Why You Should Read Unmarketing? (Book Review)

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I had the opportunity to meet Mr. Unmarketing himself, a.k.a. Scott Stratten, at Geekend in Savannah. To put it mildy, I was beyond impressed by his keynote. I ended up purchasing his book shortly therefore. How’s that for ROI? Although, I would argue it’s more like ROE (Return on Engagement). I’m sure Scott would call it ROR (Return on Relationship). But, I digress.

This book is Brilliant (With a Capital “B”). It’s an easy read filled with great, useful, applicable and tweet-able tidbits. Plus, Scott may just be one of the funniest social media/marketing authors out there. The footnotes are living proof of that.

Scott does a fantastic job of breaking down his points in 56 short, manageable chapters. The book is written in a conversational style, which makes it great for note-taking and digesting all the information in short bits. Plus, every chapter is fulled with useful nuggets, Β like these two, conveniently written in a tweet-able style. Coincidence, I think not?

“Marketing is not a task, marketing is not a department, marketing is not a job. Marketing happens every time you engage (or not) with your past, present and potential customers.” -@unmarketing

“Social media isn’t Twitter. Or Facebook. It isn’t the new website flavor of the week. It’s the ability to have conversations online with others” – @unmarketing

I really appreciate how Scott doesn’t just throw out facts and statistics. He takes the time to break each fact down and apply them through his experiences and through social media mini-case studies. Two of the best examples he used were Zappos and Rockport. Zappos is well-known for their exceptional customer service. Instead of just stopping with what a great job the Zappos social media team does. Scott takes it to the next level and shows how a lesser-known company, Rockport Shoes, was also doing a great job listening and responding on social media.

The book also contains great insights for new Twitter and Facebook users as well as blogging and viral marketing tips. The chapter on viral marketing was especially helpful and useful for me. I have a feeling I will be going back and re-reading that chapter often.

If the amount of highlighted text and notes in the margin are any indication, this book is a fantastic read. Two thumbs up!

About the author

Jessica Malnik

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