Customer Reviews

Plug Your Business! Marketing on MySpace, YouTube, blogs and podcasts and other Web 2.0 social networks

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I learned a lot about on-line marketing with this book. He talks a lot about blogging, which we're just considering taking the leap into. He gives really good advice, like:
* Ask a question or pose a challenge in the first sentence
* Don't preach, blogging is a conversation
* Tell the truth (my favorite)
* Read lots of other blogs
* Don't be boring, a good blog takes sides
* Break news, be authentic, tell stories
On the YouTube front, he told great and inspiring stories of how businesses got great advertising. Chipotle ran a contest asking college students to make a 30-second commercial about the restaurant and post it on YouTube for a grand prize of $10,000. One video alone had 7.7 million views! That's worth $346,000 in on-line advertising. There is definitely some similar marketing plan in my future. Wendy's placed humorous videos, and one episode alone got 600,000 views. What great ideas!

Then of course he discusses writing product reviews right here on Amazon, that then somehow promote your company, book or product. He gives the do's and don'ts, which are very important. If you want to be a player in the Amazon review world, you have to play by their rules. He also recommends that you type your reviews in a word processing program, which I'm doing right now, so you don't have typos.

He talks about fine-tuning your recommendations at Amazon.com/yourstore. I couldn't believe I didn't know about that. You can say "not interested" in something and even exclude items that you own from the "use to make recommendations" list. For instance if you bought a book on fungus for the biologist next door, but personally have no interest in the subject.

He introduced me to del.icio.us, which is a website to manage your bookmarks. Granted, Google lets bookmark and you can log onto your Google account from anywhere, but this sounds more sophisticated. I've looked at it a little bit, but it looks like it is worth some study, or messing around with at least.

This is a quick read, and it inspired me with some great ideas for my business. It was well written and entertaining too. I dog-eared nine pages, which is one of the way I judge how good a book is. Those are pages I intend to go back and read either soon, or often.

If you are interested in marketing on the internet, I would read this book.

Tenna Merchent (nick name), author of He's Not Autistic, But...

I liked this book, but I didn't love it. Thus it only gets a 4 star rating from me. Maybe I feel this way because I've read the author's other book entitled Plug Your Book and this book comes off being very similar? Maybe it was because it was 142 pages and has a sales price of almost $20? Or maybe it was because I have read other books that cover much of the same material and they go into more depth?

The book is comprised of the following 14 chapters:

1. Introduction
2. MySpace Buzz
3. Building Your Web Site
4. Blogging for Business
5. Blog Tours
6. Multimedia
7. Tag - You're It!
8. The Social Jungle
9. Social Media, Social Search
10. Syndicating Your Content
11. Revenue from Your Site
12. Pay-Per-Click Advertising
13. Power Tools
14. Ethics of Online Marketing

I found Chapter 2 to be the best in the book. I can see how a rock band or an author can promote themselves at MySpace. In fact, they do successfully. But I'm not yet convinced that MySpace is really conducive to marketing a small business. It would have been nice if the book had clearly explained at least a few success stories regarding small businesses marketing on MySpace. By reading the book I am left thinking it is just a hope to successfully market a small business using that social network.

I liked Chapter 3 and found it to be a good introduction to putting together a Web site. I recommend reading The Web Savvy Writer (ISBN: 0977830403) if you are interested in a more in depth coverage on the subject. I liked Chapter 4 and also found it to be a good introduction to blogging for business. For more on the subject I recommend reading Ted Demopoulos' books (ISBN: 1419584359 and ISBN: 1419536451). And I liked chapters 7 and 8, but for a more in depth coverage I recommend reading Sell Your Book on Amazon (ISBN: 1432701967).

The "Recommended Reading" list at the end of this tome included some interesting books. I would have liked to have seen Marketing to the Social Web (ISBN: 0470124172) and Marketing in the New Media (ISBN: 1551807319) included as well, but they weren't. As you can see from my review that this book covers a lot of ground in just a few pages. I highly recommend it as a lead-in to many other books. 4 stars!

This is a helpful book for navigating the waves of social networking. It's a quick read, with useful links and helpful tactics for the non-geek to leverage the web in marketing their business.

Unfortunately, any book of this sort quickly becomes outdated - social technologies ebb and flow that quickly. A *huge* portion of the book is dedicated to MySpace, for example. One tiny paragraph is devoted to Facebook. As I am a FB user and don't bother with MySpace, that means several of this book's chapters are useless for me.

LinkedIn, Flickr, uTube and all other big networking sites also rate a tiny blurb, no more. Twitter isn't even mentioned! This is a 2007 book and already out of date.

Useful chapters include setting up your website, starting to blog, and hooking your brand into the blogosphere. A few pages cover developing your blog content over the long haul. Using Technorati, Digg and Del.icio.us is touched upon.

I found the passage on building a guest column interesting. The viral video/podcasting chapter has decent, albeit bare bones, basics. I also appreciated the nuggets on using Amazon, analyzing traffic stats and monitizing your site.

Overall, anyone already familiar with the basics of MySpace, tagging, developing a blog, using Amazon's review system, setting up RSS and so on won't learn much from this slim volume. On the other hand, this book offers an easy introduction to web 2.0 marketing that social network newbies won't find intimidating.

From my perspective as a small business owner, this new book by Steve Weber has a lot to recommend it. To begin with, Steve's background is in journalism and it shows through in the clarity of his writing and in his ability to zero in on key points. (His blogs on online bookselling and Internet marketing are also especially interesting and readable for this reason.) As an example, he likens marketing "widgets" for social networking sites to the time-honored marketing method of handing out bumper stickers. Although I consider myself pretty technology-savvy, I still find the proliferation of Web 2.0 sites confusing in the extreme. MySpace and YouTube are only two of the best-known ones, and each successful venture immediately spawns a bevy of competitors trying to move into that space too. In this book Steve sorts through a lot of free or inexpensive options for generating the Internet equivalent of word of mouth advertising. He highlights the most promising ones and suggests ways to take full and effective advantage of them. This book called my attention to several interesting websites I'd overlooked, including Digg, a news site, and Gather, a social-networking site. One particularly interesting section to me was the one on the "Google sandbox effect," which I hadn't been aware of. Evidently Google search results deliberately downplay references to domain names with one-year registration periods because they've disproportionately become the province of spammers. The solution is to extend domain names for a longer term instead of renewing them every year, something I immediately tried after reading about this. Steve gives examples of businesses that have succeeded in capitalizing on Web 2.0 opportunities and points out that not everything that's hyped works. I found the example of Walmart's Hub website, which he describes as "one of the most spectacular social-networking flops" particularly interesting. Steve very sensibly suggests keeping a record of when you start trying something new in terms of marketing your product on the Internet and then checking periodically to see if that technique has made any difference or not. Bottom line: Lots of useful, stimulating ideas in a concise, well-organized, and readable form.

Steve Weber's "Plug Your Business" is so full of good ideas that I flagged almost every page. His explanations are well-written and easy to follow, and I've already started implementing some of his suggestions.

There is so much insider information in this book that can help almost anyone who wants to do internet commerce. Particularly interesting to me was the information on increasing search engine interest in one's website by doing the simplest things, such as registering your website's URL for several years instead of one year.
-- Phyllis Zimbler Miller

This book is a must read for any business owner or person interested in Web 2.0 and how to leverage the "Free" side of internet marketing in the social platform. A quick read stuffed with helpful tips, Steve has delivered a useful manual in an easy to implement strategy with sound-bites for anyone looking to grow their presence on the net. I found his suggestions on the value of blogging to be incredibly informative and made a world of difference in how I look at the blog for my own consulting practice! Thank you Steve for the great resource and tool!!!

The great thing about Steve Weber's new book 'Plug Your Business' is that it's chuck full of practical ideas on how to maximise your internet marketing for free.

He organises the suggestions from the most effective, simplest and quickest at the beginning to the more unusual and more difficult later on. As you gain more confidence using his on-line marketing ideas, you can proceed to some of the less familiar ones - refining and tweaking as you progress.

MySpace is where he suggests you begin and he provides plenty of tips and hand-holding to get you started promoting your business on-line without spending a dime. In fact, throughout his book, he strongly advises against
throwing money at internet promotion as a way of cutting corners.

Do-it-yourself may involve a steep learning curve,if this is your first exposure to internet marketing, but if you keep this book beside you as your main reference guide, help is always at hand.

Steve Weber says that no one should expect over-night success, but if you keep plugging away, within a few months you should expect to see good results.

And remember Bill Gates' comment: 'There are only two kinds of businesses - on-line ones and out of business ones.'

Terry Oliver
[...]

When I bought this book, I was hoping to find new online marketing strategies. As a web designer and web marketer, I am already familiar with most procedures used to help popularize a business or a product.
So, I did not find anything too useful for the money spent. However, I wish I had bought this book as a beginner- which was about a year ago. I think it is a good tool for those who wish to learn the basics of online marketing.

I discovered this book on MySpace on Steve Weber's page and had been curious about it for a while. I finally got my department to buy it for us. It's a great book, easy to read and soak in. Weber has some great ideas--and he's makes his ideas understandable even for those new to podcasting and other forms of social media (like most of my department!).

Steve Weber's "Plug Your Business" is a great asset for any business owner. I've also read Weber's other book about online marketing: "Plug Your Book." These two books are very similar, but they are intended for two different audiences. What works for marketing a book could very well do the same thing for a business.

To me, the most beneficial parts of the book were the sections about MySpace, blogging, and ethical promoting. MySpace can allow hundreds, thousands, even millions of people to be exposed to your business. I use MySpace to promote my books. I'm convinced that MySpace is the only reason that I've sold any of my books. And by being part of MySpace, I've joined several groups that deal with my books' genre.

Blogging is very useful as well. It can expose your business to more and more people. Blogs often appear in Google search results. If you use Blogger.com, you can almost bet that it will appear in Google search results since Google owns Blogger. MySpace blogs often appear in Google search results as well.

It is very important to promote your business ethically. Don't give your own products glowing reviews. This is seen as blatant self-promotion.
One thing that could've made this book better is more success stories from businesses that have used these tactics.

Brandon Simpson