Customer Reviews

Guerrilla PR Wired : Waging a Successful Publicity Campaign Online, Offline, and Everywhere In Between

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

It was very interesting to find out about Guerrilla PR from Levine, who seems to have a very good "offline" experience. However, as web designer and Board member of three Internet companies, I found Levine's Internet content shallow and full of Net beliefs that are not accurate or updated.

If you have NO experience, NO education or NO background in marketing, running a small business or promoting a web site, you MIGHT get something out of this book. To illustrate, here are a few of "Levine's 10 Commandments for Internet PR" listed in this book (paraphrased to save space): 1. Know your audience, 2. Know your product 3. Don't send spam ... 5. Don't overspend, 7. Send email to interested parties, 9. Seek out and provide links to your site. Some real ground-breaking revelations here, as you can see. I also found the writing style to be a bit condescending and wordy, as if the author was trying to stretch very slim information into a decent sized book. That pretty much is what this book is about - a few commonsense basics that anyone but a complete novice already knows, stretched into a book.

Just as Miss Congeniality 2 is a really stupid sequel to a really stupid movie that shouldn't have been made in the first place, so too is Guerrilla PR Wired a really stupid follow up to a really stupid book that shouldn't have been written in the first place. The author should have seen that Jay Conrad Levinson already had the topic covered and left it at that.

Michael Levine's book reads like a college freshman who is doing a report on Jay Conrad Levinson's Guerrilla Publicity. Don't let the similarity in title fool you--Levinson's is the real deal while Levine's is a very poor rip-off.

I could take out a handful of (minor) good ideas out of this book. Consider the time I invested in reading it, I would say not worth it.
I am pretty much a newbie to P.R., and I think most of the ideas inside this book will come quicker to you if you use common sense.
Some rought guidelines who to interact with the press (DON'T SEND MAILS WITH SUBJECT LINE ALL IN CAPITALS; be persistent when pitching but accept an no for an answere; journalists and producers are busy people, so contact them only if it is newsworthy, never lie to journalists, try to figure out the schedule of the person you're contacting, because if you call at "rush hour", you will not be able to make your pitch; find out how people like to be approached before you do your pitch (some like email, some fax, some snailmail, some phonecalls, etc.)

I have been planning to run an online business for a while now. To gain some better insight I thought I would seek out a few helpful books that may put me a little bit ahead in the game.

Unfortunately this book was a complete waste of time and money. And as anybody who has ever run their own business knows, both of those elements are crucial. But at least as bad investments go, a poorly written book won't set you back too far.

I can't speak for the rest of the population, but for the entrepreneurial type, you would be wise to skip this book at all costs (unless you are one of my competitors--then by all means buy this book and follow every example it teaches!).

-John Wilkins

Adding 'guerilla' to the title does not a good book make. There's nothing unique about the advice given here that you can't find in any other book on the subject. Save your money.

This book is very informative. My only warning is to realize that this book was published awhile ago so some of the information may seem like common sense. But for the novice I think it is very helpful.

It was a good read although it seemed as if it was mainly written for people with absoulty no PR expierence. I would not recommend this book to anyone. It's a no brainer book...try Jay Levinson Conrad---a much better read.

Through Levine's witty and sarcastic banter, one can capture the essentials on how to establish a successful PR campaign - via the Internet or otherwise. Be sure to also check out Guerrilla PR!

I think this is the first book about business and finance that I actually thought was not really worth my time in reading it. Maybe I normally just make good choices about which books look interesting and educational. This book was certainly not either of those.

Guerrilla PR Wired tries to capitalize on the Guerrilla name (as in Guerrilla Marketing and Guerilla Marketing for the Home-Based Business by Jay Conrad Levinson), but it is completely unrelated. The only thing "guerrilla" about it is Levine calling people with small businesses "guerrillas", just as Levinson does. When I read "guerrilla", I assumed it was part of THE guerrilla franchise and was fooled into reading it.

This book is very outdated and too simple to really be much use in public relations or online marketing. It's expected that a book on online marketing will go out of date within a few years after its printing, but I learned things about the ancient version of the internet that I had no idea existed. Additionally, its simplified view of public relations doesn't give the reader with much information to actually put together a PR campaign and execute one.

Although, as a person who had no idea what public relations were and what they intended to accomplish, I figure this book at least gave me the jist of the idea. One of the most useful things I learned was to pitch your news releases to local weekly publications. Then, larger publications can become interested in the story and then they might publish it....hence, big follows small.

So overall, there are probably better books to get you started in PR online and offline. Let me know if you have any suggested ones for me to read!

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Cat Cromar
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