Content Strategy for the Web


Kristina Halvorson - 2009
    Redesigning your home page won't help. Investing in a new content management system won't fix it, either. So, where do you start? Without meaningful content, your website isn't worth much to your key audiences. But creating (and caring for) "meaningful" content is far more complicated than we're often willing to acknowledge. Content Strategy for the Web explains how to create and deliver useful, usable content for your online audiences, when and where they need it most. It also shares content best practices so you can get your next website redesign right, on time and on budget. For the first time, you'll: See content strategy (and its business value) explained in plain languageFind out why so many web projects implode in the content development phase ... and how to avoid the associated, unnecessary costs and delaysLearn how to audit and analyze your contentMake smarter, achievable decisions about which content to create and howFind out how to maintain consistent, accurate, compelling content over timeGet solid, practical advice on staffing for content-related roles and responsibilities "

Baked In: Creating Products and Businesses That Market Themselves


Alex Bogusky - 2009
    The new way is to create truly innovative products and build the marketing right in. But how does a brand make the transition from old to new? According to advertising gurus Alex Bogusky and John Winsor, it starts with the realization that the message is not the product, the product is the message. In Baked-In, they offer a step-by-step guide on how brands can adapt and thrive in this brave new world. Using these tools, Bogusky and Winsor have successfully marketed some of today's most important brands, including Google, Nike, Microsoft, Patagonia, Toyota, and Burger King. They reveal how, through tools at hand -- product design, brand history, internal collaboration -- and the new tools of digital technology -- YouTube and the web in general -- companies can succeed in the 21st-century marketplace.

Confessions of a Public Speaker


Scott Berkun - 2009
    For managers and teachers -- and anyone else who talks and expects someone to listen -- Confessions of a Public Speaker provides an insider's perspective on how to effectively present ideas to anyone. It's a unique, entertaining, and instructional romp through the embarrassments and triumphs Scott has experienced over 15 years of speaking to crowds of all sizes.With lively lessons and surprising confessions, you'll get new insights into the art of persuasion -- as well as teaching, learning, and performance -- directly from a master of the trade.Highlights include:Berkun's hard-won and simple philosophy, culled from years of lectures, teaching courses, and hours of appearances on NPR, MSNBC, and CNBCPractical advice, including how to work a tough room, the science of not boring people, how to survive the attack of the butterflies, and what to do when things go wrongThe inside scoop on who earns $30,000 for a one-hour lecture and whyThe worst -- and funniest -- disaster stories you've ever heard (plus countermoves you can use)Filled with humorous and illuminating stories of thrilling performances and real-life disasters, Confessions of a Public Speaker is inspirational, devastatingly honest, and a blast to read.

Letting Go of the Words: Writing Web Content that Works


Janice G. Redish - 2007
    Ironically, I must recommend that you read her every word so that you can find out why your customers won't read very many words on your website -- and what to do about it.-- Jakob Nielsen, Principal, Nielsen Norman Group"There are at least twelve billion web pages out there. Twelve billion voices talking, but saying mostly nothing. If just 1% of those pages followed Ginny's practical, clear advice, the world would be a better place. Fortunately, you can follow her advice for 100% of your own site's pages, so pick up a copy of Letting Go of the Words and start communicating effectively today."--Lou Rosenfeld, co-author, Information Architecture for the World Wide WebOn the web, whether on the job or at home, we usually want to grab information and use it quickly. We go to the web to get answers to questions or to complete tasks - to gather information, reading only what we need. We are all too busy to read much on the web.This book helps you write successfully for web users. It offers strategy, process, and tactics for creating or revising content for the web. It helps you plan, organize, write, design, and test web content that will make web users come back again and again to your site.Learn how to create usable and useful content for the web from the master - Ginny Redish. Ginny has taught and mentored hundreds of writers, information designers, and content owners in the principles and secrets of creating web information that is easy to scan, easy to read, and easy to use.This practical, informative book will help anyone creating web content do it better.Features* Clearly-explained guidelines with full color illustrations and examples from actual web sites throughout the book. * Written in easy-to-read style with many befores and afters.* Specific guidelines for web-based press releases, legal notices, and other documents.* Tips on making web content accessible for people with special needs.Janice (Ginny) Redish has been helping clients and colleagues communicate clearly for more than 20 years. For the past ten years, her focus has been helping people create usable and useful web sites. She is co-author of two classic books on usability: A Practical Guide to Usability Testing (with Joseph Dumas), and User and Task Analysis for Interface Design (with JoAnn Hackos), and is the recipient of many awards.

SPIN Selling: Situation Problem Implication Need-payoff


Neil Rackham - 1988
    Unquestionably the best-documented account of sales success ever collected and the result of the Huthwaite corporation's massive 12-year, $1-million dollar research into effective sales performance, this groundbreaking resource details the revolutionary SPIN (Situation, Problem, Implication, Need-payoff) strategy.In SPIN Selling, Rackham, who has advised leading companies such as IBM and Honeywell delivers the first book to specifically examine selling high-value product and services. By following the simple, practical, and easy-to-apply techniques of SPIN, readers will be able to dramatically increase their sales volume from major accounts. Rackham answers key questions such as "What makes success in major sales" and "Why do techniques like closing work in small sales but fail in larger ones?"You will learn why traditional sales methods which were developed for small consumer sales, just won't work for large sales and why conventional selling methods are doomed to fail in major sales. Packed with real-world examples, illuminating graphics, and informative case studies - and backed by hard research data - SPIN Selling is the million-dollar key to understanding and producing record-breaking high-end sales performance.

Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness


Richard H. Thaler - 2008
    Thaler, and Cass R. Sunstein: a revelatory look at how we make decisionsNew York Times bestsellerNamed a Best Book of the Year by The Economist and the Financial Times Every day we make choices—about what to buy or eat, about financial investments or our children’s health and education, even about the causes we champion or the planet itself. Unfortunately, we often choose poorly. Nudge is about how we make these choices and how we can make better ones. Using dozens of eye-opening examples and drawing on decades of behavioral science research, Nobel Prize winner Richard H. Thaler and Harvard Law School professor Cass R. Sunstein show that no choice is ever presented to us in a neutral way, and that we are all susceptible to biases that can lead us to make bad decisions. But by knowing how people think, we can use sensible “choice architecture” to nudge people toward the best decisions for ourselves, our families, and our society, without restricting our freedom of choice.

Storyscaping: Stop Creating Ads, Start Creating Worlds


Gaston Legorburu - 2014
    Storyscapes introduces "storyscaping" as a way to create immersive experiences that solve the challenge of connecting brands and consumers. This book describes a powerful new approach to advertising and marketing for the digital age that involves using stories to design emotional and transactional experiences for customers, both online and offline. Each connection inspires engagement with another, so the brand becomes part of the customer's story. Authors Gaston Legorburu and Darren McColl explain how marketers can identify and define the core target audience segment, define your brand's purpose, understand the emotional desires of your consumers, and more.•Shows how to map how the consumer engages with the category and product/service•Explains how to develop an organizing idea and creative plan for an immersive storyscape experience•Defines the role of marketing channels around the organizing idea•Establishes how technology can be applied to the experienceLearn how to measure, optimize, and evolve the customer experience through the use of strong narratives that compel consumers to buy into your brand.

Tested Advertising Methods


John Caples - 1980
    There is also new information useful to smaller businesses.

The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future


Kevin Kelly - 2016
    In this fascinating, provocative new book, Kevin Kelly provides an optimistic road map for the future, showing how the coming changes in our lives—from virtual reality in the home to an on-demand economy to artificial intelligence embedded in everything we manufacture—can be understood as the result of a few long-term, accelerating forces. Kelly both describes these deep trends—flowing, screening, accessing, sharing, filtering, remixing, tracking, and questioning—and demonstrates how they overlap and are codependent on one another. These larger forces will completely revolutionize the way we buy, work, learn, and communicate with each other. By understanding and embracing them, says Kelly, it will be easier for us to remain on top of the coming wave of changes and to arrange our day-to-day relationships with technology in ways that bring forth maximum benefits. Kelly’s bright, hopeful book will be indispensable to anyone who seeks guidance on where their business, industry, or life is heading—what to invent, where to work, in what to invest, how to better reach customers, and what to begin to put into place—as this new world emerges.

Personality Not Included: Why Companies Lose Their Authenticity and How Great Brands Get It Back


Rohit Bhargava - 2008
    In the new business era of the twenty first century, great brands and products must evoke a dynamic personality in order to attract passionate customers. Although many organizations hide their personality behind layers of packaged messaging and advertising, social media guru and influencer Rohit Bhargava counters that philosophy and illustrates how successful businesses have redefined themselves in the new customer universe.Personality Not Included is a powerhouse resource packed with bold new insights that show you how to shed the lifeless armor of your business and rediscover the soul of your brand. Sharing stories from the ethos of the world's weirdest city, to how Manga has taken the comic book industry by storm, to showcasing brands like Intel, Boeing, ING, and Dyson, Bhargava shows you why personality matters from the inside out.In Part One, you'll be introduced to the key components to building a personality and learn how to:Recognize the greatest myth that most marketers blindly follow, and how to get past it Use the "UAT Filter" to understand the personality of your organization and products in order to develop a communication strategy that drives your marketing Create your company's "marketing backstory" using techniques pioneered by Hollywood screenwriters Harness the influence of "accidental spokespeople" and use it to your advantage Navigate the roadblocks of using personality that come from bosses, peers, investors, and lawyers, without getting fired or flamed Pinpoint and capitalize on the moments where personality can make a difference Part Two is packed with guides, tools, and techniques to help you flawlessly implement your plan. It features practical, step-by-step lessons that help you effectively move from theory to action, and includes a valuable collection of guides, checklists, question forms, printable resources, and more.Don't be another faceless company-learn the new rules for succeeding in the social media era with Personality Not Included.

Design Is Storytelling


Ellen Lupton - 2017
    The latest book from award-winning writer Ellen Lupton is a playbook for creative thinking, showing designers how to use storytelling techniques to create satisfying graphics, products, services and experiences. Whether crafting a digital app or a data-rich publication, designers invite people to enter a scene and explore what’s there. An intriguing logo, page layout or retail space uses line, shape and form to lead users on dynamic journeys.Design Is Storytelling explores the psychology of visual perception from a narrative point of view. Presenting dozens of tools and concepts in a lively, visual manner, this book will help any designer amplify the narrative power of their work. Use this book to stir emotions, build empathy, articulate values and convey action; to construct narrative arcs and create paths through space; integrate form and language; evaluate a project’s storytelling power; and to write and deliver strong narratives.

The Wall Street Journal Guide to Information Graphics: The Dos and Don'ts of Presenting Data, Facts, and Figures


Dona M. Wong - 2009
    Yet information graphics is rarely taught in schools or is the focus of on-the-job training. Now, for the first time, Dona M. Wong, a student of the information graphics pioneer Edward Tufte, makes this material available for all of us. In this book, you will learn:to choose the best chart that fits your data;the most effective way to communicate with decision makers when you have five minutes of their time;how to chart currency fluctuations that affect global business;how to use color effectively;how to make a graphic “colorful” even if only black and white are available.The book is organized in a series of mini-workshops backed up with illustrated examples, so not only will you learn what works and what doesn’t but also you can see the dos and don’ts for yourself. This is an invaluable reference work for students and professional in all fields.

Brand Failures: The Truth about the 100 Biggest Branding Mistakes of All Time


Matt Haig - 2003
    On the contrary, most of the world's global giants have launched new products that have flopped - spectacularly and at great cost. Haig organizes these 100 "failures" into ten types which include classic failures (e.g., New Coke), idea failures (e.g., R.J.Reynolds' smokeless cigarettes), extension failures (e.g. Harley Davidson perfume), culture failures (e.g., Kellogs in India), and technology failures (e.g., Pets.com).

The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage


Roger L. Martin - 2009
    They yearn to come up with a game—changing innovation like Apple's iPod, or create an entirely new category like Facebook. Many make genuine efforts to be innovative—they spend on R&D, bring in creative designers, hire innovation consultants. But they get disappointing results.Why? In The Design of Business, Roger Martin offers a compelling and provocative answer: we rely far too exclusively on analytical thinking, which merely refines current knowledge, producing small improvements to the status quo.To innovate and win, companies need design thinking. This form of thinking is rooted in how knowledge advances from one stage to another—from mystery (something we can't explain) to heuristic (a rule of thumb that guides us toward solution) to algorithm (a predictable formula for producing an answer) to code (when the formula becomes so predictable it can be fully automated). As knowledge advances across the stages, productivity grows and costs drop-creating massive value for companies.Martin shows how leading companies such as Procter & Gamble, Cirque du Soleil, RIM, and others use design thinking to push knowledge through the stages in ways that produce breakthrough innovations and competitive advantage.Filled with deep insights and fresh perspectives, The Design of Business reveals the true foundation of successful, profitable innovation.

Kellogg on Branding: The Marketing Faculty of the Kellogg School of Management


Alice M. Tybout - 2005
    Destined to become a marketing classic, Kellogg on Branding includes chapters written by respected Kellogg marketing professors and managers of successful companies. It includes: The latest thinking on key branding concepts, including brand positioning and design Strategies for launching new brands, leveraging existing brands, and managing a brand portfolio Techniques for building a brand-centered organization Insights from senior managers who have fought branding battles and won This is the first book on branding from the faculty of the Kellogg School, the respected resource for dynamic marketing information for today's ever-changing and challenging environment. Kellogg is the brand that executives and marketing managers trust for definitive information on proven approaches for solving marketing dilemmas and seizing marketing opportunities.