At ad:tech last week, fellow PR/new media marketing practitioner and blogger, Rohit Bhargava and I were talking about his new book, “Personality Not Included – Why Brands Lose Their Authenticity and How Great Companies Get it Back”, and he mentioned that I should send him a list of recommended reading for a new bookstore feature he’s adding to his blog.
I thought that was a great idea and with so many smart marketers reading Online Marketing Blog, I’d like to invite you to share a few of your favorite books on the subjects of marketing online, social media and new media public relations.
I’ll start with the list I sent Rohit which includes a few books that are several years old but most are fairly new or soon to be released:
- The Long Tail – Chris Anderson
- Join the Conversation – Joseph Jaffe
- The New Influencers – Paul Gillin
- The Search – John Battelle
- The New Rules of Marketing & PR – David Meerman Scott
- Now is Gone – Geoff Livingston & Brian Solis
- Do It Wrong Quickly, How the Web Changes the Old Marketing Rules – Mike Moran
- Search Engine Marketing Inc – Bill Hunt, Mike Moran
- The Corporate Blogging Book – Debbie Weil
- Waiting for Your Cat to Bark – Jeff & Bryan Eisenberg
- The Eyes Have It – Kevin Lee & Steve Baldwin
- Lead Generation for the Complex Sale – Brian J. Carroll
- Duct Tape Marketing – John Jantsch
- Seth Godin’s “Meatball Sundae – Is Your Marketing Out of Synch?” is scheduled for release in December
You can find and order or pre-order all of these books at Amazon or BN.com.
Do you have a recommended reading list of books for better online marketing and PR? Please share in the comments.
– Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Charles, Mackay
– Rhetoric, Aristotle
– We The Media, Dan Gillmor
– The New Competitor Intelligence, Leonard Fuld
– Competitive Communication, Barry Eckhouse
Let’s not forget Ogilvy on Advertising. This classic contains tons of invaluable information on the psychology of marketing.
I read it at least once a year and most of Ogilvy’s ideas still ring true to this day.
Thanks for including us, Lee! I’d also like to recommend Naked Conversations by Scoble and Israel. I found it to be highly influential.
Geoff, that was a HUGE oversight on my part. Thank you for mentioning it.
Thanks for the mention Lee!
I’d recommend(a) Relationship Marketing and (b)Total Access (2 books), both by Regis McKenna (the man who wrote the first marketing plan for the Apple Macintosh, among many, many other claims to fame).
Dealing with Darwin by Geoffrey Moore (or any of Geoff Moore’s books) is great. The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR by Al Ries and Laura Ries is good.
I 100 percent agree with other people who suggest Ogilvy on Advertising as required reading. It’s the best book I’ve ever read on advertising.
An excellent list of Marketing Gurus and their books is at:
http://www.marketingminds.com.au/features/gurus.html
Marketing Minds also have an excellent – and well organized – catalogue of recommended reading on PR, and all types of marketing topics.
Our own Digital Marketing website (www.digitalmarketing.us) has lots of other recommended reading.
Hope this is useful,
Rusty.
Thanks for including my book. Great company indeed!
Cheers, David
Thanks for including my books, Lee. One that I never see mentioned that I have learned a lot from is “Response: The Complete Guide to Profitable Direct Marketing” by Lois K. Geller. It took me from being a complete neophyte in direct marketing to someone who could figure out how to apply those traditional techniques to the Web. I feel strongly that every Web marketer needs to learn direct marketing principles to some degree in order to create the feedback loop that tells them what is working and what isn’t.
Hey great list, thanks!
The Long Tail is a must-read for anyone involved in this industry – I’ve read a lot of books about online marketing but this is truly one of the best out there. I definitely recommend it to anyone looking to more fully grasp the theoretical concept underlying online marketing and the Internet.
“A smile in the mind”
This title from Phaidon Press is certainly a classic and helped me face the firepit of weekly campaigns at the AAA School of Advertising. Highly recommended.
hi i have just finished reading 2 fantastic books that i would whole heartedly recommend. The first is Wikinomics by Dan Tapscott and Anthony D Williams and the second is The world is flat by Thomas L Friedman . Both are really topical at the moment with the wave of social computing. Thanks craig.
Thanks for the nice recommendation, Lee. I’d also suggest Everything is Miscellaneous by David Weinberger. It’s a wonderful work of scholarship that’s also engaging and enjoyable to read.