Sorry for not posting much over the past few weeks. Something about holidays got in the way. Well, that, and we're chewing on what we want this book to say and stand for.
One way to get started is to analyze the competition. If you were opening a shoe store in a mall, you'd want to know how yours would fit in. How it'd be different. How you'd get people to stop in your store. How you'd get people to talk about you instead of every other store in the mall and how to get people to buy, right?
I remember hearing about then Apple executive Jean-Louis Gassée work the counter at Fry's Electronics before starting his compay, Be, Inc. (A customer at the camera store told me he had seen Jean-Louis working the counter. I later asked Jean-Louis if that were true when he bought a camera from me, and he told me it was).
Why did he do that? Well, for one, he wanted to get an intimate look at what the competition was from a customer's point of view.
So, over the Christmas break Shel and I have spent a bunch of time inside book stores talking to customers and looking over the books.
Some trends:
1) There are very few books on blogging on the shelf today. Here are the few we've found:
- Dan Gillmor's "We the Media." Amazon ranking: 4.5 (out of 5).
- Rebecca Blood's "We've Got Blog: How Weblogs Are Changing Our Culture." Amazon ranking: 3.5.
- Rebecca Blood's "The Weblog Handbook: Practical Advice on Creating and Maintaining Your Blog." Amazon ranking: 4.
- Paul Bausch's "Weblog: Publishing Online with Weblog." Amazon ranking: 5.
- Cory Doctorow's "Essential Blogging." Amazon ranking: N/A.
- Biz Stone's "Blogging: Genius Strategies for Instant Web Content." Amazon ranking: 3.
- Hugh Hewitt's "Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation That's Changing Your World." Amazon ranking: N/A.
- Susannah Gardner's "Buzz Marketing with Blogs for Dummies." Amazon ranking: N/A.
2) There are no books that are currently on the shelf that talk about corporate blogging and how doing a blog can help your business get adoption, build markets, get customers, or even just get a better Google ranking. Are we missing any?
3) There are no books that talk about how companies are using blogs, but there are a few that we know about coming. Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba, for instance, are working on one, and their latest book, "Testify" gives several stories of how "remarkable organizations are creating customer evangelists." Hans Henrik is doing a corporate blogging book open source style on a Wiki. Jeremy Wright is working on a blogging book. Are we missing any?
4) Our favorite authors, Seth Godin, Tom Peters, Guy Kawasaki, McConnell and Huba, Chris Anderson, Jeffrey Fox, and Malcolm Gladwell have books that will compete on the business shelf for your attention.
5) We haven't seen a book yet that explains how simple relationships built through the blog can get you on stage at major trade shows, get you hired, get you into magazines like Fast Company and Fortune Magazine, or how blogs can be used to influence people and build friendships that'll make a difference to your business.
What books are we looking forward to seeing that we know about?
1) The Long Tail, by Chris Anderson.
2) Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell
What business books are we reading now?
1) Art of the Start, by Guy Kawasaki
2) The Naked Corporation, by Don Tapscott, and David Ticoll
3) The Marketing Playbook, by John Zagula and Richard Tong
Resources on blog books? Neville Hobson linked to the ones he knew about. Jeremy Wright has another list here (more complete). 800-CEO-READ has great info about business books.
Not quite on topic, but David Allen's "Getting Things Done" book is one we also are reading.
Which business books are you looking forward to seeing? Are we missing any books about corporate weblogging?
Update: John Moore recommends "The Wisdom of Crowds." Biz Stone has a new book out: "Who Let the Blogs Out? A Hyperconnected Peek at the World of Blogs." Paul McFedries has "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Creating a Web Page and Blog." B.L. Ochman has "What Could Your Company Do With a Blog? How Smart Companies Use Blogs for Marketing and PR Success and How You Can Too."
