The coolest marketing podcasts, blogs, websites, and books.
In Delivering Happiness, Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh describes his journey in building Link Exchange which sold for about $200 million and Zappos which was recently acquired by Amazon for about $1 billion. The book is written like an autobiography and is very honest and open. You learn some interesting things about him like how he …
How do you make your company more open using social technologies? That is the challenge that Charlene Li discusses in her latest book Open Leadership. She discusses how social media can help organizations become more open and transparent and also share ideas more effectively within the company. She also discusses how to overcome the challenges …
If you are starting a marketing blog, or any blog, there are several benefits for self hosting your blog on your own domain. You own the domain and control it, including all the Google authority that it builds up over time from people linking to you. You have more flexibility is changing the site appearance …
Advertising executive Rory Sutherland gives a brilliant and humorous talk at TED about how marketing creates intangible value and why this is good for society. He points out that while creating tangible value requires raw materials, energy, and labor, creating intangible value just requires a good idea. Marketing often involves changing the perception of a …
Pepsi recently announced that they plan to move away from traditional marketing and toward a new strategy that involves leveraging social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook to “become a catalyst in the culture” and “add value to a community”. Tom Asacker discusses this in the following post from his blog, AClearEye.com. I’ve just read …
This is a great presentation by Scott Berkun, who is the author of the book Confessions of a Public Speaker. The talk which is titled “How to Call BS on a Social Media Guru” makes some interesting points about marketing and cognitive bias. SMC Seattle May Event: How to Call BS on a Social Media …
For many smaller businesses, WordPress can be a great website solution and an effective marketing tool. There are literally thousands of great designs that are available, with hundreds of designs costing less than $40 at a site like Themeforest.net. In addition to the low cost, WordPress website themes can run on the WordPress content management …
Rework is a great book from the founders of the successful web company 37 signals. I really like the contrarian ideas from the book like “how drug dealers get it right” because it is great to get a fresh perspective on business. I also like how Jason and David get straight to the point and …
This is a great presentation by Simon Sinek about how some organizations are able to achieve so much more than others with seemingly the same amount of resources. Why did no one buy Gateway’s flat screens or Dell’s MP3 players? The following video, which I think marketers should watch over and over, explains why. The …
Prolific podcaster, writer, and all around nice guy, Joseph Jaffe recently released his third marketing book entitled Flip the Funnel. This book mainly focuses on the idea of flipping the sales funnel to focus marketing on existing customers. The reasoning for this shift in marketing strategy is sound: existing customers are far less expensive than …
In Switch, Chip and Dan Heath describe a simple framework for getting people to change their behavior, a very relevant topic for marketers. Switch is a must read for marketers because many ideas in this book can help marketers be more effective at changing behavior. Whether your goal is to get more consumers to switch …
The official list of authors has just been released for the upcoming book Age of Conversation 3. These brilliant individuals will be sharing their insights and ideas on marketing, social media, and the changing business landscape. The book is a collaboration of about 300 leading marketers, writers, and thinkers who each contribute 1 page to …
Linchpin is a very thought provoking book that describes how we must think differently about work to succeed in the new economy. Here are a few of the big ideas and my reflections on how this can be applied to marketing. The idea of repetitive hard work done to the specifications of a rule book …
Here is my video on how to set up your own personal domain like ChrisBrogan.com or CharlesSipe.com and why it is very important for personal branding. Personal Branding with a Personal Domain from Charles Sipe on Vimeo.
Here are the best marketing books for 2009 listed in order of awesomeness: 1. Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs (The New Rules of Social Media) by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah Why and how to market your business online through inbound marketing rather than outbound marketing. 2.Free: The Future of …
1. Having a blog helps you create more content on your site, which often leads to more pages showing up in Google search results. 2. Every new blog post is a potential source for inbound links to your site. 3. Blogs give you a platform to speak directly to your customer. 4. Blogs are a …
Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuk is a business book about how to be successful from Gary’s perspective. Gary Vaynerchuk has built one of the strongest personal brands on the internet with his successful Wine Library TV video show and a Twitter following of over 800,000 (@garyvee). If you haven’t heard Gary Vaynerchuk speak, prepare to …
Tom Asacker argues that Toyota lost its way when it shifted its focus away from an obsession with making quality cars and more towards the numbers and Wall Street. That loss in focus by the company may now result in a loss of focus in the mind of the consumer. See the following article from …
I asked top minds in marketing about the best marketing career advice they have ever received. Here are their responses: “Get involved in the process.” Oddly, I learned this from Senator John Montford in the late 80′s. We were flying back to Austin from Lubbock and I asked him about impacting the legislative process: At …
Whether you love them or hate them, Apple has been one of the greatest business success stories of our time and it can be argued that most of their success is attributed to their marketing. Here are the top 7 things marketers can learn from Apple. Create suspense around new products Apple is known for …
