Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs

For my review I chose a book called Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs. It was written by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, who are the cofounders of the website HubSpot which is a marketing software company that helps businesses “get found.”
I thought that this book was really good for someone like me, who is new to online marketing and inbound marketing in particular. I think people who are already using the tools in the book for marketing their business would probably think this book was too basic and obvious. I really liked the style of the authors’ writing because it was easy to follow and didn’t come off as pretentious or condescending as these types of books sometimes do. I really liked how everything was laid out in a step-by-step manner so it was easy to follow and you could start using these techniques right away. The last thing I really liked about this book was the fact that they had a to-do list at the end of each chapter outlining the steps it advised you to take, plus lines for extra tasks you might want to add yourself. The only real weakness I could find for this book was simply the fact that it was written more for beginners, so people just wanting to hone their skills a little would probably be disappointed with it.
Without having read many other books on this subject, or similar subjects, I have a hard time really recommending it given similar books. However, I think it is safe to say that if you are a beginner in online marketing or social media use, this would definitely be a great book to get you started. If you are someone who has been using online marketing for a while and are looking for ways to improve upon it, then I would not recommend this book for you. There are probably much better resources out there, some of which we will probably hear about from other student’s reviews.

Check out my YouTube video on the primary value I got from this book here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1_0dy6vZ1Q

Hazel Bundy

Welcome to the 2010 book review blog

This blog features book reviews of titles selected by undergraduate e-commerce students from University of Colorado at Colorado Springs as part of a course requirement. Most of the activity will take place in October 2010, and will continue into November.
The criteria for selection include:
- relevance to the course,
- of great personal interest to the student,
- a book that the student has not previously read, and
- a copyright date of 2008 or later (earlier copyright requires instructor approval)
Beyond these few rules, the only other criterion is that only one student can select a particular book, so once one students selects a book, the 41 other students have to find another title--you snooze, you lose!
Each student serves as a contributor to the blog, so there will be 42 contributors. If you read this blog and are not a student in the class, feel free to make comments to the blog postings. If you are an author and see a review of your book, feel free to comment.
TG, the e-commerce prof.