Wow. Take a look at this thread over on the O’Reilly Radar blog. I wasn’t aware they are looking to claim full legal, exclusive ownership to the phrase “Web 2.0”, but clearly they are. I didn’t have enough time to read the many comments that have been added to the original post, but it sounds like the community has spoken…
I first came across David Meerman Scott in the blogosphere and when I saw the title of his book, Cashing In with Content, I couldn’t resist buying it. After starting it a few weeks ago I finally carved out enough time to finish reading it last night.
David has a great writing style and this book is a must read for anyone looking to add value to their website. Don’t just think of content in the traditional sense. David has a lot of great case studies that show how product facts and figures are part of the content world and how that information can and should be used to enhance the user experience.
My favorite section of this book is the first part where he dives into seven different e-commerce sites/solutions: Crutchfield, Alloy, Design Within Reach, mediabistro, Esurance, Aerosmith (yes, Aerosmith!) and The Wall Street Journal. If you’re running an e-commerce site there’s something to be learned from each of these chapters.
The next two parts of the book cover B2B and the combination of Nonprofit, Education, Healthcare and Politics, all with the same case study approach. (Again, David’s writing style is very conversational, so don’t be scared off by the “case study” format.). The last part gets into best practices and lessons learned, a nice summary for all the earlier chapters.
Of the 12 best practices he cites towards the end, my favorites are “When launching a new site, start with a comprehensive needs analysis” and “Include interactive content and opportunities for user feedback.” The first one seems ridiculously obvious, but be honest: Can you really say you did a thorough needs analysis (from your customers’ point of view) when you build and launched your last site?
There have been plenty of stories lately about how TiVo and other DVR’s are wreaking havoc with the network advertising industry. One possible solution is to prevent ad-skipping in future DVR products. Bad solution. You can’t solve this problem by forcing people to do something they don’t want to do. Long before DVRs hit the scene we had all grown accustomed to using “commercial breaks” to run to the bathroom, raid the kitchen, etc., so this is nothing new.
This article from cnet sheds light on a new way to attack this problem: make the ads interesting so that people don’t want to miss them. Here’s an interesting quote towards the end:
Networks and advertisers should start taking advantage of the fact that while material is fast-forwarded, consumers can perceive individual frames.
True. In fact, rather than completely missing the message by making that bathroom/kitchen run during any commercial break for the shows I DVR, I hit the fast forward button and wind up seeing bits and pieces of the ads. More often than not I can tell you what products were just featured in the ads, despite the fact that I “skipped” them…
Now here’s an author who really understands how to leverage his platform. He’s got a catchy title/cover combination, taking advantage of The DaVinci Code, of course. More importantly, take a look at his blog. He’s offering readers “over $6,900 in bonuses from top Internet success stories.”
Are the tips worth it? For a $15.72 book (discounted price on Amazon), I’d say so. It’s clear a lot of other people agree: The book was ranked #210 overall in Amazon’s book category this morning and it’s already up to #80 at noon east coast time, putting it in the #1 slot on the Computers & Internet list today. It’s too early to say whether he can sustain this sort of momentum, but I applaud the effort thus far.
An author’s platform is more important today than ever before, but it’s not just about sheer numbers and reach. If you’re an author or thinking of becoming one, what platform-related assets do you have to offer your prospective readers? Do you have access to information/material beyond what’s in your book that you could offer up via a blog/website? Could that material be used to help leverage sales of your book?
Update: It's also interesting to watch the effect Joel Comm's book has on other related titles. For example, O'Reilly's Google Advertising Tools was ranked 8,452 yesterday and has climbed to 585 today while our own Money for Content and Your Clicks for Free jumped from 42,908 yesterday to 1,445 today. Neither of these were on the Computer & Internet Top 100 before today and now they're both on it. They're also both on the Amazon list of "What do customers ultimately buy after viewing items like this?" on the detail page for The AdSense Code. Thanks Joel!
As part of my ongoing use of the getAbstract book summaries program I was able to “read” two books on a recent flight home: Blue Ocean Strategy and Hot Property.
Blue Ocean Strategy is all about “hitting ‘em where they ain’t”, in old baseball lingo. In other words, rather than competing in an overcrowded space where all participants suffer from reduced market share and profits, why not move into the “blue ocean” and build a new business where none currently exist? It sounds much simpler than it is, of course, but it still caused me to stop and think. I love this quote:
To fundamentally shift the strategy canvas of an industry, you must begin by reorienting your strategic focus from competitors to alternatives, and from customers to non-customers.
Read that again. In just about any business out there it’s accurate to say the number of non-customers far exceeds the number of customers. What can you do to convert those non-customers? What sort of new product would lure them in? Most of your non-customers don’t even know you exist, so you not only have to create a completely new, exciting product, but you’ve got to figure out how to raise awareness. If you think about great new product developments of the past I’ll bet most of them weren’t created so much to beat a competitor as they were to establish a new industry.
One final (great) quote from this one:
Non-customers tend to offer far more insight into how to unlock and grow a blue ocean than do relatively content existing customers.
Hot Property’s subtitle is The Stealing of Ideas in an Age of Globalization. It talks not only about the IP theft that’s so widespread today and how the U.S. is “the world’s most zealous intellectual property cop”, but also how the U.S. “owes its Industrial Revolution to some astonishing instances of industrial espionage.” One of the excerpts notes that “Hamilton and Congress wanted to rapidly industrialize the United States…by whatever means necessary…America thus became the world’s premier legal sanctuary for industrial pirates.” Very interesting.