Review by Melinda Brennan

http://superwahm.com

Would I recommend Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion?
Absolutely.  I have already recommended this book to many people, both for personal and business use and will continue to do so.  This is one of my favourite books that I read a couple of times a year for a refresher course.

Overall stickiness:
I’d rate it as a five-sticky book overall. I know I rated the Style as lower, in spite of this I still call it a five-sticky.  The usefulness and far-reaching application of this book overrides the slight downfall of the style.

Application:
Whether you’re in business and need marketing knowledge or just in everyday life as a consumer there’s information that you can use in this book.  Understand how sales and marketing is designed to encourage to you buy – especially when you’re not aware you’re being marketed to.

The concepts in Influence are fully explained in a way that makes them instantly applicable to your own business and situation.

Ideas:

I don’t think there’s anything actually ‘new’ about the ideas in Influence.  Marketing tactics have been around since the world began; however Influence digs really deeply into the ‘Why’ these tactics work and how to use them to their best effect in your own marketing.  Never before has a marketing book approached these techniques and tactics from the psychological aspect or in such depth and detail.

I found I had a lot of “Aha” moments as I read this book and realised the many ways we’re marketed to, every single day, by everyone we meet.  It’s an absolute eye-opener.  Whether it’s a friend raving about a great movie, an email to tell you of an upcoming sale, or an authority figure selling toilet paper, Influence dissects the effect it has and explains the psyche behind it.

While I said there are no new ideas in Influence, the age-old marketing techniques are presented in a radically new and interesting way, in way more depth than I’ve seen anywhere else.  The case studies and discussions of scientific experiments provide a solid base of understanding and ‘real life’ application that is fascinating and at times shocking.

Style:

This is not a book to be read quickly and lightly.  The material is heavy and at times the language can be fairly scientific.  Cialdini knows his subject inside and out and at times his writing becomes a trifle long-winded.  His passion and knowledge shines through in every word he says though, and this does make up for the heaviness of the material.

On the actual physical side, the text font of the book is quite small and the pages are full of long paragraphs of text.  This both slows down reading and makes it slightly harder to focus on the words.  (Don’t try and read this book in a badly lit room!) It doesn’t detract from the reading, however if you’re looking to skim through for important or interesting topics it does make it harder.

Influence is not strictly a business book; it’s a fascinating insight into how our minds are wired and why we do what we do, presented in an entertaining if sometimes heavy manner.

My Biggest Insight:

From Influence I learnt to look at marketing techniques in a new way and to be able to identify why they’re working or not working and how to fix or improve them.  I gained an in-depth understanding behind a buyer’s thinking – or rather, their non-thinking responses – that enabled me to revamp my marketing and that of my clients.

It was quite a shock to me to realise how much of our buying behaviour is pre-programmed for marketers to tap into and use.

One of the minor fun things I learnt from Influence is how to deal with telemarketers and other heavy-duty salespeople by recognising the tools that they’re using and refusing to be manipulated by them.

Some of the powerful concepts in this book (and how you start applying them today):

- Realising that discounts are actually devaluing your product in the eyes of the customer.  We’re wired to associate cost with value with quality.

- Techniques to encourage blog readers/customers/visitors to ‘buy in’ to your site and convince themselves of your value.

- The power of social proof and how to use more than just testimonials to demonstrate the benefits of your business.

- How to get rid of telemarketers and have fun with their questions.

- I could rewrite the whole book under this heading, for me, the above were the biggest and most important concepts to apply immediately.

Introductory concepts:
1) The ‘Click-Whirr’ response that we’re all wired with and that drives our behaviour.
2) How we’re much more strongly influenced by society and peers than we like to think.
3) Reasons that we’ll support and justify a decision we’ve made even in the face of strong evidence that it’s a bad decision.
4) How to deny the marketer/salesperson the ability to manipulate your answers for their benefit and sale

Where To Get This Book (Nope, this isn’t an affiliate link)
Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Influence-Psychology-Persuasion-Business-Essentials/dp/006124189X

• Author: Robert B. Cialdini
• Hardcover: Paperback
• Publisher: Harper Collins, Revised Edition July 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN-13: 978-0-06-124189-5

Thanks to Melinda Brennan
http://superwahm.com

Review by: Natalya Murphy, Website Remedies

Would I recommend Don’t Make Me Think?
If your job has anything to do with creating or maintaining a website, this book must be on your desk. Not on your bookshelf collecting dust; on your desk where you can refer to it daily as you work on your website.

Overall stickiness:
I’d rate it as a five-sticky book. You can use the first seven chapters as a step-by-step checklist for evaluating the user-friendliness of your website. The last few chapters give specific instructions for conducting usability tests.

Application:
It’s a three-sticky on application. Concepts such as having a search box or tabbed menus are easy enough to describe, but making them usable is still tricky; the same goes for home pages. Krug devotes an entire chapter to good home page design, but in the end the suggestions there are still just high-level concepts. There is no single solution for making every home page user-friendly. Because there is so much variety between websites and their purpose, it’s impossible to identify a single approach to design that works in all cases. Krug does an excellent job of giving the high-level concepts but he doesn’t give many specifics on how to implement them.

Ideas:

There are two main ideas in this book:

1. People won’t use your website if they can’t find their way around it  The book tells you the specific elements to put on your website to make it easy to navigate.
2. You won’t know if people can find their way around your site unless you do usability testing.  Krug spends an entire chapter showing you how even the most time- and money-challenged businesses can find the time and resources for usability testing. For those wanting more details Krug has published a companion book, Rocket Surgery Made Easy, devoted to usability testing.

Style:

Steve Krug writes his book in the same style he recommends for website design: easy to scan, easy to digest. You could take 15 minutes to just skim all the subheadings in the book and come away with the basic concepts.  The tone is light and sprinkled with humor, which makes the book very easy to read. The screen shots and tables are easy to understand and, like the subheadings, give you good information just from skimming them. In the introduction, Krug writes that he intentionally kept the book short enough to be read on a long plane ride.

My Biggest Insight:

The biggest insight I gained from this book is that just because my site design is obvious to me, doesn’t mean it’s obvious to my site visitors – that’s where usability testing comes in. Testing a site’s usability doesn’t have to be a big and scary process – it can be as simple as grabbing someone walking by your desk, asking them to take a look at your site design and asking a few questions or observing how they interact with the website.

Some of the powerful concepts in this book (and how you start applying them today):

Websites are like billboards – they need to quickly convey a message and get the visitor’s attention. Use visual elements on the website to logically group related items and distinguish between more-important and less-important items.

Some web users prefer to find information by using the search box, so make sure your site has a search box… and make sure it actually brings back meaningful results.

Introductory concepts:

1. Site visitors should be able to figure out what a website is about right away, and navigating the site should be easy and intuitive.  Some elements Krug recommends for easy navigation:
   1. A logo in the top left of the page that, when clicked, returns you to the home page.
   2. Standards for navigation menus
   3. A search box
   4. Breadcrumbs (you-are-here indicators)
2. Internet users are looking for a quick answer to their problem. They don’t read web content, they scan it.   Websites should be designed with this fact in mind.
3. Make time for usability testing.  It doesn’t have to take a lot of time and money, so commit to taking one morning a month for usability testing, and involve as many people from the project team as possible.

Where To Get This Book (Nope, this ain’t an affiliate link)
http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Make-Me-Think-Usability/dp/0321344758

• Author: Steve Krug
• Paperback: 216 pages
• Publisher: New Riders Press; 2nd edition (August 28, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0321344758
• ISBN-13: 978-0321344755

Thanks to: Natalya Murphy, Website Remedies

Would I recommend the The Culting of Brands?
Absolutely. I’ve read this book thrice already. And each time it brings a new layer of understanding of why certain communities work (and why most others don’t). The word ‘cult’ brings up the worst sort of connotations. It brings up a feeling of control, of mindless, robotic behaviour, of mass madness. And yet the concept of a cult is nowhere as maniacal.

In fact the concept of the word ‘cult’ changes almost instantly when you think of the brand “Apple Computers”. Suddenly the word swings from the bizarre to the not-so-bizarre. The fact is that cults are part of social evolution for thousands of years, and Christianity, the Pilgrims etc., were all cults. The underlying factor of the book is that cults tend to be progressive. Sects on the other hand tend to be regressive.

And once that definition comes to the fore, we see that cults have these underlying factors of great devotion, distinct ideology, defined/committed community and a devotion that leads to members becoming voluntary advocates. Kinda like me and my Mac (Heck, didn’t even know I was in a cult).

Overall stickiness:
I’d rate it as a five-sticky book. The book is extremely well written and detailed. There are lots of examples (some of which are now dated) E.g. How Jet Blue created a cult out of nothing at all, simply by NOT being an airline, but being something else altogether. You can delve deep into the heart of the Hare Krishna movement, how Saturn cars were sold, or even how Harley Davidson created a cult in complete contrast to say BMW bikes.

This book becomes hard to put down once you get started, because it gets under your skin. Doug Atkins (the author) goes from the Paradox of cults, and shows you how cults (for all their sameness) succeed because the cult members believe they’re different. He also delves deeply into how cults tend to sell the concept of the “people” long before the “ideology”. That interaction between the members is critical and more important than shoving an idea down someone’s throat.

Incredibly, the smart cults attract members who are socially very successful (makes sense, doesn’t it?) and often very attractive. People who have connections to friends, family, and good at making connections. And I must stop raving here, because otherwise I’ll never stop. So yes, I’d rate this book very highly. And I’ll be reading it several times over the years to come.

Application:
It’s a five-sticky on application. The concepts are easy to apply. Really easy. They’re a lot of concepts, but if you are patient (and cults are patient) then you can indeed put all of the concepts in place over the years and the decades to come.

Ideas:
The ideas contained in this book are not only quite sound and well-researched, but they’re very do-able. That’s often unusual for a book with such a broad (or deep) concept.

Style:
The book is very readable. The text flows easily, and the stories and case studies keep you enthralled. It’s hard to put down (didn’t I say that before?) The layout is also very clean, and this makes a big difference in the overall presentation of the book’s ideas.

Click on the thumbnail to see bigger picture

My Biggest Insight
I’d say it changed my concept of a cult. The ideas that are in this book find a place in our membership site at 5000bc. In the past, I’d have hesitated to call 5000bc a cult and used something more like “oh it’s a membership”, but I see that there’s a massive diffrence between just being a member and being part of a cult. I see myself in the Apple cult. And the Wacom cult. And the InDesign cult. And the great coffee cult. It definitely changes the perspective.

Some of the powerful concepts in this book (and how you start applying them today): (Note: The links go to similar-kinda Psychotactics articles.I’ll add more links as I write more articles.)

Introductory concepts:
1) Is there a difference between brands and cults?
2) How people search for meaning, security, order and identity.
3) How it creates a paradox: Devotion of one=rejection of another.
4) People join to find themselves, and not to conform. They feel safe.
5) Mary Kay, Apple, Harley Davidson are all ongoing cults without the overall need to be supervised.
6) All cults assume they’re different.
7) The importance of language, iconography, appearances.
The focus on the person.
9) Choosing the “right” members.
10) The critical importance of interaction at all times.

Where To Get This Book (Nope, this ain’t an affiliate link)
At Amazon.com : ‘The Culting of Brands by Douglas Atkin’

# Hardcover: 256 pages
# Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover (June 3, 2004)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 1591840279
# ISBN-13: 978-1591840275
# Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches

Another website you’ll find useful to understand customer psychology:
www.psychotactics.com

Would I recommend ‘Made to Stick?’
Absolutely, I’d recommend it! It’s a five-sticky book (where a five-sticky rating is the top score) on Application, Ideas, as well as style.

Application:
It’s a five-sticky on the application score, because each chapter gives you a ‘clinic’. This ‘clinic’ is not just a very good summary of what you’ve just learned, but can also test your abilities–and measure them against the concepts. And there’s a rating system for ’stickiness’ in the ‘clinic’ itself. So you can go ‘duh’ when you realise, what you could have done to make the communication a little stickier–and didn’t.

Ideas:
It’s hard to turn too many pages in this book without getting a bucket-load of ideas. This book is packed to the brim with real examples, and well-told stories. And it’s quite easy to connect the concepts to your own business. And once you’ve made the connection, the ideas start to flow. I ended up with 48 stickies. And read the book three times. And yes, I’d read it a fourth time, just to mop up what I didn’t see on the first three passes. So heck, ideas just flow. Which is why the ideas get a five-sticky too!

Style:
Many books have ideas. And applications. Few have an inherent style. Ok, so style is kinda subjective, but I couldn’t put the book down. And I started reading it at 2am. It kept me absorbed. A thriller couldn’t have done much better! Ahem, a five-sticky on that too!

Kinda summed up on this brown paper bag

Click image to see bigger picture of this brown paper bag

My Biggest Insight
Story telling is dramatic. We all know that. But this book tells you a story on literally every page.

And then underlines how the story links up to the concepts that are being taught in the book. If there’s one thing I’ve got that would make this book worth the read, it’s the importance of story-telling vs. cold analytical facts; That figures aren’t a patch on story-telling; That testimonials don’t work their magic without the story behind the testimonial.

That when facts meet stories in the boxing ring, stories come out champions every single time.

Some of the powerful concepts in this book (and how you start applying them today): (Note: The links go to similar-kinda Psychotactics articles.I’ll add more links as I write more articles.)1- Break the pattern: How to get the attention of the customer.
2- The Curse of Knowledge: Ah, the term says it all-but distraction helps
3- The low-fare airline: The ability to cut through the crap.
4- No school next Thursday: What does it really mean?
5- Disco lights on the floor: The Southwest girl with a sense of humour.
6- It’s the Economy, Stupid! – One Idea, not three!
6- Sour grapes: Sour. Not sweet. That’s concrete.
7- Stephen Covey’s description of a football team (ok, ok, soccer): Bringing abstraction to life.
8- Don’t Mess With Texas: Is your advertising being wasted? Memorable messaging
9- Shop talk at Xerox: Geek talk ain’t always Greek

Where To Get This Book (Nope, this ain’t an affiliate link)
At Amazon.com : ‘Made to Stick’

• Author: Chip and Dan Heath
• Publisher: Random House (January 2, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400064287
• ISBN-13: 978-1400064281
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.7 x 1.1 inches