This is a book review of Business Relationships That Last by Ed Wallace.

How I got the book:

Electronic review copy was sent to me on behalf of the publisher (sorry it took me so long to write this, Greenleaf Group Book Press).

Background:

Ed Wallace is the Chief Relationship Officer of  The Relationship Capital Group.  He has many years of experience in sales and business development.

Business Relationships That Last – 5 Steps to Transform Contacts into High Performing Relationships is quite a timely book in this age of social media, networking, trust agents, and generally behaving like a decent human being.

This book focuses on a key concept called relationship capital, which resembles the concepts of the emotional bank account (as per Stephen Covey) or the Whuffie Factor (as per Tara Hunt via Cory Doctorow).

This book is divided into three main parts:

• Part I: What is Relationship Capital?
• Part II: The 5 Steps to Transform Contacts into High-Performing Relationships
• Part III: Action Planning

The strengths:

This is a decent, but somewhat narrowly focused, book.  Wallace uses the character of Max, a taxi cab driver who is much more than he seems, as a means to illustrate the power of relationship capital.  There’s a good section on relational blockers, which are reasons why you might not be developing good business relationships.  The Relational Ladder, a diagram used throughout the book, emphasizes the importance of soft and hard skills.  It also shows the stages of building a business relationship where, believe or not, the sign of a highest level performing relationship is your ability (and comfort) with asking your customer for help.  There’s also a section on a Relationship Quotient and some exercises that help you figure that out and apply it to your business relationships.

There’s no question that this is important stuff – it’s getting easier to do things on your own on the Web, but it’s getting harder to do them in an excellent or remarkable way without developing relationships with other talented folks.  Chris Brogan and Julien Smith talked about the power of relationships within Trust Agents and this book focuses on that piece of the puzzle in much more detail, although slanted towards sales.

The areas for improvement:

The main suggestion that I have for improvement is that this book would have been more useful by looking beyond relationships with the ulterior motive of making your monthly sales quota.  I think the concepts beyond this book should go beyond filling your month end sales order form:  maybe  that’s an idea for a follow-up book.

Also, I was turned off by the Action Planning section.  I felt I like I was getting account management training which, while it’s not a bad thing in and of itself, was a bit too focused on that kind of thing.  Might be great if you sell widgets, but that’s not my interest.

Finally, there was a very overt plug for the author’s company, website and services.  I think the first hit is free, so to speak, but I’m sure that this book is a “funnel” to bring in additional business.  And that’s fair game, no question:  every author has their own reasons for publishing a book.  From my vantage point, however, it soured the book for me.

Other points of interest:

I really do enjoy the character of Max, the Jedi Master cab driver.  Well, he’s not really a Jedi.  But still…

Verdict (out of 10): 7 (worth getting from the library; good ideas about how to build better professional relationships, but seems to be focused towards the widget salesperson.)

My methodology for book reviews and affiliate links: I’ll provide an Amazon.com affiliate link (or other related affiliate link) for content if I think it’s worth buying and reading. If I don’t, I won’t provide an affiliate link. The affiliate link helps fund my content creation activities.

If you would like me to review YOUR eBook, book, or other content, please send me an E-Mail at markdykeman@gmail.com to get instructions on how to send your book or content to me. You’ll get my honest opinion about your book, either publically or privately.

This is a book review of The Whuffie Factor – Using The Power of Social Networks To Build Your Business by Tara Hunt of HorsePigCow.com.

How I got the book:

It was a Christmas present, on my list. I’m serious.  You’ll be seeing me repeat this phrase for awhile.

Background:

Tara Hunt is a marketer and an entrepreneur who has been blogging for a number of years.  This book captures her thoughts about how to build social capital (or reputation or goodwill or karma…) at the organizational level.  Whuffie is the term coined by writer Cory Doctorow in one of his novels to represent a kind of currency, derived from reputation, good deeds, and favorable public opinion.  In his novel, whuffie permits the individual to enjoy a higher standard of living depending on how much whuffie they have.

Hunt takes the basic concept and uses it in the real world.  She also extends it to businesses as a concept for them to use as a means to build up goodwill with customers, members of the communities they participate in, and the general public.  If done right, the book suggests, whuffie can help drive business growth.

The strengths:

Tara writes in a warm, conversational style.  She manages to work in her personal experiences without being boastful, merely presenting them as living examples of the concepts that she’s writing about.

The book intermingles both whuffie and community management, which provides the bridge to the enterprise being able to accumulate and use whuffie.  There are a number of examples of companies doing things to build whuffie/goodwill from the very beginning, as well as companies like Dell that weathered a storm of negative opinion and used social media tools to help win back the confidence and trust of its customers.

The table which gives examples of how to build (and lose) whuffie is a practical tool, as is The Entrepreneur’s Whuffie Checklist.

The areas for improvement:

One thing that I think would have served this book well was to reference Seth Godin’s The Purple Cow (which I highly recommend if you are into marketing, spreading new ideas, and generally trying to do amazing things) and his concept of “remarkable” in the section where Tara writes about being “notable”.  To me it’s the same thing and I think it would have been a good idea to acknowledge where Seth Godin had already gone with this concept.

Another thing is that I found that the book rambled a little bit, bouncing back and forth between personal whuffie building and community building.  It felt like the book was charting a path between two similar but ultimately different subjects.  I still see whuffie as something individuals, not businesses, accumulate.

Other points of interest:

I particularly enjoyed the anecdotes about Moleskine, Threadless, and Ma.gnolia.

Verdict (out of 10): 8 (recommended; some good ideas to help companies to grow a heart and a soul)

My methodology for book reviews and affiliate links: I’ll provide an Amazon.com affiliate link (or other related affiliate link) for content if I think it’s worth buying and reading. If I don’t, I won’t provide an affiliate link. The affiliate link helps fund my content creation activities.

If you would like me to review YOUR eBook, book, or other content, please send me an E-Mail at markdykeman@gmail.com to get instructions on how to send your book or content to me. You’ll get my honest opinion about your book, either publically or privately.

This is a book review of The Paradox of Choice:  How The Culture of Abundance Robs Us Of Satisfaction by Barry Schwartz.

How I got the book:

It was a Christmas present, on my list. I’m serious.

Background:

Barry Schwartz is an American psychology professor who has written extensively on the impact of choice on individuals.  He has focused on the impact of having a great deal (perhaps too much) of choices for many of our daily decisions.  The Paradox of Choice contains various arguments as to why having too many choices can result in misery and problems rather than happiness and satisfaction.  The book is divided into four sections:

I.  When We Choose

II.  How We Choose

III.  Why We Suffer

IV.  What We Can Do

The first three sections deal with the nature of making choices and possible negative results from having too many options.  The final section presents eleven recommendations on how we can better handle the wide ranges of choices available to us.

The strengths:

There is no question in my mind that this is an important book that everyone should read.  Schwartz clearly and comprehensively makes a case that having too many choices, or options, available to us in our lives can lead to unhappiness.

The areas for improvement:

After spending a great deal of time building a case for choice overload, Schwartz spends very little time on possible solutions to these problems.  Several of them were foreshadowed throughout the book and the entire list, when put together, isn’t very inspiring.

Other points of interest:

Although they aren’t addressed in this book, I think this book can shed some insight into the longer term impact of Twitter and of “free” products.

Verdict (out of 10): 8 (recommended; a good way to get a handle on an important, but seldom discussed, topic)

My methodology for book reviews and affiliate links: I’ll provide an Amazon.com affiliate link (or other related affiliate link) for content if I think it’s worth buying and reading. If I don’t, I won’t provide an affiliate link. The affiliate link helps fund my content creation activities.

If you would like me to review YOUR eBook, book, or other content, please send me an E-Mail at markdykeman@gmail.com to get instructions on how to send your book or content to me. You’ll get my honest opinion about your book, either publically or privately.

This is a book review of The Social Media Marketing Book by Dan Zarrella of  Dan Zarrella.com.

How I got the book:

Review copy sent to me by O’Reilly Media.

Background:

Dan Zarrella is an inbound marketing manager for Hubspot.com.  He refers to himself as “The Social Media & Marketing Scientist” within his personal branding and on his blog.  He has written and presented a great deal of content concerning viral marketing, particularly viral marketing through Twitter as well as research concerning the content of Tweets (messages sent using Twitter) and ReTweets (the process of copying and sending another Twitter user’s Tweet, used to share information with other Twitter users).

The title of the book is pretty self-explanatory:  this book is a collection of information about using social media as a part of your organization’s marketing strategy.

The strengths:

This is a very good introduction to the basics of social media marketing.  It gives an overview of the basic building blocks of social media, including blogs; multi-media; microblogging; social networking; social news and bookmarking; and older but still valuable tools like forums.  Within each section, Zarrella introduces the tool, talks about its history, and describes the protocols for using each tool.  He provides examples of websites and applications that represent each category of tool.  Zarrella chose to go “wide” instead of “deep” in this book and it’s a good strategy for a reader who’s new to social media marketing.

I like the fact that Zarrella links blogging back to journaling and notes that the practice has been around for (literally) thousands of years.  At the same time, though, he rightly points out that blogs have evolved to be powerful content management systems.

Twitter is clearly one of Zarrella’s strengths and he packs a lot of useful information in a small number of pages.

I think it’s very good that strategy, tactics, practices and measurement are discussed in the book, although I think they don’t get as much emphasis as the tools themselves.

There are loads of interesting and useful tips in this book.  Zarrella also provides anecdotes from various social media gurus and notables to share their wisdom.

The areas for improvement:

I have a couple of quibbles with this book.  In the greater scheme of things, they are  minor, but I still want to mention them in case they are useful.

This book is written in first person, but the author isn’t properly introduced until the end of the book.  Yes, we know the author’s name by looking at the cover of the book and a tiny bit about him by looking at the back cover.  But we don’t really find out who he is and what he does until we read the About The Author page at the back of the book.  It’s like the book is written by a faceless, anonymous individual who we’re supposed to assume that we know, although hints and clues are dropped throughout.  However, if this book is really designed as an introduction to social media marketing, chances are the reader probably won’t have heard of Dan Zarrella.  They also might be wondering why there are several references to his employer and their offerings in the book if this is a generic guide for the social media practitioner.  I know this is being really picky, but I found the effect to be jarring, even though I know who Dan is and what he does.  By contrast, in Trust Agents, Chris Brogan and Julien Smith take the time to introduce themselves early in the book to establish a somewhat more personal touch.  I think Chris has a higher profile than Dan, but Chris made the point of assuming that the reader didn’t know who he is.  It would have been a better move for Dan to properly introduce himself at the beginning of the book when the book was being written in the first person.

Second, I think that a better title for this book would have been The Social Media Marketing Tools Book.  I say that because I think there’s a whole side of social media marketing that Dan doesn’t discuss in much detail:  the social or human side of social media marketing.  I’m not a marketer and I’m an amateur (but reasonably experienced) social media user, but the thing that should distinguish social media marketing from traditional marketing is the human element:  interaction with consumers, clients, and potential leads through social media tools.  Traditional marketing tools are largely one-way using older media like print, television, and radio to send messages from the producer to the consumer.  Social media tools facilitate and encourage communication between both parties when used correctly, with the classic examples of companies like Dell’s websites and Twitter presence, Comcast’s Frank Eliason, and Zappos.  And, to be fair, Zarrella references these examples, as well as other examples of how social media tools can backfire (e.g. embarrassing YouTube videos).  In short, this is a tools-centric book and a bit lacking on the social or human side.  That’s why I have a problem with the title, but not a huge one.

Other points of interest:

Zarrella makes a point of including the HTML code for embedding YouTube videos into a blog or other web page, which I thought was a useful tip.

I think this book should be included as a “starter” pack of several other books about social media and web presence.  At this point in my reading, I’d couple it with Friends With Benefits, which goes in more depth on some of these topics.

Verdict (out of 10): 8  (recommended; good overview of the field with plenty of useful tips)

My methodology for book reviews and affiliate links: I’ll provide an Amazon.com affiliate link (or other related affiliate link) for content if I think it’s worth buying and reading. If I don’t, I won’t provide an affiliate link. The affiliate link helps fund my content creation activities.

If you would like me to review YOUR eBook, book, or other content, please send me an E-Mail at markdykeman@gmail.com to get instructions on how to send your book or content to me. You’ll get my honest opinion about your book, either publically or privately.

This is a book review of Just Listen:  Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone by Mark Goulston.

How I got the book:

Electronic review copy sent to me (sorry, I’m kind of late at reviewing this book).

Background:

Dr. Mark Goulston is a business advisor, consultant, trainer and coach trained as a clinical psychiatrist who honed his skills as an FBI/police hostage negotiation trainer.

Just Listen is a collection of anecdotes, tips, and strategies how to effectively communicate with other people, especially those people who don’t want to listen.

The strengths:

This book is loaded with tips, techniques and anecdotes about developing and improving your listening skills.  Many of these techniques involve different ways of listening, questioning and building trust with other people so you can get to the root of their problems, anger, fears, and concerns.

Anything that promotes better listening, communication, and understanding between people is a must-have resource.

To give you a better idea of what’s included in the book, here are the section headings:

• The Secret To Reaching Anyone
• The Nine Core Rules For Getting Through To Anyone
• 12 Quick and Easy Ways to Acheive Buy-In and Get Through
• Putting It All Together:  Fast Fixes For Seven Challenging Situations

The areas for improvement

I cannot think of any good reason why you shouldn’t buy this book.  Seriously.  It’s valuable, valuable, valuable information that we would all benefit from.  Although, it’s worth pointing out that you could conceivably use the techniques in this book to manipulate the hell out of a lot of people.  But I trust that you’re one of the good guys.

Other points of interest:

The term amygdala hijack, although a bit of a tongue-twister, makes so much sense that it’s scary.

Verdict (10 out of 10): (this book is extremely valuable to anyone who needs to communicate to other people… like you and me…)

My methodology for book reviews and affiliate links: I’ll provide an Amazon.com affiliate link (or other related affiliate link) for content if I think it’s worth buying and reading. If I don’t, I won’t provide an affiliate link. The affiliate link helps fund my content creation activities.

If you would like me to review YOUR eBook, book, or other content, please send me an E-Mail at markdykeman@gmail.com to get instructions on how to send your book or content to me. You’ll get my honest opinion about your book, either publicly or privately.

This is a book review of Friends With Benefits:  A Social Media Marketing Handbook by Darren Barefoot and Julie Szabo.

How I got the book:

Electronic review copy sent to me on behalf of the authors.  Note:  the book is slated for publication in November 2009, so it isn’t available for purchase yet.

Background:

Darren Barefoot and Julie Szabo have run social media marketing campaigns for national retailers.  Darren also blogs at DarrenBarefoot.com and is generally well known in the social media space, particularly in Canada.  More details here.

What you read is what you get:  as the title implies, this is a handbook full of advice and tips about social media marketing.  It goes through the basics.

The strengths:

This book gives a good overview of the social media space and how you as a marketer can use it to tell the world about your organization.  It’s very clear, easy to read, and non-threatening.  For example, they have a great section that describes RSS to non-technical folks.  The Netiquette section is also a very good overview (you can get a copy of it for free here).

The areas for improvement

While this is a very good overview, this might not be the book for marketing professionals looking for more advanced tips and techniques.

Other points of interest:

They used the name “Regina Phalange” in this book – no, I’m not making that up.

Verdict (8 out of 10): (definitely worth checking out; a useful resource for marketers, especially for social media beginners)

My methodology for book reviews and affiliate links: I’ll provide an Amazon.com affiliate link (or other related affiliate link) for content if I think it’s worth buying and reading. If I don’t, I won’t provide an affiliate link. The affiliate link helps fund my content creation activities.

If you would like me to review YOUR eBook, book, or other content, please send me an E-Mail at markdykeman@gmail.com to get instructions on how to send your book or content to me. You’ll get my honest opinion about your book, either publicly or privately.