and studied how to best lead a Community. [source]
Bogdana Butnar
I thought I might put my money where my mouth is. I keep whining that young people are not in touch with some essential books on advertising that have helped me shape the way I practise my trade today, but I never did anything about it. So I am starting here the ultimate books to read list. I will add to it as I get suggestions and as more good books get written. [source]
Michael Herrmann
Another good book for today. The author argues that every product/service appeals to a "Tribe" of like-minded people. As businesspeople it's important we understand their dynamics. [source]
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The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google
Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google are the four most influential companies on the planet. Just about everyone thinks they know how they got there. Just about everyone is wrong.
For all that's been written about the Four over the last two decades, no one has captured their power and staggering success as insightfully as Scott Galloway.
Instead of buying the myths these compa-nies broadcast, Galloway asks fundamental questions. How did the Four infiltrate our lives so completely that they're almost impossible to avoid (or boycott)? Why does the stock market forgive them for sins that would destroy other firms? And as they race to become the world's first trillion-dollar company, can anyone chal-lenge them?
In the same irreverent style that has made him one of the world's most celebrated business professors, Galloway deconstructs the strategies of the Four that lurk beneath their shiny veneers. He shows how they manipulate the fundamental emotional needs that have driven us since our ancestors lived in caves, at a speed and scope others can't match. And he reveals how you can apply the lessons of their ascent to your own business or career.
Whether you want to compete with them, do business with them, or simply live in the world they dominate, you need to understand the Four.
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Recommended by Angela Pham, Cat Williams-Treloar, Craig Pearce, and 1 others.
Angela Pham
I’m in the middle of The Four, which takes an awestruck-but-critical look at the four largest tech companies. [source]
Cat Williams-Treloar
Scott Galloway "The four" - because that's where the Marketing world is. I like the book for its honesty. [source]
Craig Pearce
I am currently reading The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. I was introduced to the author, Scott Galloway during his appearance on the aforementioned Recode Decode podcast, specifically episode released on September 14. His opinion and thoughts on the big 4 (Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google) lead me to research him. I put a hold on his book from my local library and waited a few weeks. A great thing about this book is its recency, for example, it includes Amazon’s recent acquisition of WholeFoods. So far, it has covered, in entertaining detail, Amazon and Apple. The author writes with great knowledge, mixed with the right amount of wit. The author argues that Apple is sex, Google is God, Facebook is love and Amazon is our gut. By aligning with these roles in our lives, they have become wildly successful. I hope to hear an expansion of his positions he discussed on the podcast, and hope to apply some of strategies into my own startup. [source]
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YouTube Secrets: The Ultimate Guide to Growing Your Following and Making Money as a Video Influencer
It's easy to just look at the numbers. How many likes? How many purchases? How many email subscribers?
But as entrepreneurs, we have to remember that there are people behind all that data. People who are looking to us to be a leader, to give advice, and to care. In this dog-eat-dog world, these are the people who are looking for someone who they can trust, and who they know have their best interests in mind.
These are the people, if you connect with them in the right way, who will become Superfans.
Followers may "like" an Instagram post. Customers may buy a product. But "Superfans" will be your biggest supporters. They will promote you and your products because they know you have made a difference in their lives. They will tell their friends. They will send you encouraging emails.
Whether you're a shy YouTuber just starting out, or the leader of a Fortune 500 company, your superfans are out there waiting for you to connect with them.
You don't need to change the entire world to build a successful business; you just need to change someone's world.
People don't become superfans the moment they find you. They become superfans because of the magical moments you create for them over time.
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Recommended by Amy Porterfield, Chris Ducker, Chris Guillebeau, and 2 others.
Amy Porterfield
Superfans should be required reading for anyone wanting to build an authentic business that lasts forever. [source]
Chris Ducker
Have you pre-ordered your copy of @PatFlynn's new book, "Superfans" yet?! If not, jump on before August 13th and he'll throw in the AudioBook version for free, too! It's a GREAT read, y'all. Pre-order here: https://t.co/6B2Jb5qjYq https://t.co/gQlzkGBfcy [source]
Bestselling author and marketing strategist Ryan Holiday reveals to creatives of all stripes--authors, entrepreneurs, musicians, filmmakers, fine artists--how a classic work is made and marketed. In Hollywood, a movie is given a single weekend to succeed before being written off. In Silicon Valley, a startup is a failure if it doesn't go viral or rake in venture capital from the start. In publishing, a book that took years to write is given less than three months to sink or swim. These brutally shortsighted attitudes have choked the world with instructions for engineering a flash-in-the-pan and littered the media landscape with fads and flops. Meanwhile, the greats, the stalwarts, the household names, are those who focus on a singularly different, possibly heretical, idea: that their work can and should last. For instance, Zildjian has been one of the premier makers of cymbals since its founding in 1623--and shows no signs of quitting. Iron Maiden has filled stadiums for forty years, moving some 85 million albums without the help of radio or television. Robert Greene's first book, The 48 Laws of Power, didn't hit the bestseller lists until over a decade after it was first released, and since then has sold more than 1 million copies worldwide. These works Ryan Holiday calls Perennial Sellers. They exist in every creative industry--timeless, dependable resources and unsung moneymakers, paying like blue chip annuities. Like gold or land, they increase in value over time, outlasting and outreaching any competition. And they're not flukes or lucky breaks--they were built to last from the outset. Holiday shows readers how to make and market their own classic work. Featuring interviews with some of the world's greatest creatives, and grounded in a deep study of the classics in every genre, this exciting new book empowers readers with a foundational set of innovative principles. Whether you have a book or a business, a song or the next great screenplay, this book reveals the recipe for perennial success.
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Recommended by James Altucher, David Zuckerman, Gunhee Park, and 5 others.
I said this about Ryan Holiday's last book, but I'll say this now about this book. This is his best book. This will be a perennial seller. Everything in here is so true and it is a guide to creativity in the real world. [source]
David Zuckerman
As a showrunner or any kind of artist, you have to know when to stick to your guns and trust your gut, when and whom to ask for help, and how to define and lean into your brand. This book gets to the core of each of those elements in an attempt to help creatives be successful for a long time. [source]
Gunhee Park
I just finished up Stranger in a Strange Land, and am also reading Churchill, A Life and The Perennial Seller. I can’t really pinpoint what I expect to gain from any books I read, but am hoping to gain perspective and some valuable lesson that I can take away from each book. What that is exactly is different for every book. [source]
"Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains."
These are the famous opening words of a treatise that has not ceased to stir vigorous debate since its first publication in 1762. Rejecting the view that anyone has a natural right to wield authority over others, Rousseau argues instead for a pact, or ‘social contract’, that should exist between all the citizens of a state and that should be the source of sovereign power. From this fundamental premise, he goes on to consider issues of liberty and law, freedom and justice, arriving at a view of society that has seemed to some a blueprint for totalitarianism, to others a declaration of democratic principles.
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Play Bigger: How Pirates, Dreamers, and Innovators Create and Dominate Markets
Al Ramadan, Dave Peterson, Christopher Lochhead, Kevin Maney
The founders of a respected Silicon Valley advisory firm study legendary category-creating companies and reveal a groundbreaking discipline called category design.
Winning today isn’t about beating the competition at the old game. It’s about inventing a whole new game—defining a new market category, developing it, and dominating it over time. You can’t build a legendary company without building a legendary category. If you think that having the best product is all it takes to win, you’re going to lose.
In this farsighted, pioneering guide, the founders of Silicon Valley advisory firm Play Bigger rely on data analysis and interviews to understand the inner workings of “category kings”— companies such as Amazon, Salesforce, Uber and IKEA that give us new ways of living, thinking or doing business, often solving problems we didn’t know we had.
In Play Bigger, the authors assemble their findings to introduce the new discipline of category design. By applying category design, companies can create new demand where none existed, conditioning customers’ brains so they change their expectations and buying habits. While this discipline defines the tech industry, it applies to every kind of industry and even to personal careers.
Crossing The Chasm revolutionized how we think about new products in an existing market. The Innovator’s Dilemma taught us about disrupting an aging market. Now, Play Bigger is transforming business once again, showing us how to create the market itself.
Question: What five books would you recommend to young people interested in your career path & why? Answer: I know this is sounds self-serving but I’d recommended both of my books, the soon to be released, “Niche Down: How to Become Legendary by Being Different” and Harper Collins’ “instant classic,” “Play Bigger: How Pirates, Dreamers and Innovators Create and Dominate Markets” In addition: The Effective Executive, by Peter Drucker The E-Myth, by Michael Gerber Radical Candor: Be a Kickass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity by Kim Scott Back from the Dead, by Bill Walton The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, by Al Ries and Jack Trout [source]
Glen Allsopp
As we're ending 2019, a shoutout to the best book I read this year: Play Bigger by @lochhead, @kmaney and co. Bought the Kindle version after the audiobook it's that good. Speaking of audio, cool to get a mention on the @authorityhacker podcast today: https://t.co/hg99T1OKxh https://t.co/BTE6fj2hWT [source]
Mikhail Dubov
A few books had affected how I run the company … Play Bigger. [source]
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40
Digital Marketing for Dummies
Ryan Deiss
4.2
Does your digital marketing pack a punch? Written with the marketer's best interests in mind, this friendly, down-to-earth guide shows you how to use proven digital marketing strategies and tactics to expand the reach of your brand, increase audience engagement, and acquire and monetize customers. From current best practices in SEO and SEM to the latest ways to effectively use content marketing and influencer marketing--and everything in between--Digital Marketing For Dummies helps you get the most out of all your digital marketing efforts.
What worked in digital marketing just a few years ago is quickly losing relevance as electronic platforms--and the people who use them--continue to evolve. So how do you keep afloat in this fast-paced and ultra-competitive environment? Don't sweat it! Digital Marketing For Dummies takes the guesswork out of marketing in the digital age, offering the latest tips and techniques for utilizing technology to get your product or services out to the masses. Whether you're looking to craft a killer campaign from scratch or just want to beef up your social media presence, you'll find everything you need to meet your business goals--and boost your bottom line.
Develop an individually tailored digital marketing campaign Offer an effective lead magnet to convert visitors Keep your audience invested in your brand, products, and services Create a return path with frequent and strategic communication with your customers If you're ready to benefit from the latest and greatest digital marketing has to offer, this no-nonsense guide sets you up for success.
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Recommended by Haris Siddique.
Haris Siddique
The book is related to digital marketing and one of my friend recommended me. I just started reading this book and expecting that it will increase the graph of my knowledge about developing best digital marketing campaigns so that I can proficiently work in my domain. [source]
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41
Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth
Gabriel Weinberg, Justin Mares
4.2
Two successful startup founders offer a comprehensive overview of the various ways startups can achieve strong, sustainable growth, and a guide to choosing the ones that will make the differencce.
Why do so many startups fail? According to entrepreneurs Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares, most failed startups don’t get off the ground not because of a bad product, but because they don’t have enough customers. They make the fatal mistake of putting all their effort into perfecting their product at the cost of reaching out to potential users. Instead, they should be putting half their resources into getting traction.
TRACTION is the essential guide for any startup looking to stay ahead of the curve and start building a user base early in the game. The book offers no one-size-fits-all solution: every startup is unique, so no single method is guaranteed to generate traction. Instead, the authors identify nineteen different traction channels from viral marketing to trade shows, offer insights on how to exploit each one to its fullest potential, and provide a framework to test various channels and identify the best one for any startup.
Drawing on advice from more than 40 successful startup founders and marketers, from Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales to American Apparel’s Ryan Holiday, TRACTION is a comprehensive textbook for marketing your way to growth.
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Recommended by Nir Eyal, Cory Zue, Dave Child, and 13 others.
Cory Zue
The business book I find myself recommending the most often is Traction, which is an excellent practical and high-level take on strategies for getting traction for your products. I found it particularly helpful because it prevents a framework and strategies you can actually execute and follow yourself instead of just pontificating about ideas. [source]
Dave Child
Recently, I've been reading Traction by Gabriel Weinberg. Readable.io has been growing well, and we've been exploring new marketing avenues and ideas. Traction is a really useful book to read in that regard - it explores a variety of different approaches to marketing, each paired with some direct experiences from someone who has achieved success with that approach. We're a small team, with limited resources, and the approach of Traction is working well for us so far. Seeing ideas explored and balanced with some real-world experiences is a nice way to get yourself to think about marketing possibilities, and less dry than some of the other books I've tried. [source]
Gunhee Park
This book lays out a framework to help any startup brainstorm ways to gain more customer traction. [source]
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42
Expert Secrets: The Underground Playbook for Creating a Mass Movement of People Who Will Pay for Your Advice
Russell Brunson, Robert Kiyosaki
4.2
Your message has the ability to change someone's life. The impact that the right message can have on someone at the right time in their life is immeasurable. It could help to save marriages, repair families, change someone's health, grow a company or more... But only if you know how to get it into the hands of the people whose lives you have been called to change. Expert Secrets will put your message into the hands of people who need it.
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Recommended by Carolina Millan, John Shea, and 1 others.
Carolina Millan
If this book is not yet in your arsenal, you’re making a big mistake. I always carry it with me when I travel , it’s filled with amazing knowledge for anyone wanting to turn their knowledge into a business. Get a free copy at https://t.co/VV4Syx66Cn 🔥🔥 https://t.co/RTWgKhCiXl [source]
John Shea
One that I'm reading right now that I haven't finished yet is Expert Secrets by Russell Brunson. The reason being is this book really emphasizes the idea that anyone can teach someone else how to accomplish something and make money doing it. [source]
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43
Seo 2018 Learn Search Engine Optimization with Smart Internet Marketing Strateg: Learn Seo with Smart Internet Marketing Strategies
Adam Clarke
4.2
Learn SEO strategies to rank at the top of Google with SEO 2018 EXPANDED & UPDATED - NOVEMBER, 2017
No matter your background, SEO 2018 will walk you through search engine optimization techniques used to grow countless companies online, exact steps to rank high in Google, and how get a ton of customers with SEO. First, let me tell you a little secret about SEO marketing...
Most of the search engine optimization advice on the Internet is wrong! If you've sifted through search engine optimization advice online, you may have noticed two things: - Most published SEO advice is either outdated or just dead-wrong. - Google's constant updates have made many popular SEO optimization strategies useless.
Why is this so? Google are constantly evolving. Recent changes: 1. September, 2017 - Google becomes Apple's default search provider for Siri, iOS search, and Spotlight search on Mac OS, providing a wave of new opportunities for businesses. 2. August, 2017 - Google quietly releases a local SEO update dubbed the "Hawk" update, providing unique new challenges for local businesses. 3. June, 2017 - Google announces their game changing Mobile First Index coming up in 2018, that will completely shake up the mobile search results.
SEO 2018 is now updated covering the latest changes to Google's algorithm, and walks you through major updates and how to use them to your advantage. This book also reveals industry secrets about staying ahead of Google's algorithm, and potential Google changes coming up in 2018. With this best-selling SEO book, learn SEO from a fundamental level, achieve top rankings, and generate a wave of new customers to your site.
Discover powerful link building techniques experts use to get top rankings and generate massive traffic Link building is the strongest factor for ranking high in Google. Unfortunately, most widely-used methods suck! This chapter walks you through new and powerful techniques that won't get you in hot-water with Google. Now expanded with more link building strategies, and extra tips for advanced readers.
You will also discover: 1. Important SEO concepts, from beginner to advanced. 2. Sneaky tricks to get local businesses ranking high with local SEO. 3. The inner workings of Google's algorithm and how it calculates the search results. 4. How to find "money" keywords that will send customers to your site. 5. Basic and advanced link building strategies for pushing your rankings up higher. 6. Six insider sources to get expert SEO or Internet marketing advice worth thousands of dollars, for free. 7. How to use social media and web analytics to multiply your results. 8. 25+ powerful tools top Internet marketing experts use to automate search engine optimization, saving weeks of time and creating bigger results.
Sidestep the 2018 Google updates Contrary to Internet marketing gossip, problems caused by Google updates are rarely irrecoverable-but you need the right knowledge. This book reveals: - Inner mechanics of Google's algorithm, and how to rank your site at the top. - Recent Google updates-Mobile First Index, Google Hawk update, Google FRED update, and more... - Potential updates coming up in 2018. - Steps to recover from Google penalties. And read the special bonus chapter on pay-per-click advertising In this bonus, learn to quickly setup pay-per-click advertising campaigns with Google AdWords and send customers to your site overnight, literally.
One of the most comprehensive SEO optimization books ever published-updated and expanded-of all best-selling SEO books, this is the only one with everything you need.
Scroll up, click buy, and get started now!
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44
Lean Analytics: Use Data to Build a Better Startup Faster
Alistair Croll and Benjamin Yoskovitz
4.2
Whether you’re a startup founder trying to disrupt an industry or an intrapreneur trying to provoke change from within, your biggest challenge is creating a product people actually want. Lean Analytics steers you in the right direction.
This book shows you how to validate your initial idea, find the right customers, decide what to build, how to monetize your business, and how to spread the word. Packed with more than thirty case studies and insights from over a hundred business experts, Lean Analytics provides you with hard-won, real-world information no entrepreneur can afford to go without.
Understand Lean Startup, analytics fundamentals, and the data-driven mindset Look at six sample business models and how they map to new ventures of all sizes Find the One Metric That Matters to you Learn how to draw a line in the sand, so you’ll know it’s time to move forward Apply Lean Analytics principles to large enterprises and established products
Like Charlie Munger once said: “I’ve long believed that a certain system - which almost any intelligent person can learn - works way better than the systems most people use to understand the world. What you need is a latticework of mental models in your head. And, with that system, things gradually fit together in a way that enhances cognition. Just as multiple factors shape every system, multiple mental models from a variety of disciplines are necessary to understand that system". You can read this book to start building a "latticework of mental models in your head". [source]
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45
Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content
Ann Handley
4.2
"Everybody Writes" is a go-to guide to attracting and retaining customers through stellar online communication, because in our content-driven world, every one of us is, in fact, a writer.
In "Everybody Writes", top marketing veteran Ann Handley gives expert guidance and insight into the process and strategy of content creation, production and publishing, with actionable how-to advice designed to get results.
These lessons and rules apply across all of your online assets — like web pages, home page, landing pages, blogs, email, marketing offers, and on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social media. Ann deconstructs the strategy and delivers a practical approach to create ridiculously compelling and competent content. It's designed to be the go-to guide for anyone creating or publishing any kind of online content — whether you're a big brand or you're small and solo.
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Recommended by Brian Clark, David Meerman Scott, Lee Odden, and 1 others.
Brian Clark
The alternate click-bait title of Ann’s great new book could have been 73 Ways to Improve Your Writing and Conquer the World! …and it would have been an understatement. We’re all publishers now, and the better writers connect, persuade, and win. Be one of them with this book. [source]
David Meerman Scott
Throw the others away because this is the only guide you need to elevate your content to the level of awesomeness! With wisdom and an infective wittiness, Ann shows you how to take your writing from awkward or awful to electric or elegant. She’s your favorite teacher, cracking you up while her tough love gets you to do the work to improve. Even though I’ve written 10 books, I still learned a great deal in these pages and now I’m eager to flex my newfound content creation muscles. [source]
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46
No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram
Sarah Frier
4.2
Award-winning reporter Sarah Frier reveals an inside, never-before-told, behind-the-scenes look at how Instagram defied the odds to become one of the most culturally defining apps of the decade.
Since its creation in 2010, Instagram’s fun and simple interface has captured our collective imagination, swiftly becoming a way of life. In No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram, technology reporter Sarah Frier explains how Instagram’s founders married art and technology to overcome skeptics and to hook the public on visual storytelling. At first, Instagram initially attracted artisans, but then the platform exploded in popularity among the masses, creating an entire industry of digital influencers that’s now worth tens of billions of dollars.
Eighteen months after Instagram’s launch and explosive growth, the founders made the gut-wrenching decision to sell the company to Facebook. For most companies, that would be the end of the story; but for Instagram, it was only the beginning. Instagram borrowed some lessons from Facebook and rejected others, until eventually its success stirred tension with Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg, just as Facebook became embroiled in a string of public crises. Frier unearths the details that led to the cofounders’—Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger—departure, bringing to light dramatic moments unknown to the public until now.
At its heart, No Filter draws on unprecedented exclusive access—from the founders of Instagram, as well as employees, executives, and competitors; hedge fund billionaire Ray Dalio; Anna Wintour of Vogue; Kris Jenner of the Kardashian-Jenner empire; and a plethora of influencers, from fashionistas with millions of followers to owners of famous dogs worldwide—to show how Instagram has fundamentally changed the way we communicate, shop, eat, and travel. The book brings readers inside users’ strategies to craft their personal image and fame, explaining how the company’s product decisions have affected the structure of our society. From teenagers to the pope, No Filter tells the captivating story of how Instagram not only created a new industry but also changed our lives.
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Recommended by Casey Neistat, Kurt Wagner, and Taylor Lorenz On Vacation.
Awesome story about how ig came to be and its impact broadly on human interaction. [source]
Kurt Wagner
omg so candid: someone caught me reading @sarahfrier’s book at the office this morning! For real though: This book is tremendous & expertly reported (no surprise there). It’s so much more than a business book - the best read yet on IG’s influence on culture and society https://t.co/O1Hmplii7B [source]
Taylor Lorenz On Vacation
🚨 🚨 🚨 MUST READ NEW BOOK ALERT. 🚨 🚨 🚨 You can now preorder @sarahfrier’s incredible book on the inside story of Instagram. There’s no book I’m excited to read more this year https://t.co/DBO46e79jo [source]
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47
The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More
Chris Anderson
4.2
We think Chris Anderson is onto something big with 'The Long Tail', a groundbreaking look at a well-known feature of statistical distribution and its potential to revolutionize business. 'Wired' magazine editor Anderson expands his influential 2004 article into a comprehensive exploration of this phenomenon -- which, simply stated, holds that products with low demand or sales volume can collectively comprise a market that exceeds the bestsellers. Catering to the tastes and expectations of consumers increasingly disenchanted with the same old thing, these new "niches" provide limitless opportunity for savvy companies. Fresh, insightful, and surprisingly accessible, 'The Long Tail' explains how to tap into the new economics of abundance.
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Recommended by Ev Williams, Jack Ma, Bogdana Butnar, and 2 others.
Bogdana Butnar
I don't have favourite books. I equate a favourite something with wanting to do it over and over again and I've never wanted to read a book too many times. I have favourite authors and I have books that changed me in significant ways because they moved me or taught me something or changed my view of the world. So, here's some of those books... [source]
Michael Herrmann
Very fitting for the internet today. We see niches form inside niches and as entrepreneurs it's important to be aware (and make use) of that fact. [source]
Zhang Ruimin
In a 2009 interview with Knowledge@Wharton, he explained how Anderson's ideas were helping Haier transition from traditional manufacturer to information-based service provider. [source]
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48
Building a StoryBrand 2.0: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen
Donald Miller and HarperCollins Leadership
4.2
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49
Becoming A Digital Marketer: Gaining the Hard & Soft Skills for a Tech-Driven Marketing Career
Gil Gildner and Anya Gildner
4.2
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50
The Art of SEO: Mastering Search Engine Optimization
Eric Enge, Stephan Spencer, et al.
4.2
A well-designed, easy-to-navigate website is useless if no one can find it. In this book, four experts help you optimize your site for search engine visibility, using proven guidelines and cutting-edge techniques for planning and executing a comprehensive strategy. Much has changed in SEO since the first edition of this book, including new methods for ranking sites based on user engagement with pages and content. Search engines also have improved their ranking results with data from social media. This second edition helps you adjust to these changes with an array of effective tactics, from basic to advanced. It’s the ideal SEO reference.Explore the underlying theory behind SEO and how search engines work Learn the steps you need to prepare for, execute, and evaluate SEO initiatives Examine a number of advanced strategies and tactics Understand the intricacies involved in managing complex SEO projects Learn what’s necessary to build a competent SEO team with defined roles Glimpse the future of search and what lies ahead for the SEO industry
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Recommended by Tony Hsieh and Aleyda Solis.
Tony Hsieh
CEO/Zappos.com
SEO expertise is a core need for today’s online businesses. Written by some of the top SEO practitioners out there, this book can teach you what you need to know for your online business. [source]
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51
#AskGaryVee: One Entrepreneur's Take on Leadership, Social Media, and Self-Awareness
Gary Vaynerchuk
4.2
The New York Times bestselling author draws from his popular show #AskGaryVee to offer surprising, often outrageous, and imminently useful and honest answers to everything you’ve ever wanted to know—and more—about navigating the new world.
Gary Vaynerchuk—the inspiring and unconventional entrepreneur who introduced us to the concept of crush it—knows how to get things done, have fun, and be massively successful. A marketing and business genius, Gary had the foresight to go beyond traditional methods and use social media tools such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube to reach an untapped audience that continues to grow.
#AskGaryVee showcases the most useful and interesting questions Gary has addressed on his popular show. Distilling and expanding on the podcast’s most urgent and evergreen themes, Gary presents practical, timely, and timeless advice on marketing, social media, entrepreneurship, and everything else you’ve been afraid to ask but are dying to know. Gary gives you the insights and information you need on everything from effectively using Twitter to launching a small business, hiring superstars to creating a personal brand, launching products effectively to staying healthy—and even buying wine.
Whether you’re planning to start your own company, working in digital media, or have landed your first job in a traditional company, #AskGaryVee is your essential guide to making things happen in a big way.
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Recommended by Caisey Neistat and Robert Katai.
Caisey Neistat
Founder/368 Creative Space
BUY THIS BOOK! because Gary is a genius and because he put my picture on the back cover!! [source]
Robert Katai
If you want to do social media start with “Jab Jab Jab Right Hook” and move forward to “Ask Gary Vee” by Gary Vaynerchuk. Even if Gary has admitted that he has a ghostwriter writing his book, you can see Gary’s personality and also his experience in the social media field in this book. These are some great books to start with in social media. [source]
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52
Digital Marketing
Dave Chaffey and Fiona Ellis-Chadwick
4.2
Digital Marketing provides the most comprehensive guide to all aspects of using the Internet, digital media and marketing technology to achieve the goals of integrated multichannel marketing.
This streamlined seventh edition provides comprehensive, practical guidance on how companies can get the most out of digital media and technology to meet their marketing goals. Digital Marketing links marketing theory with practical business experience through case studies from cutting edge companies such as ASOS, Spotify, Zalando and Zappos, to help students understand digital marketing in the real world. To support this, new 'Essential Digital Skills' boxes give students guidance on how to develop key skills they will need in the workplace.
Readers will learn best practice frameworks for developing a digital marketing strategy, plus success factors for key digital marketing techniques including search marketing, conversion optimisation and digital communications using social media including Twitter and Facebook.
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53
Youtility: Why Smart Marketing Is about Help Not Hype
Jay Baer
4.2
The difference between helping and selling is just two letters
If you're wondering how to make your products seem more exciting online, you're asking the wrong question. You're not competing for attention only against other similar products. You're competing against your customers' friends and family and viral videos and cute puppies. To win attention these days you must ask a different question: "How can we help?"
Jay Baer's Youtility offers a new approach that cuts through the clutter: marketing that is truly, inherently useful. If you sell something, you make a customer today, but if you genuinely help someone, you create a customer for life.
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Recommended by Gary Vaynerchuk, Jeff Gibbard, Neal Schaffer, and 1 others.
Jeff Gibbard
One of the five books Jeff recommends to young people interested in his career path. [source]
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54
The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture
John Battelle
4.2
If you pick your books by their popularity--how many and which other people are reading them--then know this about The Search: it's probably on Bill Gates' reading list, and that of almost every venture capitalist and startup-hungry entrepreneur in Silicon Valley. In its sweeping survey of the history of Internet search technologies, its gossip about and analysis of Google, and its speculation on the larger cultural implications of a Web-connected world, it will likely receive attention from a variety of businesspeople, technology futurists, journalists, and interested observers of mid-2000s zeitgeist.
This ambitious book comes with a strong pedigree. Author John Battelle was a founder of The Industry Standard and then one of the original editors of Wired, two magazines which helped shape our early perceptions of the wild world of the Internet. Battelle clearly drew from his experience and contacts in writing The Search. In addition to the sure-handed historical perspective and easy familiarity with such dot-com stalwarts as AltaVista, Lycos, and Excite, he speckles his narrative with conversational asides from a cast of fascinating characters, such Google's founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin; Yahoo's, Jerry Yang and David Filo; key executives at Microsoft and different VC firms on the famed Sandhill road; and numerous other insiders, particularly at the company which currently sits atop the search world, Google.
The Search is not exactly the corporate history of Google. At the book's outset, Battelle specifically indicates his desire to understand what he calls the cultural anthropology of search, and to analyze search engines' current role as the "database of our intentions"--the repository of humanity's curiosity, exploration, and expressed desires. Interesting though that beginning is, though, Battelle's story really picks up speed when he starts dishing inside scoop on the darling business story of the decade, Google. To Battelle's credit, though, he doesn't stop just with historical retrospective: the final part of his book focuses on the potential future directions of Google and its products' development. In what Battelle himself acknowledges might just be a "digital fantasy train", he describes the possibility that Google will become the centralizing platform for our entire lives and quotes one early employee on the weightiness of Google's potential impact: "Sometimes I feel like I am on a bridge, twenty thousand feet up in the air. If I look down I'm afraid I'll fall. I don't feel like I can think about all the implications."
Some will shrug at such words; after all, similar hype has accompanied other technologies and other companies before. Many others, though, will search Battelle's story for meaning--and fast. --Peter Han
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Recommended by Gary Vaynerchuk, David Soskin, and Richard Reynolds.
Gary Vaynerchuk mentioned reading this book in a video. [source]
David Soskin
This explains very clearly why the Google search algorithm outclassed the other search engines of the time. [source]
Richard Reynolds
Well, the internet is a huge landscape and it’s up to us to plant it with ideas. It’s a wonderfully democratic space, unlike the physical landscape around us. I read this book because it was recommended by a colleague at work and I was inspired to really make the most of the internet. I realised that in parallel with doing the gardening I could also plant my ideas prominently on line. My blog is there to inspire other people and it’s a very straightforward assertion that what I am doing is not to be hidden away and disguised. The beauty of the internet is that you can make a public statement without having to send it to anyone. Guerrilla gardening is ideally suited to the internet because it’s a lot of disparate individuals or small groups generally active on a very small scale. But cumulatively, through the power of the internet bringing them together, it becomes something more tangible. And this book really helped me put my plan into action. What’s good is that the author brings it all to life in a gripping romp – part history of Google’s success and also a manual on how the web works. Read 5 Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney Read [source]
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Web Analytics 2.0: The Art of Online Accountability & Science of Customer Centricity
Avinash Kaushik
4.1
Adeptly address today's business challenges with this powerful new book from web analytics thought leader Avinash Kaushik. "Web Analytics 2.0" presents a new framework that will permanently change how you think about analytics. It provides specific recommendations for creating an actionable strategy, applying analytical techniques correctly, solving challenges such as measuring social media and multichannel campaigns, achieving optimal success by leveraging experimentation, and employing tactics for truly listening to your customers. The book will help your organization become more data driven while you become a super analysis ninja
Note: CD-ROM/DVD and other supplementary materials are not included as part of eBook file.
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Recommended by Raluca Radu.
Raluca Radu
I work in digital marketing so I would recommend: … Web Analytics: An Hour A Day and Web Analytics 2.0 by Avinash Kaushik. [source]
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Launch: How Ordinary People Are Creating Extraordinary Success Online
Jeff Walker
4.1
Is your product or business going to achieve nearly instant momentum and sales, or will it start off slow and fade away from there? The start of every business is critically important. . .and every truly successful product or business starts with a successful launch. Unfortunately, most entrepreneurs put all their focus into "getting the doors open," without giving much thought to creating a great launch. It doesn't have to be that way. Since 1996 Jeff Walker has been creating hugely successful launches in our increasingly digital world. Bootstrapping his first Internet business from his basement, he quickly developed an underground zero-budget process for launching new products with then-unheard of success. But the success-train was just getting started---once he started teaching his formula to other entrepreneurs the results were simply breathtaking. Tiny home-based businesses started doing launches that sold tens of thousands. . .hundreds of thousands. . .and even millions of dollars in just a few days. What you have in your hands is the treasure map into that world---an almost secret digital society of entrepreneurs who have learned to create cash-on-demand paydays with their product launches and business launches. Whether you have an existing business with existing products, or whether you have a service-based business and you want to develop your own products so you can leverage your time and your impact, or whether you're still in the planning phase and haven't quite started yet. . .this is your owners manual on how to start. This formula is how you engineer massive success. Now the question is. . .are you going to start slow, and fade away from there? Or are you ready to engineer a launch that will change the future of your business and your life?
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Recommended by Christian Mickelson, Eric T. Wagner, Michael Hyatt, and 4 others.
Christian Mickelson
This book isn’t just for people who want to make a lot of money in their businesses really fast. This is for people who want to live their best life, doing what they were born to do, and serving the world. I highly recommend this book to anyone that wants to make a bigger impact along with a much bigger income. [source]
Eric T. Wagner
Wow! What can you say about Jeff Walker? This guy owns the launch space. Believe me—if you’re looking to launch a product, business, or even a book, then pick up this book and read it NOW. I guarantee you won’t regret it. [source]
This is not just a book. It’s a license to print money. (Okay, maybe I’m overstating it a bit, but not by much.) I used Jeff’s Product Launch Formula to create a seven-figure-plus business I absolutely love. And unlike some successful entrepreneurs, he holds nothing back. It’s all here—a proven strategy, real world examples, and step-by-step instructions—everything you need to create a business you’re crazy about while making an incredible living doing it. [source]
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57
WTF Is My Password: Password Book Log Book AlphabeticalPocket Size Purple Flower Cover Black Frame 6" x 9" (Password Logbook)
Paper Kate Publishing
4.1
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58
Day Trading Attention: How to Actually Build Brand and Sales in the New Social Media World
Gary Vaynerchuk
4.1
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59
Growth Hacker Marketing: A Primer on the Future of PR, Marketing, and Advertising
Ryan Holiday
4.1
A Primer on the Future of PR, Marketing and Advertising
A new generation of megabrands like Facebook, Dropbox, Airbnb, and Twitter haven’t spent a dime on traditional marketing. No press releases, no TV commercials, no billboards. Instead, they rely on a new strategy—growth hacking—to reach many more people despite modest marketing budgets. Growth hackers have thrown out the old playbook and replaced it with tools that are testable, trackable, and scalable. They believe that products and businesses should be modified repeatedly until they’re primed to generate explosive reactions. Bestselling author Ryan Holiday, the acclaimed marketing guru for American Apparel and many bestselling authors and multiplatinum musicians, explains the new rules and provides valuable examples and case studies for aspiring growth hackers. Whether you work for a tiny start-up or a Fortune 500 giant, if you’re responsible for building awareness and buzz for a product or service, this is your road map.
Holiday is part Machiavelli, part Ogilvy, and all results... This whiz kid is the secret weapon you've never heard of. [source]
Alex Korchinski
FInally, a crystallization and explanation of growth hacking in easy-to-understand terms-and better, real strategies and tactics for application. [source]
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60
Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs, Revised and Updated
Brian Halligan
4.1
Attract, engage, and delight customers online"Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs" is a comprehensive guide to increasing online visibility and engagement. Written by top marketing and startup bloggers, the book contains the latest information about customer behavior and preferred digital experiences. From the latest insights on lead nurturing and visual marketing to advice on producing remarkable content by building tools, readers will gain the information they need to transform their marketing online.
With outbound marketing methods becoming less effective, the time to embrace inbound marketing is now. Cold calling, e-mail blasts, and direct mail are turning consumers off to an ever-greater extent, so consumers are increasingly doing research online to choose companies and products that meet their needs. "Inbound Marketing" recognizes these behavioral changes as opportunities, and explains how marketers can make the most of this shift online. This not only addresses turning strangers into website visitors, but explains how best to convert those visitors to leads, and to nurture those leads to the point of becoming delighted customers.
Gain the insight that can increase marketing value with topics like: Inbound marketing - strategy, reputation, and tracking progressVisibility - getting found, and why content mattersConverting customers - turning prospects into leads and leads into customersBetter decisions - picking people, agencies, and campaigns
The book also contains essential tools and resources that help build an effective marketing strategy, and tips for organizations of all sizes looking to build a reputation. When consumer behaviors change, marketing must change with them. "Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs" is a complete guide to attracting, engaging, and delighting customers online.
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Recommended by Ionut Danifeld and Irina Nica.
Ionut Danifeld
If you want to find a niche and adapt to the marketing, one of my favorite techniques is Inbound Marketing. Great book to understand what's inbound marketing and how you can use effectively this technique for your business or clients. [source]
Irina Nica
Inbound Marketing by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah - if you’re working in B2B or you’re working on your own SaaS product, you have to learn the basics of Inbound Marketing. I do admit that the concept of “inbound marketing” is evolving and you should also follow marketing blogs to make sure you’re up to date with the latest practices in SEO, Facebook Marketing, etc. However, if you’re just getting started, this book will definitely give you a foundation to build on. [source]
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61
Marketing Made Simple: A Step-By-Step Storybrand Guide for Any Business
Donald Miller
4.1
Based on Building a StoryBrand by New York Times bestselling author Don Miller, this checklist is a strategic and actionable guide to applying the StoryBrand framework to any brand and an essential part of any marketing professional's tool kit.
Every day, brands lose millions of dollars simply because they do not have a clear message that tells consumers who they are and what value they will add to their customers' lives. To solve this dilemma, Don Miller wrote Building a StoryBrand, which has become the quintessential guide for anyone looking to craft or strengthen their brand's message.
Now, Don is taking it a step further with this five-part checklist that helps marketing professionals and business owners apply the StoryBrand messaging framework across key customer touchpoints to effectively develop, strengthen, and communicate their brand's story to the marketplace.
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62
Rocket Surgery Made Easy: The Do-It-Yourself Guide to Finding and Fixing Usability Problems
Steve Krug
4.1
It's been known for years that usability testing can dramatically improve products. But with a typical price tag of $5,000 to $10,000 for a usability consultant to conduct each round of tests, it rarely happens.
In this how-to companion to Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, Steve Krug spells out an approach to usability testing that anyone can easily apply to their own web site, application, or other product. (As he said in Don't Make Me Think, "It's not rocket surgery".)
In this new book, Steve explains how to:
-Test any design, from a sketch on a napkin to a fully-functioning web site or application -Keep your focus on finding the most important problems (because no one has the time or resources to fix them all) -Fix the problems that you find, using his "The least you can do" approach
By pairing the process of testing and fixing products down to its essentials (A morning a month, that's all we ask ), Rocket Surgery makes it realistic for teams to test early and often, catching problems while it's still easy to fix them. Rocket Surgery Made Easy adds demonstration videos to the proven mix of clear writing, before-and-after examples, witty illustrations, and practical advice that made Don't Make Me Think so popular.
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Recommended by Paul Boag.
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63
Lean Marketing: More leads. More profit. Less marketing.
Allan Dib
4.1
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64
The Forecaster Method: The Modern System to Accurately Evaluate, Forecast, and Scale Your Digital Marketing
John Lincoln
4.1
Never Waste Another Digital Marketing Dollar Again (While Growing Your Business Faster Than Ever)! The Forecaster Method is the proven system to accurately evaluate, forecast, and scale your digital marketing. This book is by John Lincoln, one of the top digital marketing experts in the nation. What You Will Learn: - Bring dollars online from traditional media with confidence!- Accurately forecast and scale your digital marketing- Establish goals and hit them while reducing costs- Establish executive-level reporting and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)- Set the right overall marketing budget based on a real model- Find new opportunities and phase out poor performers- Create a diversified portfolio of traffic - Set business revenue targets and hit them - Learn how to convert your traffic for less- Learn how to build audiences and market to them over time.- Learn how much you should be spending on marketing.- Get access to real industry studies that show benchmark data- And more!With hundreds of ways to spend your money in digital today, now is the most important time for my system to be released. Welcome to the Forecaster Method, your guide to transitioning more marketing dollars online from offline, structuring your approach, properly using a performance-based model, and using clear data to scale results. If you are a CMO, business owner, or digital marketer (or perhaps aspire to be in positions such as these) of a multi-million or even multi-billion-dollar company, consider this book your new best friend. As a large company you are competing with the smartest minds in the business, many of which are nimbler in performance-based marketing. It is critical you understand how to test, measure, and prove results as well as scale your online marketing. It is no longer the same marketing mix as it was a few years ago. Digital marketing has exploded and there are so many new ways to advertise it is almost impossible to keep up with.The key to success is following a methodical digital marketing process.By the end of this book, you will know what that process is and how to run a multi-million-dollar digital marketing program. That is my promise to you. I use this process myself and have done so for our clients whose revenues range from millions to billions of dollars a year. About The AuthorJohn Lincoln (MBA) is CEO of Ignite Visibility (a 2017, 2018 and 2019 Inc. 5000 company) a highly sought-after digital marketing strategist, frequent industry speaker, and winner of the coveted Search Engine Land "Search Marketer of the Year" award.With 16+ years of demanding experience, Lincoln has worked with over 1,000 online businesses including amazing clients such as Office Depot, Tony Robbins, Morgan Stanley, Fox, USA Today, Sharp Healthcare, 5 Hour Energy, Cox Communications, and more.
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65
The Content Fuel Framework
Melanie Deziel
4.1
An adaptable and evergreen guide you'll come back to again and again.
Never before have we consumed as much content, in as many forms, and in as many places as we do now. This means marketers, creators, and anyone who communicates with an audience is under more pressure than ever to deliver unique content, consistently. How can you fill all those web pages, social feeds, blogs, and newsletters, every single day?
In The Content Fuel Framework, trained journalist and award-winning content marketer Melanie Deziel shows you how to maximize your creativity by systematizing it. This simple framework catalyzes the brainstorming process, making idea generation effortless and nearly automatic. No more writer's block. No more asking "what should I post?" No more waiting for that "big idea" to show up in its own time. This system allows storytellers from any industry to produce fresh story ideas on demand, any time.
The Content Fuel Framework will challenge you--and enable you--to tell stories in entirely new ways.
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66
The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use Social Media, Online Video, Mobile Applications, Blogs, Newsjacking, and Viral Marketing to Reach Buyers Directly
David Meerman Scott
4.1
The international bestseller--now in a new edition When it comes to marketing, anything goes in the Digital Age, right? Well, not quite. While marketing and public relations tactics do seem to change overnight, every smart businessperson knows that it takes a lot more than the 'next big thing.'
The New Rules of Marketing & PR is an international bestseller with more than 375,000 copies sold in twenty-nine languages. In the latest edition of this pioneering guide to the future of marketing, you'll get a step-by-step action plan for leveraging the power of the latest approaches to generating attention for your idea or your business. You'll learn how get the right information to the right people at the right time--at a fraction of the cost of traditional advertising.
The Internet continues to change the way people communicate and interact with each other, and if you're struggling to keep up with what's trending in social media, online videos, apps, blogs, or more, your product or service is bound to get lost in the ether. In The New Rules of Marketing & PR, you'll get access to the tried-and-true rules that will keep you ahead of the curve when using the latest and greatest digital spaces to their fullest PR, marketing, and customer-communications potential. Keeping in mind that your audience is savvy and crunched for time, this essential guide shows you how to cut through the online clutter to ensure that your message gets seen and heard.
Serves as the ideal resource for entrepreneurs, business owners, marketers, PR professionals, and non-profit managers Offers a wealth of compelling case studies and real-world examples Includes information on new platforms including Facebook Live and Snapchat Shows both small and large organizations how to best use Web-based communication Finally, everything you need to speak directly to your audience and establish a personal link with those who make your business work is in one place.
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Recommended by Ann Handley and Kyrylo Taranenko.
Kyrylo Taranenko
Make sure to pick up the revised edition. For my generation, most advice is pretty obvious (blogs are Social Media too - oh I didn’t know that already :D), but there are some interesting cases and thoughts on going viral. [source]
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67
Digital Marketing Strategy: An Integrated Approach to Online Marketing
Simon Kingsnorth
4.1
Effectively select, align and manage digital channels and operations using this second edition of the bestselling guide, Digital Marketing Strategy. This accessible, step-by-step framework enables the planning, integration and measurement of each digital platform and technique, all tailored to achieve overarching business objectives.
Ranging from social media, SEO, content marketing and user experience, to customer loyalty, automation and personalization, this edition features cutting edge updates on marketing automation, messaging and email, online and offline integration, the power of technologies such as AI, plus new data protection and privacy strategies. Accompanied by downloadable templates and resources, Digital Marketing Strategy is an ideal road map for any marketer to streamline a digital marketing strategy for measurable, optimized results. Online resources include practical implementation guides spanning SEO, paid-search, email, lead-generation and more, as well as group activities, which will be regularly updated to equip readers as digital marketing continues to evolve.
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68
Epic Content Marketing: How to Tell a Different Story, Break Through the Clutter, and Win More Customers by Marketing Less
Joe Pulizzi
4.1
One of FORTUNE Magazine's Top 5 Business Book Must-Reads How do you cut through the noise, commotion, and bad information that is right now cluttering up your customers' digital space?
EPIC CONTENT MARKETING
One of the world's leading experts on content marketing, Joe Pulizzi explains how to attract prospects and customers by creating information and content they actually want to engage with. No longer can we interrupt our customers with mediocre content and sales messages they don't care about.
Epic Content Marketing takes you step-by-step through the process of developing stories that inform and entertain and compel customers to act--without actually telling them to. Epic content, distributed to the right person at the right time, is the way to truly capture the hearts and minds of customers. It's how to position your business as a trusted expert in its industry. It's what customers share and talk about.
Once we hook customers with epic content, they reward us by sending our sales through the roof.
Epic Content Marketing provides everything you need to:
Determine what your content niche should be to attract and retain customers Discover and develop your content marketing mission statement Set up a process for creating and curating epic content Learn how to leverage social and e-mail channels to create--and grow--your audience Measure the performance of your content--and increase your content marketing budget With in-depth case studies of how John Deere, LEGO, Coca-Cola, and other leading corporations are using content to drive epic sales, this groundbreaking guide gives you all the tools to start creating and disseminating content that leads directly to greater profits and growth.
Whether you're the CMO of a Fortune 500, a digital marketer, or an entrepreneur, Epic Content Marketing gives you the tools you need to vanquish the competition. Start your epic journey now!
PRAISE FOR EPIC CONTENT MARKETING
"From the man who invented content marketing. Listen to this guy. He really understands the new world of marketing. The concepts in Epic Content Marketing are usable all over the world--instantly usable and useful for any business." -- Don Schultz, the "father of integrated marketing," Professor Emeritus at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, and author of 13 books
"Joe Pulizzi's ideas are so consistently . . . well, epic (!) that they really don't need any endorsement by anyone. But here's mine anyway: You don't need MORE content. You need the right kind of content, strategically applied. For those organizations struggling to create a content marketing program that drives results, Joe delivers. Again." -- Ann Handley, coauthor of Content Rules and Chief Content Officer, MarketingProfs
"As Joe shows us in his wonderful Epic Content Marketing, you must unlearn interrupting people with your nonsense. Instead, publish the valuable content they want to consume and are eager to share." -- David Meerman Scott, marketing strategist and bestselling author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR
"This is a brilliant canter through the rapid and ever-changing world of content marketing. Joe has managed to capture the right blend of art and science as he plots the major trends impacting all marketers right now." -- Jonathan Mildenhall, VP, Global Advertising Strategy and Creative Excellence, Coca-Cola Company
"You could say that Joe Pulizzi wrote the book on content marketing, but now it's more than just a saying. It's what you're holding in your hands. If you truly want to be successful at content marketing, Pulizzi is one of the few who can show you the way." -- Mitch Joel, President, Twist Image, and author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete
"Joe Pulizzi may know more about content marketing than any person alive. He proves it in these pages." -- Jay Baer, New York Times bestselling author of Youtility: Why Smart Marketing is About Help Not Hype
"The future of successful brand building, and especially the art of solidifying the emotional connection between people and brands, will require expertise in Content Marketing. Epic Content Marketing gives all the details practitioners need without overcomplicating." -- Professor JoAnn Sciarrino, Knight Chair, Digital Advertising and Marketing, UNC Chapel Hill
"Joe Pulizzi is the godfather of our burgeoning profession of Content Marketing. He lays out the objectives, principles, and core strategies of our field in a way that's easy-to-understand, inspiring, and entertaining. If your company doesn't yet realize that it's a media company, with all the challenges and advantages that implies, you're missing the most powerful way to connect with your customers." -- Julie Fleischer, Director, Media & Consumer Engagement, Kraft Foods
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Recommended by Jonathan Mildenhall, David Meerman Scott, Lee Odden, and 2 others.
Jonathan Mildenhall
VP of Global Advertising Strategy/Coca Cola
This is a brilliant canter through the rapid and ever changing world of content marketing. [source]
David Meerman Scott
As Joe shows us in his wonderful Epic Content Marketing, you must unlearn interrupting people with your nonsense. Instead, publish the valuable content they want to consume and are eager to share. [source]
Raluca Radu
In terms of business, some of the must-read books I would mention are Hooked by Nir Eyal, Web Analytics: An Hour A Day by Avinash Kaushik, Call To Action and Always Be Testing by Bryan Eisenberg, Epic Content Marketing by Joe Pulizzi, How To Build Websites That Sell by Peep Laja, Content Chemistry by Andy Crestodina. [source]
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69
Digital Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice
Dave Chaffey, Fiona Ellis-Chadwick
4.1
Now in its fifth edition, Digital Marketing (previously Internet Marketing) provides comprehensive, practical guidance on how companies can get the most out of digital media to meet their marketing goals. Digital Marketing links marketing theory with practical business experience through case studies and interviews from cutting edge companies such as eBay and Facebook, to help students understand digital marketing in the real world.
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70
The Club: How the English Premier League Became the Wildest, Richest, Most Disruptive Force in Sports
Joshua Robinson
4.1
The Club is the previously untold inside story of how English soccer’s Premier League became the wildest, richest, most popular sports product on the planet.
This is a sports and business tale of how money, ambition, and twenty-five years of drama remade an ancient institution into a twenty-first-century entertainment empire. No one knew it when their experiment began, but without any particular genius or acumen, the motley cast of billionaires and hucksters behind the modern Premier League struck gold.
Pretty soon, everyone wanted to try their luck, from Russian oligarchs to Emirati sheikhs, American tycoons, and Asian Tiger titans. Some succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Some lost everything. Today, players are sold for tens of millions, clubs are valued in the billions, and games are beamed out to nearly two hundred countries, all while the league struggles to preserve its English soul.
Deeply researched and drawing on one hundred exclusive interviews, including the key decision makers at every major English team, The Club is the definitive and wildly entertaining narrative of how the Premier League took over the world.
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71
Endless Customers: A Proven System to Build Trust, Drive Sales, and Become the Market Leader
Marcus Sheridan
4.1
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72
Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World
Michael Hyatt
4.1
As the former chairman and CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers, author Michael Hyatt gained insight on the importance of combining compelling products with a meaningful platform. Now, with nearly three hundred thousand followers on Twitter, his large and growing platform serves as the foundation for his own successful writing, speaking, and business coaching practice. In this straightforward how-to, he offers down-to-earth guidance on crafting an effective and meaningful online platform to help readers extend their influence, monetize it, and build a sustainable career.Social media technologies have provided unprecedented opportunities for getting noticed and earning money in an increasingly noisy world. Platform goes behind the scenes into the world of social media success. You’ll discover what bestselling authors, public speakers, entrepreneurs, musicians, and other creatives are doing differently to gain contacts, connections, and followers and win customers in today’s crowded marketplace. With proven strategies, easy-to-replicate formulas, and practical tips, this book makes it easier, less expensive, and more possible than ever to stand out from the crowd and launch a business.
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Recommended by Jeff Bullas.
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73
Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age
Clay Shirky
4.1
The author of the breakout hit Here Comes Everybody reveals how new technology is changing us from consumers to collaborators, unleashing a torrent of creative production that will transform our world.
For decades, technology encouraged people to squander their time and intellect as passive consumers. Today, tech has finally caught up with human potential. In Cognitive Surplus, Internet guru Clay Shirky forecasts the thrilling changes we will all enjoy as new digital technology puts our untapped resources of talent and goodwill to use at last.
Since we Americans were suburbanized and educated by the postwar boom, we've had a surfeit of intellect, energy, and time-what Shirky calls a cognitive surplus. But this abundance had little impact on the common good because television consumed the lion's share of it-and we consume TV passively, in isolation from one another. Now, for the first time, people are embracing new media that allow us to pool our efforts at vanishingly low cost. The results of this aggregated effort range from mind expanding-reference tools like Wikipedia-to lifesaving-such as Ushahidi.com, which has allowed Kenyans to sidestep government censorship and report on acts of violence in real time.
Shirky argues persuasively that this cognitive surplus-rather than being some strange new departure from normal behavior-actually returns our society to forms of collaboration that were natural to us up through the early twentieth century. He also charts the vast effects that our cognitive surplus- aided by new technologies-will have on twenty-first-century society, and how we can best exploit those effects. Shirky envisions an era of lower creative quality on average but greater innovation, an increase in transparency in all areas of society, and a dramatic rise in productivity that will transform our civilization.
The potential impact of cognitive surplus is enormous. As Shirky points out, Wikipedia was built out of roughly 1 percent of the man-hours that Americans spend watching TV every year. Wikipedia and other current products of cognitive surplus are only the iceberg's tip. Shirky shows how society and our daily lives will be improved dramatically as we learn to exploit our goodwill and free time like never before.
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Recommended by Vinod Khosla, Vinod Khosla, Bogdana Butnar, and 1 others.
Bogdana Butnar
I thought I might put my money where my mouth is. I keep whining that young people are not in touch with some essential books on advertising that have helped me shape the way I practise my trade today, but I never did anything about it. So I am starting here the ultimate books to read list. I will add to it as I get suggestions and as more good books get written. [source]
Jules Evans
Clay Shirky’s book isn’t really about ancient philosophy, but explores one of the reasons why there is a revival of community philosophy today. As discussed, there is the rediscovery of the ancients’ idea of philosophy as a therapeutic way of life, and this naturally leads to questions of community. Ancient philosophy wasn’t just individual self help. It was very social and communal. The Stoics would gather together under the Colonnade in their Athenian marketplace to talk about philosophy, the Epicureans lived together in a commune called “the Garden” outside Athens, the Aristotelians had their own community called the Lyceum, and so on. [source]
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74
Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble
Dan Lyons
4.1
For twenty-five years Dan Lyons was a magazine writer at the top of his profession--until one Friday morning when he received a phone call: Poof. His job no longer existed. "I think they just want to hire younger people," his boss at Newsweek told him. Fifty years old and with a wife and two young kids, Dan was, in a word, screwed. Then an idea hit. Dan had long reported on Silicon Valley and the tech explosion. Why not join it? HubSpot, a Boston start-up, was flush with $100 million in venture capital. They offered Dan a pile of stock options for the vague role of "marketing fellow." What could go wrong?
HubSpotters were true believers: They were making the world a better place ... by selling email spam. The office vibe was frat house meets cult compound: The party began at four thirty on Friday and lasted well into the night; "shower pods" became hook-up dens; a push-up club met at noon in the lobby, while nearby, in the "content factory," Nerf gun fights raged. Groups went on "walking meetings," and Dan's absentee boss sent cryptic emails about employees who had "graduated" (read: been fired). In the middle of all this was Dan, exactly twice the age of the average HubSpot employee, and literally old enough to be the father of most of his co-workers, sitting at his desk on his bouncy-ball "chair."
Mixed in with Lyons's uproarious tale of his rise and fall at Hubspot is a trenchant analysis of the start-up world, a de facto conspiracy between those who start companies and those who fund them, a world where bad ideas are rewarded with hefty investments, where companies blow money lavishing perks on their post-collegiate workforces, and where everybody is trying to hang on just long enough to reach an IPO and cash out.
With a cast of characters that includes devilish angel investors, fad-chasing venture capitalists, entrepreneurs and "wantrapreneurs," bloggers and brogrammers, social climbers and sociopaths, Disrupted is a gripping and definitive account of life in the (second) tech bubble.
The book starts like a punch in the gut, but the story and the reality dose of this book are something that we all need from time to time in the Tech Startup Age. It helped me look beyond the excitement of working on new projects as a goal in itself and keep at least one foot on the ground. Plus the writing is extraordinary! [source]
@DannySkarka Lots had been written about that but always a great topic. I recommend Dan Lyon’s book [source]
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75
One to Many: The Secret to Webinar Success
Jason Fladlien
4.1
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76
The Youtube Formula: How Anyone Can Unlock the Algorithm to Drive Views, Build an Audience, and Grow Revenue
Derral Eves
4.0
Master the YouTube algorithm and transform your channel into a thriving, revenue-generating businessEven experienced YouTube creators struggle to understand the platform's complex algorithm and grow their audiences profitably. The YouTube Formula, Second Edition by Derral Eves, a video marketing expert who has generated billions of views, provides proven strategies for YouTube success. This comprehensive guide reveals algorithm mechanics and delivers actionable advice for building a sustainable creator business. The updated edition includes brand new case studies and addresses emerging trends. Readers discover how to leverage AI tools, optimize shortform content and YouTube Shorts, master livestreaming, and build loyal fandoms. The book provides data-driven strategies for launching channels, creating compelling content, driving subscriber growth, and increasing engagement. The book offers: Detailed explanations of how the YouTube algorithm evaluates and recommends content to maximize reachProven techniques for driving rapid view and subscriber growth based on billions of views generatedComprehensive guidance on AI tools, shortform content, and livestreaming strategies for modern creatorsReal-world case studies from successful YouTube creators demonstrating strategies in actionData-driven approaches to monetization, audience development, and community building that generate revenuePerfect for YouTube creators, content creators, social media strategists, brand managers, entrepreneurs, and video marketers, The YouTube Formula delivers the insider knowledge and practical strategies you need to achieve commercial success on the world's largest video platform and build a thriving creator business.
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77
Content Inc.: How Entrepreneurs Use Content to Build Massive Audiences and Create Radically Successful Businesses
Joe Pulizzi
4.0
The NEW Rulebook for Entrepreneurial Success
What s the surest way to startup failure? Follow old, outdated rules.
In Content Inc., one of today s most sought-after content-marketing strategists reveals a new model for entrepreneurial success. Simply put, it s about developing valuable content, building an audience around that content, and then creating a product for that audience.
Notice a shift?
Author Joe Pulizzi flips the traditional entrepreneurial approach of first creating a product and then trying to find customers.It s a brilliant reverse-engineering of a model that rarely succeeds.
The radical six-step business-building process revealed in this book is smart, simple, practical, and cost-effective. And best of all, it works. It s a strategy Pulizzi used to build his own successful company, Content Marketing Institute, which has landed on Inc. magazine s list of fastest growing private companies for three years straight. It s also a strategy countless other entrepreneurs use to build their own multi-million dollar companies. Build an audience and you ll be able to sell pretty much anything you want.
Today s markets are more dynamic and customers are more fickle than ever before. Why would you put all your eggs in one basket before securing a loyal customer base? Content Inc. shows you how to get customers first and develop products later. It s the best way to build a solid, long-lasting business positioned for today s content-driven world.This is the simple but profoundly successful entrepreneurial approach of one of today s most creative business minds.
A pioneer of content marketing, Pulizzi has cracked to code when it comes to the power of content in a world where marketers still hold fast to traditional models that no longer work. In Content Inc., he breaks down the business-startup process into six steps, making it simple for you to visualize, launch, and monetize your own business. These steps are:
The Sweet Spot: Identify the intersection of your unique competency and your personal passion Content Tilting: Determine how you can tilt your sweet spot to find a place where little or no competition exists Building the Base: Establish your number-one channel for disseminating content (blog, podcast, YouTube, etc.) Harvesting Audience: Use social-media and SEO to convert one-time visitors into long-term subscribers Diversification: Grow your business by expanding into multiple delivery channels Monetization: Now that your expertise is established, you can begin charging money for your products or services
This model has worked wonders for Pulizzi and countless other examples detailed in the book. Connect these six pieces like a puzzle, and before you know it, you ll be running your own profitable, scalable business.
Pulizzi walks you step by step through the process, based on his own success (and failures) and real-world multi-million dollar examples from multiple industries and countries.
Whether you re seeking to start a brand-new business or drive innovation in an existing one, Content Inc. provides everything you need to reverse-engineer the traditional entrepreneurial model for better, more sustainable success.
Joe Pulizzi is an entrepreneur, professional speaker, and podcaster. He is the founder of several startups, including the Content Marketing Institute (CMI), recognized as the fastest growing business media company by Inc. magazine in 2014. CMI produces Content Marketing World, the world s largest content marketing event, and publishes the leading content marketing magazine, Chief Content Officer. Pulizzi s book Epic Content Marketing was named one of Fortune magazine s Five Must Read Business Books of the Year.
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UX for Lean Startups
Laura Klein
4.0
Great user experiences (UX) are essential for products today, but designing one can be a lengthy and expensive process. With this practical, hands-on book, you’ll learn how to do it faster and smarter using Lean UX techniques. UX expert Laura Klein shows you what it takes to gather valuable input from customers, build something they’ll truly love, and reduce the time it takes to get your product to market.
No prior experience in UX or design is necessary to get started. If you’re an entrepreneur or an innovator, this book puts you right to work with proven tips and tools for researching, identifying, and designing an intuitive, easy-to-use product.
Determine whether people will buy your product before you build it Listen to your customers throughout the product’s lifecycle Understand why you should design a test before you design a product Get nine tools that are critical to designing your product Discern the difference between necessary features and nice-to-haves Learn how a Minimum Viable Product affects your UX decisions Use A/B testing in conjunction with good UX practices Speed up your product development process without sacrificing quality
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Recommended by Dan Olsen, Laura Klein, Steve Krug, and 1 others.
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Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, eBooks, Webinars (and More) That Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business
Ann Handley and C. C. Chapman
4.0
The guide to creating engaging web content and building a loyal following, revised and updated Blogs, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and other platforms are giving everyone a "voice," including organizations and their customers. So how do you create the stories, videos, and blog posts that cultivate fans, arouse passion for your products or services, and ignite your business? Content Rules equips you for online success as a one-stop source on the art and science of developing content that people care about. This coverage is interwoven with case studies of companies successfully spreading their ideas online--and using them to establish credibility and build a loyal customer base.
Find an authentic "voice" and craft bold content that will resonate with prospects and buyers and encourage them to share it with others Leverage social media and social tools to get your content and ideas distributed as widely as possible Understand why you are generating content--getting to the meat of your message in practical, commonsense language, and defining the goals of your content strategy Write in a way that powerfully communicates your service, product, or message across various Web mediums Boost your online presence and engage with customers and prospects like never before with Content Rules.
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What to Post: How to Create Engaging Social Media Content that Builds Your Brand and Gets Results (for Real Estate)
Chelsea Peitz
4.0
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81
Inbound Marketing Book
Tom Poland
4.0
Inbound Marketing Book is written for independent professionals who want to enjoy a predictable weekly flow of high quality new client inquiries.
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Shift: Digital Marketing Secrets of Insurance Agents and Financial Advisors
Jeremiah D. Desmarais
4.0
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83
Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked
Adam Alter
4.0
Welcome to the age of behavioral addiction—an age in which half of the American population is addicted to at least one behavior. We obsess over our emails, Instagram likes, and Facebook feeds; we binge on TV episodes and YouTube videos; we work longer hours each year; and we spend an average of three hours each day using our smartphones. Half of us would rather suffer a broken bone than a broken phone, and Millennial kids spend so much time in front of screens that they struggle to interact with real, live humans.
In this revolutionary book, Adam Alter, a professor of psychology and marketing at NYU, tracks the rise of behavioral addiction, and explains why so many of today's products are irresistible. Though these miraculous products melt the miles that separate people across the globe, their extraordinary and sometimes damaging magnetism is no accident. The companies that design these products tweak them over time until they become almost impossible to resist.
By reverse engineering behavioral addiction, Alter explains how we can harness addictive products for the good—to improve how we communicate with each other, spend and save our money, and set boundaries between work and play—and how we can mitigate their most damaging effects on our well-being, and the health and happiness of our children.
As if to prove his point, Adam Alter has written a truly addictive book about the rise of addiction. Irresistible is a fascinating and much needed exploration of one of the most troubling phenomena of modern times. [source]
Arianna Huffington
Founder/The Huffington Post
If you can't stop checking, clicking, surfing and liking, put your device down and read Adam Alter's Irresistible, an important, groundbreaking book about why we're addicted to technology, how we got here, and what we should do next. [source]
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Sponsor Magnet: How to Attract, Price, & Execute Your Dream Brand Partnerships
Justin Moore
4.0
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85
Home Service Millionaire: How I Went from $50,000 in Debt to a $30 Million+ Business in Seven Years
Tommy Mello
4.0
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86
Canva For Beginners: Your Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Professional and Ready-to-Publish Designs — Fast, Simple, and Stress-Free, Even If You've Never Used a Design Tool Before
Lila Parker
4.0
This book turns "I don't know where to start" into "I just published this — and I'm proud of it."Every time you open Canva, do you find yourself wondering where to start? You always feel like your design looks amateurish, even when you use templates?You’re not aloneHere's the truth: Canva isn't hard. But nobody ever explains it in an order that actually makes sense.So you end up clicking randomly. Copying templates that never quite fit your brand. Spending an hour on a single post, only to delete it and start over again.That's why this book was created“Canva for Beginners” is your step-by-step guide specifically designed to help even those who have never opened Canva before learn how to use it and Creating Professional and Ready-to-Publish Designs with confidence and without frustration.How this book will help you:Discover the simple visual principles (fonts, color, spacing, alignment) that instantly make any design look polished, even if you've never studied design in your life.Learn how to use Canva with confidence and ease so you can create any project and give it a professional lookThe Canva 2026 interface easy explained to fully understand the logic behind each commandHow to Create Design Presentations That Actually Hold Attention using the one text rule that keeps your audience listening instead of reading.Clear, Step-by-step instructions for creating any professional project without wasting valuable time on silly mistakesLearn how to animate, edit, and add effects and sound to your videos so they're ready to be posted on various platformsStart using shortcuts and tips that will save you valuable time on all your projectsImagine opening Canva and knowing exactly what to do. Your posts look like they belong to a real brand. Your designs are yours, and that specific feeling — “I did it myself”Start creating whatever you want, whenever you want, on your own!Click "Buy Now" and create content that makes people stop scrolling
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87
Copywriting Secrets: How Everyone Can Use The Power Of Words To Get More Clicks, Sales and Profits . . . No Matter What You Sell Or Who You Sell It To!
Jim Edwards
4.0
What if you could sell anything to anyone? Nobody is born knowing how to sell. But the truth is, you can learn how to sell more . . . a LOT more . . . when you discover the right words that make people buy.
Copywriting is selling. Whether online, offline, in video, direct mail, on Facebook, or from the stage, copywriting is how you put words together that make people click, call,or pull out their wallets and buy from you.
Whether you're a coach, author, "funnel hacker", e-commerce seller, or real estate agent, your ability to create sales copy that drives people to buy determines your paycheck, your lifestyle, and your family's future.
In the fast-paced, attention-starved, social media-driven world of business today, two facts about your ability to create sales messages (copywriting) stand out: Fact #1: Great Copywriting = Incredible lifestyle, plenty of money, and freedom! Fact #2: Poor Copywriting = Struggle forever and die poor! Putting The Right Words On Paper And Online Is The Single Most Profitable Skill Everyone Can Learn.
This book teaches you street-smart copywriting, which means this book teaches youhow to get results today. (Because we all need to make more sales today . . . not tomorrow, not next week!)
If you've tried to write ads, emails, and sales letters for your business before and failed, this book is for you.
If you need to make more sales -- no matter what you sell or who you sell it to -- this book is for you.
Bottom Line: If you want to make a lot more money, have a lot more time off, and enjoy a lot more freedom, this book is for you . . . especially if you're not making as many sales as you want to right now.
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Work Less, Make More: The counter-intuitive approach to building a profitable business, and a life you actually love
James Schramko
4.0
Work Less, Make More is a dense delivery of solid systems and sane advice. It's not 80/20, it's 80/20 squared. Every few pages, James punches you in the face with an instantly actionable hack. Perry Marshall, Author of 80/20 Sales & Marketing, Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords, and Evolution 2.0
James gives massive value in a fun and easy-to-read book. Real, actionable ways to cut your hours while increasing your income. Want to know how to do it in your own business? Get this and find out! Jonathan Mizel
In Work Less, Make More, James proves that keeping your business strategy simple produces far greater success (and happiness) than if you focus only on 'hustling'. John Reese
James possesses a 'no-holds barred' approach to business which frees him to think outside ingrained assumptions regarding one's current realities and future opportunities. His candid advice in Work Less, Make More provides bold and practical wisdom for any person, of any vocation, who wants to lift the lid on their creative potential and move into unexplored territories of freedom and opportunity. Ian Freestone
I found Work Less, Make More--part memoir, part how-to guide--to be truly extraordinary! James brings his unique analytical insights about how to think regarding complex issues in business. He describes the systems that he has designed to shape both meaningful work and relationships, as well as, a life worth living. So many authors attempt to "motivate" you, without giving any real instruction. I find that James provides both. Every page is full of so many principles, wisdom and insights--and I love how James incorporates his history and his life in such a thoughtful way. His book has already changed how I think about making decisions in my life and in my business. Tim Papadopoulos
---- In 2006, whilst working in a full-time job, James Schramko wrote this in a notebook:
MY GOALS ... create automated income so that I am independently wealthy and enjoy my life passionately.
Within three years, he'd built his own business and achieved those goals. At which point he set about helping his coaching clients do the same. Leveraging his knowledge and experience, they were able to make more money while reducing their work hours. Significantly.
This freed them up to spend more time living.
It's easy to think working less and making more is something available only to a blessed few. But James has proven over and over again that this is not the case. All you require is:
- An open mind, - The ability to focus on what's important, - An understanding of business models, and - A willingness to challenge your assumptions.
Work Less, Make More will break down all the barriers standing between you and the above.It will teach you how to effectively leverage yourself, your team and your business via:
- Increasing your personal effectiveness - Planning and goalsetting - Learning focus - Building a team - Creating an offer that converts - Leveraging the Profit Formula to boost cash flow - Understanding the importance of Customer Lifetime Value - Choosing the right business model - Removing compromise from your life
This book is for you if you are:
- A business owner (big or small) - Currently in a job with a hard ceiling on how much you can earn - Overworked and underpaid - Stressed out and missing out on precious time with family and friends.
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89
The New Rules of AI Search: SEO for visibility in ChatGPT, Google Gemini and Generative Search
Crystal Carter
4.0
Optimize your brand visibility for AI-powered search engines and large language modelsIn The New Rules of AI Search: SEO for visibility in ChatGPT, Google Gemini and Generative Search, Crystal Carter delivers a practical guide to optimizing brand visibility across AI-powered platforms. As large language models transform how consumers discover products and services, traditional SEO strategies require fundamental updates to remain effective in this new search paradigm. The New Rules of AI Search explores the technical and strategic dimensions of generative engine optimization. Crystal Carter examines how AI search platforms aggregate and present information differently than traditional search engines, providing actionable frameworks for ensuring your brand appears prominently when users query ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and similar platforms for recommendations and information. Readers will also discover: Specific techniques for structuring content that AI systems can easily understand, cite, and recommend to users seeking informationStrategies for building brand authority signals that large language models recognize and prioritize in their generated responsesMethods for monitoring and measuring your brand's visibility across multiple AI search platforms and generative interfacesPractical approaches for adapting existing SEO infrastructure to meet the unique requirements of AI-powered discovery channelsFrameworks for anticipating future developments in generative search and positioning your brand ahead of algorithmic changesEssential for digital marketers, SEO professionals, brand managers, and business owners seeking to maintain competitive visibility, this guide provides the strategic foundation for succeeding as AI fundamentally transforms how consumers search for and discover information online.
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90
How to Grow Your Small Business: A 6-Step Plan to Help Your Business Take Off
Donald Miller
4.0
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91
Invisible Selling Machine
Ryan Deiss, Clate Mask
4.0
Recommended by Daymond John.
Daymond John
Founder/FUBU
John thinks that Digital Marketer founding CEO Ryan Deiss' 2015 book is a great introduction to sales tactics for the new entrepreneur. [source]
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92
How To Market A Book
Joanna Penn
4.0
The first job of an author is, of course, to write great books, but these days, their second job is to market them.
Marketing isn't a skill that most authors have naturally, and there is little formal training. But when your book hits the shelves, and the sales don't start rolling in, there's only two things an author can do. Keep writing more books and ... Get to grips with marketing.
This book is for authors who want to sell more books, but it's also for those writers who want to think more like an entrepreneur. It's for traditionally published authors who want to take control of their future, and for self-published authors who want to jumpstart a career.
There are some short-term tactics for those who want to kick up immediate sales, but the focus of the book is more about instilling values and marketing principles that will help your long-term career as a writer.
It's also about going beyond just the book, because the methods in this guide can take you from being an author into professional speaking, making money from other products and creating opportunities that you can't even imagine yet.
There are no rules in this game, but learning this kind of authentic marketing has certainly changed my life, so read on and I'll share everything I know with you.
How To Market A Book covers an extensive range of marketing principles, strategies and tactics:
Part 1: Marketing Principles - including myths, how to balance your time, co-opetition and generosity
Part 2: Prerequisites for Success - including an understanding of yourself and your target market, professional editing and cover design, your book page on the retailer websites, pricing and the use of free
Part 3: No Platform Needed - Short-term Marketing - including how to get book reviews, paid advertising, using traditional media and tips for TV, radio and press releases
Part 4: The Author Platform - Long-term Marketing - including the reasons why a platform is a good thing, author branding, your author website, list-building and email marketing, content marketing and blogging, audio and podcasting, video and book trailers, social networking, professional speaking, and becoming an author-entrepreneur.
Part 5: Launching Your Book - including how launching has changed, soft launch, launch spikes, post launch and relaunches as well as lessons learned from some major book launches.
Plus/ tips for when you get overwhelmed and plenty more links to further resources.
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93
Socialnomics: How Social Media Transforms the Way We Live and Do Business
Erik Qualman
4.0
A fascinating, research-based look at the impact of social media on businesses and consumers around the world, and what's in store for the future Social Media. You've heard the term, even if you don't use the tools. But just how big has social media become? Social media has officially surpassed pornography as the top activity on the Internet. People would rather give up their e-mail than their social network. It is so powerful that it is causing a macro shift in the way we live and conduct business. Socialnomics charts this shift from the forefront.
Brands can now be strengthened or destroyed by the use of social media. Online networking sites are being used as giant, free focus groups. Advertising is less effective at influencing consumers than the opinions of their peers. If you aren't using social media in your business strategy, you are already behind your competition.
Explores how the concept of "Socialnomics" is changing the way businesses produce, market, and sell, eliminating inefficient marketing and middlemen, and making products easier and cheaper for consumers to obtain Learn how successful businesses are connecting with consumers like never before via Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other social media sites A must-read for anyone wanting to learn about, and harness the power of social media, rather than be squashed by it Author Erik Qualman is a former online marketer for several Top 100 brands and the current Global Vice President of Online Marketing for the world's largest private education firm Socialnomics is an essential book for anyone who wants to understand the implications of social media, and how businesses can tap the power of social media to increase their sales, cut their marketing costs, and reach consumers directly.
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94
The Thank You Economy
Gary Vaynerchuk
4.0
Gary Vaynerchuk, the New York Times bestselling author and creator of Wine Library TV, is back with a bold and expansive look at the evolution of today's marketplace, revealing the essential factors defining and driving successful relationships between businesses and consumers. In this groundbreaking follow-up to the bestselling Crush It!, Vaynerchuk—one of Bloomberg Businessweek’s “20 People Every Entrepreneur Should Follow”—looks beyond a numbers-based analysis to explore the value of social interactions in building our economy.
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95
Marketing 4.0: Moving from Traditional to Digital
Philip Kotler
4.0
Marketing has changed forever--this is what comes nextMarketing 4.0: Moving from Traditional to Digital is the much-needed handbook for next-generation marketing. Written by the world's leading marketing authorities, this book helps you navigate the increasingly connected world and changing consumer landscape to reach more customers, more effectively. Today's customers have less time and attention to devote to your brand--and they are surrounded by alternatives every step of the way. You need to stand up, get their attention, and deliver the message they want to hear. This book examines the marketplace's shifting power dynamics, the paradoxes wrought by connectivity, and the increasing sub-culture splintering that will shape tomorrow's consumer; this foundation shows why Marketing 4.0 is becoming imperative for productivity, and this book shows you how to apply it to your brand today.
Marketing 4.0 takes advantage of the shifting consumer mood to reach more customers and engage them more fully than ever before. Exploit the changes that are tripping up traditional approaches, and make them an integral part of your methodology. This book gives you the world-class insight you need to make it happen.
Discover the new rules of marketing Stand out and create WOW moments Build a loyal and vocal customer base Learn who will shape the future of customer choice Every few years brings a "new" marketing movement, but experienced marketers know that this time its different; it's not just the rules that have changed, it's the customers themselves. Marketing 4.0 provides a solid framework based on a real-world vision of the consumer as they are today, and as they will be tomorrow. Marketing 4.0 gives you the edge you need to reach them more effectively than ever before.
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96
Social Media Roi: Managing and Measuring Social Media Efforts in Your Organization
Olivier Blanchard
4.0
"Blanchard is demanding. He won't allow you to flip through this book, nod your head, and leave. If you're in, you're going to have to invest to get your rewards." --Chris Brogan, president of Human Business Works "Social media isn't inexpensive; it's different expensive. The human effort required to do it right is significant, and not knowing precisely how social media helps your business and how to gauge that progress is a dereliction of duty. In "Social Media ROI," Blanchard provides the missing playbook for sensible, sustainable, profitable social communication. It's about time."--Jay Baer, coauthor of "The NOW Revolution: 7 Shifts to Make Your Business Faster, Smarter, and More Social" ""Social Media ROI" gets down to the heart of the matter: How will social communications positively impact my organizational goals? Olivier takes us through a journey starting from the start, creating a strategy to achieve objectives, and in turn, the means to measure return on investment. If you want to get serious about online communications, you can't go wrong with "Social Media ROI.""--Geoff Livingston, author of "Welcome to the Fifth Estate "and "Now Is Gone " "Olivier explains the intricacies of building a social media-influenced company for every layman to understand. It is important to understand reach, attention, and influence for social media ROI. This is the book to help with that understanding."--Kyle Lacy, principal at MindFrame (yourmindframe.com) and author of "Branding Yourself" "Ladies and gentlemen, the social media code has officially been cracked. In "Social Media ROI," Blanchard reveals how companies can apply the massive power of social media to achieve equally massive results. Incredibly practical, yet supremely enjoyable, this book offers a clear roadmap to growing your revenue in the dizzying world of tweets and retweets, likes and shares, connections and comments."--Sally Hogshead, author of "Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation" "If you know Olivier, you know he goes beyond the bullshit. He 'gets it.' This book will put you in the mindset to successfully plan and achieve real business objectives with social media. It's a hard fact that good business decisions depend on real results. Olivier avoids the fluff with clear-cut ideas that will help you produce results."--Brandon Prebynski, social media strategist Use Social and Viral Technologies to Supercharge Your Customer Service! Use this book to bring true business discipline to your social media program and align with your organization's goals. Top branding and marketing expert Olivier Blanchard brings together new best practices for strategy, planning, execution, measurement, analysis, and optimization. You will learn how to define the financial and nonfinancial business impacts you are aiming for--and achieve them. "Social Media ROI "delivers practical solutions for everything from structuring programs to attracting followers, defining metrics to managing crises. Whether you are in a startup or a global enterprise, this book will help you gain more value from every dime you invest in social media. You'll learn how to: Align social communications with broader business goals and functions Plan for effective performance measurement Establish clarity of vision, purpose, and execution Implement guidelines and operations for effectively managing social media Get started by "listening before talking" Integrate social media into long-term marketing programs, short-term campaigns, and brand initiatives Use social media to deliver real-time, optimized customer support Leverage mobility and the "on-the-fly" social media culture Measure FRY (Frequency, Reach, and Yield) Includes a foreword by Brian Solis.
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Recommended by Jeff Gibbard.
Jeff Gibbard
One of the five books Jeff recommends to young people interested in his career path. [source]
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97
They Ask, You Answer: A Revolutionary Approach to Inbound Sales, Content Marketing, and Today's Digital Consumer
Marcus Sheridan
4.0
The revolutionary guide that challenged businesses around the world to stop selling to their buyers and start answering their questions to get results; revised and updated to address new technology, trends, the continuous evolution of the digital consumer, and much more
In today's digital age, the traditional sales funnel--marketing at the top, sales in the middle, customer service at the bottom--is no longer effective. To be successful, businesses must obsess over the questions, concerns, and problems their buyers have, and address them as honestly and as thoroughly as possible. Every day, buyers turn to search engines to ask billions of questions. Having the answers they need can attract thousands of potential buyers to your company--but only if your content strategy puts your answers at the top of those search results. It's a simple and powerful equation that produces growth and success: They Ask, You Answer.
Using these principles, author Marcus Sheridan led his struggling pool company from the bleak depths of the housing crash of 2008 to become one of the largest pool installers in the United States. Discover how his proven strategy can work for your business and master the principles of inbound and content marketing that have empowered thousands of companies to achieve exceptional growth.
They Ask, You Answer is a straightforward guide filled with practical tactics and insights for transforming your marketing strategy. This new edition has been fully revised and updated to reflect the evolution of content marketing and the increasing demands of today's internet-savvy buyers. New chapters explore the impact of technology, conversational marketing, the essential elements every business website should possess, the rise of video, and new stories from companies that have achieved remarkable results with They Ask, You Answer.
Upon reading this book, you will know:
How to build trust with buyers through content and video. How to turn your web presence into a magnet for qualified buyers. What works and what doesn't through new case studies, featuring real-world results from companies that have embraced these principles. Why you need to think of your business as a media company, instead of relying on more traditional (and ineffective) ways of advertising and marketing. How to achieve buy-in at your company and truly embrace a culture of content and video. How to transform your current customer base into loyal brand advocates for your company. They Ask, You Answer is a must-have resource for companies that want a fresh approach to marketing and sales that is proven to generate more traffic, leads, and sales.
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Recommended by Brian Fanzo Isocialfanz.
Brian Fanzo Isocialfanz
Number 1 question @TheSalesLion gets about his book "They Ask You Answer" isn't about growing sales or marketing... It's I can't get my sales team or marketing team onboard or leadership to buy in! We must focus on collaboration! #IMlive19 [source]
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98
Freakishly Effective Social Media for Network Marketing: How to Stop Wasting Your Time on Things That Don't Work and Start Doing What Does!
Ray Higdon and Jessica Higdon
4.0
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99
80/20 Sales and Marketing: The Definitive Guide to Working Less and Making More
Perry Marshall
4.0
Guided by famed marketing consultant and best-selling author Perry Marshall, sales and marketing professionals save 80 percent of their time and money by zeroing in on the right 20 percent of their market — then apply 80/202 and 80/203 to gain 10X, even 100X the success. With a powerful 80/20 software tool (online, included with the book), sellers and marketers uncover how to slash time-wasters; advertise to hyper-responsive buyers and avoid tire-kickers; gain coveted positions on search engines; differentiate themselves from competitors and gain esteem in their marketplace. With the included tools they’ll see exactly how much money they’re leaving on the table, and how to put it back in their pockets. Sellers will identify untapped markets, high-profit opportunities and incremental improvements, gaining time and greater profit potential. Supported by online tools from Marshall, including The 80/20 Power Curve, a tool that helps you see invisible money, and a Marketing DNA Test, a personal assessment that zeroes in on one’s natural selling assets, this timeless guide promises to change the game for seasoned and novice marketers and sellers.
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Recommended by Ola Olusoga.
Ola Olusoga
Like Charlie Munger once said: “I’ve long believed that a certain system - which almost any intelligent person can learn - works way better than the systems most people use to understand the world. What you need is a latticework of mental models in your head. And, with that system, things gradually fit together in a way that enhances cognition. Just as multiple factors shape every system, multiple mental models from a variety of disciplines are necessary to understand that system". You can read this book to start building a "latticework of mental models in your head". [source]
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100
The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley
1
