Books

Book Recommendations

Disclosure: All links are to amazon.com, where I am an affiliate.

Business Books

The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business – Short, concise chapters explain every business concept you can imagine. The idea is to come away from the book with a cognitive framework to build on. He suggests that you read it by dipping in to subjects that you need to understand, and then following the leads he gives you for more specific sources of information and learning.

Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time – This is a really excellent book about the value of networking and how to build and use a network. Ferrazzi focuses on the need to work to create and maintain your relationships both systematically and with love and care. Like Dale Carnegie in his classic How To Win Friends and Influence People, Ferrazzi teaches that the best way to make friends is to be friendly and to really like people.

 

Science Books

Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means – A tour through the science of networks and how it explains almost everything about business, biology, the internet – actually, there are networks wherever we look. How they grow and develop and the implications of their topology are very well explored here. Great information if you’re trying to understand how you and your activities fit in with the rest of the world, considered as a system.

Books about the Internet

The Cluetrain Manifesto: 10th Anniversary Edition – Getting on the Cluetrain is something every individual, business, institution, group, or community needs to do even more now than they did in 1999. 95 theses on how the Internet impacts markets and organizations. Lots of food for thought.

Cognitive Surplus: How Technology Makes Consumers into Collaborators – In a modern economy there are massive amounts of brainpower and attention free which can used for a lot more than watching advertisements. What it means that volunteers can build something like Wikipedia on a free, voluntary basis. Our minds are an amazing and underused resource. Clay Shirky.

Marketing and Advertising

The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use Social Media, Blogs, News Releases, Online Video, and Viral Marketing to Reach Buyers Directly, 2nd Edition – David Meerman Scott’s classic about how the Internet changes the game for marketers. Lots of practical advice and how-to material. Excellent for business and marketing professionals who “don’t get it”- they will come away enlightened.

Social Marketing to the Business Customer: Listen to Your B2B Market, Generate Major Account Leads, and Build Client – Relationships - Eric Schwartzman and Paul Gillin identify B2B social media as the true sweet-spot for Social Media. B2B is a relationship and information-rich world that is ideal for social media. Lots of case studies and clear, hands-on advice about how to use social for businesses.

Books about Analytics

Web Analytics: An Hour a Day – Do you know how your website is performing for? Do you understand how to think about it and how to measure its effectiveness. How to see what’s working and what isn’t? These questions are important to anyone who’s spending money and or time on a website. Most people don’t have any idea how to find out, and why they need to. Avinash Kaushik takes you through the fascinating world of web analytics and shows you how to get into control.

Books about SEO

The Art of SEO – Excellent, concise, exhaustive coverage of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), the art of getting found on the Internet. Much confusion and misinformation is out there about this subject. If you want a correct understanding of the nuts and bolts of this subject, with a view to being more effective in your online communications, this is a great place to start. This book and Web Analytics will open your eyes to what’s really going on.

Books about Economics and Public Policy

The New Capitalist Manifesto: Building a Disruptively Better Business – Deep, critical analysis of what really ails our economy and some guideposts and case studies of how some big companies are changing the game in ways that point out the way ahead. Inspiring. Umair Haque calls himself an advisor to revolutionaries – he’s thinking hard about how the world needs to change.