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Seth Godin – Unleashing the Ideavirus | Review

Title: Unleashing the Ideavirus

Author: Seth Godin

Type: Non-Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 240

Rating: 3*/5

Seth Godin – Unleashing the Ideavirus

I was a little disappointed by this one. I’ve been a pretty big Seth Godin fan for a while now, but this particular book feels a lot more dated than others, thanks partly due to its references to Napster, AOL and Yahoo! being revolutionary. Still, at least it does show that Godin was ahead of the times and on trend even way back when, and some of the ideas here are still applicable in terms of working with “sneezers” – which we now call “influencers“.

I can’t give this one anything lower than a three out of five because I’m pretty sure I would have found this useful if I’d read it five years ago. Unfortunately, I didn’t, and while I would recommend reading some of Godin’s books, this isn’t where I’d start.

In terms of the central concept, it’s basically about how sometimes, as a species, something catches on like a cold and is “sneezed” from one person to another. It’s certainly a believable theory, especially because Godin backs it up with some fairly solid examples. The companies that he mentions might not be relevant anymore, but they certainly were back in their heyday.

And hey, come on. If nothing else, you’ll get a pretty good idea of how far we’ve really come along in the last ten years.

Seth Godin

Click here to buy Unleashing the Ideavirus.

Pam Didner – Global Content Marketing | Review

Title: Global Content Marketing

Author: Pam Didner

Type: Non-Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 246

Rating: 6/10

Pam Didner – Global Content Marketing

I felt like I had to give this book a 6/10 because that’s my default score for a book which contains typos, which unfortunately this one does. There aren’t many – maybe three or four throughout the whole thing – but it was enough.

But with that out of the way, let’s take a look at the good stuff. See, there’s a lot of great advice in here, and while it doesn’t cover every single thing that you might want to know, no book ever could. In fact, while some bits did feel a little dated here and there, that’s inevitable with a book like this, and the good news is that all of the theory is still relevant.

Personally, I don’t do a huge amount of global content marketing, because I tend to work on national rather than international companies. That’s because I work at an agency, and most international companies have their own internal content teams, these days. I think I would’ve found it more useful if I was working in-house on one of those content teams, but there were still plenty of ideas for me to graze on throughout the book.

Still, there are better marketing books out there, and you should read the basics (like Inbound Marketing, The New Rules of Marketing and PR, or any Seth Godin or Gary Vaynerchuk book) before this.