Posts Tagged by Bill Liao

Putting Our Tiny Shoulder To The Wheel

November 17, 2010

Posted by Ross under Nibbles

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After a few weeks of email swaps, Skype discussions, and much research and reading up, Secret Pie is delighted to announce that we have firmly pledged our support to WeForest.

WeForest is an international not-for-profit organization combating global warming in the most natural way possible, and was founded by entrepreneur and philanthropist Bill Liao. WeForest promotes sustainable forestry, which plays a vital role in ensuring the stability of our planet. Trees support ecosystems, maintain the integrity of our soil and habitats, and provide food, employment, and shelter for local people.

Please take a moment to find out more by watching this short video about WeForest, narrated by Stephen Fry:-

Secret Pie is donating at least 10% of our working time to helping out WeForest in various digital projects over the coming months, and hopefully beyond that and through the many years it will take to achieve a cooler planet. We are only one small part of a massive network of global volunteers, but if we can put back a bit more than we have taken out then it’s a step in the right direction.

If you or your business is not currenty supporting a charity, or if you are generally interested in finding out more about WeForest and how you can get involved then please visit the website, join us on the WeForest facebook page, or read the latest online newsletter.

“The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second-best time is now.” African proverb.

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Digital Marketing For Dummies…for dummies

February 20, 2010

Posted by Ross under Baker's Dozens

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Search Amazon for books relating to digital marketing, social media, blogs etc and you’ll see one helluva long list. If you’re just browsing then it’s down to trusting the customer reviews to find the cream of the crop, and that can sometimes mean rolling the dice if there are only 1 or 2 reviews lsted. Well, I’ve bought some belters and some absolute stinkers over the years, so here’s my top 13 books on all things digital to help you shorten your wishlist (in no order of importance):-

Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies (by Li & Bernoff) – the authors take you through a study of what social media really means for businesses today, and how people have the power to shift the view of a brand significantly by joining together as one voice. Li & Bernoff show you your business can take a front foot with today’s technology and harness the power of social media to properly connect with a brand audience online. You can tell it’s written by MBA market research types, and it reeks of academia at times, but this book is essential reading for any senior professional who wants to discuss social media at boardroom level and keep a semblance of credibility.
This is Social Media (Tweet, Blog, Link and Post Your Way To Business Success), by Guy Clapperton – the antidote to Groundswell in that it is written in an easily accessible style by an experienced tech-journalist and is much more bite-sized (but both should be read together). This book is bang up to date and explains the services and platforms that you are likely to need to investigate if you have any sort of business that needs to engage with customers en masse. Whereas Groundswell takes a strategic approach, Clapperton seeks to introduce the relative novice to the individual services such as facebook, twitter and linked in and explains what makes them tick and how you should use them.
WordPress For Dummies (Lisa Sabin Wilson) – The ‘For Dummies’ range can be oh so hit and miss; they either get the audience and their abilities completely wrong or they nail the right level of information that lets novice and slightly experienced people get to grips and understand the topic. The author of this offering, Sabin Wilson, is a true expert in the field and she has obviously planned the book out well because everything you need to produce your own WordPress powered site (like this one) or WordPress.com blog is here. Now, with a title like ‘WordPress For Dummies’ you’d expect that, but this genuinely is the best guide to understanding and using WordPress that I have seen for a couple of years now. Books on blogs and WordPress are appearing on the shelves at an exponential rate and the vast majority of them are absolute garbage. Don’t be embarrassed to buy a ‘For Dummies’ book – this one is excellent.
Web Standards Solutions (Dan Cederholm) – Websites need to be created in such a way that they are viewable by as many people as possible using as many different browsers or gadgets as possible. To aid with this there are some standards set by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). To help you understand the standards and how to create web code that complies there is a number of books you could pick up…..but if you want to read something by someone who ‘talks’ like a real person and instucts in a non-textbook style then Dan Cederholm is your man. Easy to pick up and read, easy to use as a workbook, great results everytime – this is the only book on code that any web designer needs.
Don’t Make Me Think (Steve Krug) – A landmark publication from a few years ago; Steve Krug managed to elaborate in straightforward human terms why a website should be intuitive to use and how even the most simple and seemingly small choices of design or functionality could have people leaving your site by the shedload. Whether you build sites or not, in fact especially if not, you must read this book if you are somehow involved with customer interaction or customer journeys on a website, whether you sell online or not. Digital gold.
Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media and Blogs (Halligan & Shah) – You can usually tell when a book has been written in the last couple of years by people who are actually hands-on with digital marketing; they tend to have longish-keyword-rich-search-engine-friendly titles. Inbound Marketing: Get Found etc is no exception to this rule. Often, the rule rolls on to include that these books are usually the better ones from the genre, as is the case with Inbound Marketing as the guys who wrote it did it alongside working hard running one of America’s search and social media success stories (Hubspot). This is written for the luddite or the geek, the Chief Exec or the lowly marketing exec. The old techniques of outbound marketing are dying or having to adapt to today’s consumers, and this book argues and demonstrates how your business needs to stop shouting at random groups and instead become a magnetic force that listens and adapts.
Here Comes Everbody: How Change Happens When People Come Together (Clay Shirky) – If you watched the recent BBC series ‘The Virtual Revolution’ you might have clocked author Clay Shirky giving a few excellent soundbites in the last two episodes; well he writes as well as he talks. If you want to step away from explanations of technology and understand more about how people gravitate towards each other when they use the web or digital applications, then you need to read this. If you don’t understand already that you and your business cannot choose to be involved with the digital revolution, or that an average man or woman in an internet cafe can shake your commercial world then you probably donlt deserve to read this….but you probably should.
Search Engine Optimization For Dummies (Peter Kent) – The only other ‘For Dummies’ book I will recommend, Search Engine Optimization For Dummies is a perfect introductory manual for novice/intermediate website owners, or marketing managers who are working with or about to recruit a search marketing agency or supplier. It’s so easy to get ripped off by search marketing suppliers who either ham up the simple tasks or charge a seemingly small fee for outlandishly impossible potential results….finding an honest and skillfull SEO consultant or other search marketing supplier who plays fair can be the best blessing and investment you can have for your business, so arm yourself with some knowledge and keep the charlatans at bay. You’ll see that search engine optimisation is not rocket science, but you’ll also learn that, like an orchestra, you will need to pay someone to conduct it skilfully for you.
Boo Hoo: A Dot Com Story (Malmstem, Portanger, Drazen) – Just a reminder folks that it was less than 10 years ago (at the time of writing) that businesses such as boo.com were blazing a trail across the stock exchanges and sucking up investment capital like it was cocaine flavoured innocent smoothies….and then it started to fall apart. Boo.com went bust in May 2000, and when you look back now at what they were trying to do it’s kinda no surprise, although launched today it might have done quite well…ah well. This is the story from 2 of the company founders and it’s quite an eye opener as well as a useful reminder that hardly any aspects of the digital world today have any serious heritage or equity and could quite easily be gone tomorrow so don’t put all your digital eggs into one basket.
Wired Magazine (UK edition) – Ok, it’s not a book but it is essential reading and you have to get this every month if you are serious about living as a digital citizen or understanding the techno side of the zeitgeist. This is not monthly nerd-lit like so many other ‘digital’ magazine on the bookshelves, this is well written and compelling content for people who interact with 21st century ways of doing things whether you understand code or not. If you at least own an iPod and use Sky+ then you’re target market so buy, read, enjoy, subscribe.
Meatball Sundae: How New Marketing is Transforming the Business World (and How to Thrive in It); by Seth Godin – Another one of those long winded titles by the marketing world’s very own Mr Hit & Miss, Seth Godin. This is Godin writing on a good day however - he’s found something interesting here and that’s the discussion about how a busines cannot just switch overnight from ‘old marketing’ (tv etc) to ‘new marketing’ and expect business to stay the same or grow. Old marketing is great for selling washing powder and tomato ketchup, but switching to virals and facebook etc to sell these types of products doesn’t just magically work, and ‘old’ companies should not try and compete with ‘new marketing’ companies in territory that is not natural for them. You’ll have lots of your own examples, but I personally expect WHSmith to go bust in the next 24 months (I actually hope I’m wrong) because they have lost their way and had no idea how to compete in today’s world and now have a website that tries to sell mobile phones, DVD rentals and ebook readers while their stores crumble into jumble sale territory thus alienating their core customers. Oops…starting to rant…..sorry. Worth a read anyway, but approach some of his other books with caution….especially Big Red Fez as it is utter garbage.
Stone Soup (by Bill Liao) – The digital link here is Bill Liao himself as he is a humble and generous digital age millionaire who has built success not through modern savage means but by playing smart and planting lots of seeds and using the power of networks to forge companies and profits. This is not, however, a book all about technology or digital marketing. I’m including this in my top 13 because you need to remember to be yourself and to stay focussed on your own gut feel and your own ideas. So much of the digital business world involves rapid spread of opinion and packs and groups of people joining together and moving together that it is easy to be swayed by the results and debates that you see on your monitor. Bill shows you how to be yourself, how to have a vision, how to plan and ultimately reminds you to be the shepherd who steers rather than part of the flock who follows.
Little Book of Campervan (Morgan & Fowler) – I love the digital world, and I love how it is changing the way we live, work and do business together. But I also love not being at work, and not being in front of a laptop, and I love driving my campervan. The 13th book on your digital bookshelf should be whatever book you need to remind you that leisure time and fresh air is ultimately more healthy and rewarding than long working days and air-conditioning. Buy Stone Soup and go away for the weekend…

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