4/5 stars
HarperBusiness, 2013
188 pages
Non-Fiction Business Marketing
Source: Received an ARC through Amazon Vine in exchange for an honest review.
I made a bit of a mistake when picking out this book for review. I saw the subtitle and thought it was related to telling a personal professional story, to working on an elevator pitch of your skills and pluses, and ways to get hired or at least get your foot in the door. Instead this book is more focused on how brands/businesses can use social media to their fullest advantage. While I think some of these techniques can be adapted on a more personal scale (choosing the right message on the right platform at the right time comes to mind), for the most part it was not as personally applicable as I had hoped.
However it did become incredibly fascinating as Vaynerchuk presented case studies of what he considered successful and unsuccessful uses of different media. For example, who told a good story on Facebook? Who confused quantity with quality on Twitter? Deconstructing these examples along with Vaynerchuk was definitely my favorite part of the book and helped me get through what I considered less interesting sections of just text. These bits are loaded with personality and I zipped through them.
I've mostly stayed off most social media, excepting a personal facebook account and linkedin profile, blog twitter, and a mixed Pinterest account. I just don't have the time and energy to properly devote to each channel (and quite frankly I haven't had much interest.) However this book has me seriously considering getting a tumblr and/or instagram account; just because. I also feel like it has opened my eyes to all the marketing that is done to me. I hope to be able to more critically evaluate future efforts because of reading this book.
Something that is applicable I feel are his emphasis on putting forth to understand what you can accomplish with the media and putting your own personal touch on this. Those are good attitudes to take across many arenas and I will certainly be evaluating how I can implement them in my own (non-marketing) career.
Recommended for marketers of products of all sizes; may be less interesting on a personal level.
I don't have time to devote to much social media for the blog either, but I try twitter to some extent
ReplyDeleteThis sounds really interesting -- I actually find books about social media fascinating. Great review!
ReplyDeleteThis sounds kinda fascinating. I don't really go on my twitter but I do like my FB account though. :)
ReplyDeleteEven though you went into this reading thinking you'd get one thing but got something totally different, it's great you got away with a positive experience. This book isn't for me, but I appreciate the review! Awesome work! :)
ReplyDeleteMarlene @ The Flyleaf Review
I've been studying marketing a lot lately to improve my own business and while this cover never would have sold me on the book, your review did! Social media is important for businesses these days and really is very much a part of my job. I need to try to learn everything I can to market to the best of my ability.
ReplyDeleteI LOVE instagram! Strangely enough, though it's for personal stuff, it's really gotten me in touch with a lot of other bloggers I may not have known before and has gotten dialogue going to where we now read each others blogs. I don't really understand Tumblr yet though.