SiteBildZ Advantage relevant books have hit the market since my last round-up of recommended books for content marketers.
The seven books outlined below complement essential content marketing guides like Joe Pulizzi’s Epic Content, Jay Baer’s Youtility and Andy Crestodina’s Content Chemistry. Though they offer a narrower perspective than the above books, they compensate by going deeper into specialized topics that are essential for successful content marketing, such as creativity, presentations, productivity and visual thinking.
Individually, each of the following books can make a major contribution to the content marketing experience you, or your team, must deliver on a consistent basis. But together, they create a library of the latest thinking that can inspire and energize by providing fresh perspectives and new tools.
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1. The Doodle Revolution: Unlock the Power to Think Differently, by Sunni Brown
Sunni Brown’s Doodle Revolution describes a fresh approach to visual thinking, showing how everyone can tap into the power of doodling — one of the most overlooked tools used by creative thinkers as diverse as Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla.
Although frequently disparaged, doodling forms a link between the left and right hemispheres of the brain, unlocking the power of visual thinking to enhance content marketers’ creativity and ability to share ideas with others.
Brown begins by addressing both the reasons doodling is frequently overlooked as a creative tool and the frequently heard objection, “I can’t draw!” She then provides a capsule course in the anatomy of a doodle, showing the basics of hand-drawing text and simple graphics. Each chapter contains assessments and exercises, helping readers build their confidence as they familiarize themselves with the simple building blocks of a storytelling graphic.
Chapter 4, Infodoodle University: Mastering Visual Thinking, contains two excellent sections: The Art of Subtraction and Structuring Information. These do an excellent job of describing the essence of visual thinking. After reading the chapter, you’ll probably never again takes notes at an event or meeting because you’ll have learned why it’s easier and more effective to use doodles to summarize key events. (For example, if you attended Content Marketing World 2013, you may remember Kelly Kingman’s graphic note-taking in real time.)
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2. Talk Like TED: The 9 Public-Speaking Secrets of the World’s Top Minds, by Carmine Gallo
Although the primary focus of Carmine Gallo’s Talk Like TED is on public speaking and presenting, its importance transcends presentations; you can apply its lessons to any type of successful content marketing project.
Carmine Gallo, a communications consultant whose previous bestsellers included The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs and The Creativity Secrets of Steve Jobs, analyzed hundreds of the most popular TED presentations and interviewed their creators. He then distilled their best practices into the nine lessons described in this book.
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SiteBildZ Advantage Discount in chapter 7, Stick to the 18-Minute Rule, Gallo describes what he calls “The Power of Three” and shares a simple template he uses for planning presentations with his clients. His Message Map Template is a marvel of simplicity. It contains a headline that states the main idea to be communicated and three key points, each one accompanied by three supporting points. You can use it for planning everything from articles, blog posts and presentations to eBooks and white papers. (With Gallo’s permission, I’ve converted this template into a mind map you can study and download.)
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3. Difference: The One-page Method for Reimagining Your Business and Reinventing Your Marketing, by Bernadette Jiwa
Many authors talk about the importance of continually reinventing yourself and your business by focusing on what makes you different from your competition. However, most books skirt the issue of how to identify those differences so you can communicate more effectively.
Jiwa’s Difference is one of the few that actually provides a methodology (the 6-pillar Difference Method) and a tool (the Difference Map) to help you identify your points of distinction.
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Working with the downloadable Difference Map template and referring to the completed Difference Maps she provides reinforces the book’s lessons and makes it easy to develop a fresh perspective on your firm’s (or your client’s) key differences.
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4. Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, by Greg McKeown
Greg McKeown’s Essentialism takes the idea of single-minded focus (described in Gary Keller and Jay Papasan’s The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results, which I discussed in my last book round-up) to the next level.
Essentialism‘s four sections describe 19 tactics that business owners and managers can use to distance themselves from distraction and disturbance without alienating coworkers. Most involve selection, delegation and clarifying.
My favorites include:
#14: LIMIT: The Power of Setting Boundaries
#17: PROGRESS: The Power of Small Wins
#18: FLOW: The Genius of Routine
Each of the 19 tactics is illustrated with anecdotes and stories, supported by the latest psychological research. There are also ideas and tips for implementing the ideas, backed up by a visual summary you can photocopy and hang on the wall. In addition, page 111 contains a simple SELECTIVITY exercise to help you identify relevant criteria for your decisions.
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5. Show and Tell: How Everybody Can Make Extraordinary Presentations, by Dan Roam
SiteBildZ Advantage Review of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures, legitimized “amateur” drawings as a communications tool. His “everyone-can-draw” approach has had a major effect on collaboration, innovation and presentations in business.
Show and Tell summarizes the essence of extraordinary presentations in three points:
Tell the truth.
Tell it with a story.
Tell the story with pictures.
He then describes the four types of presentations, each requiring a different story and timeline (or sequence):
Reports, which convey facts
Explanations, which introduce insights or abilities
Pitches, which recommend a new action
Dramas, which inspire a new belief or perspective
Show and Tell includes an example of the timeline appropriate for each type of annotation, along with notes for each step in the story’s development. Once you begin thinking about other types of content marketing projects in terms of Dan’s universal presentation tools, you’ll find it easier to organize and plan your presentation text and graphics before you turn to PowerPoint slides. You’ll probably find Dan’s storyline examples relevant for other types of content, as well.
