Loren Woirhaye said
"Return on Engagement" is a strikingly high-quality book. When I first held it in my hands I commented on how heavy it is. The weight is from the paper - the creamy-smooth paper that takes full-color printing so well.
The book delivers a rich, visual reading experience with lots of relevant illustrations and sidebars. You'd expect a book written by a specialist in engaging and easy to navigate websites to create an engaging and easy to navigate book - and Frick has. It's quite a stunning achievement in terms of how much relevant content it contains and how well-sorted the information is. A real triumph of restraint because Frick probably could have written a book 2 or 3 times as long and made the book worse for it.
I'm a bit humbled by "Return on Engagement". I was expecting a lot of familiar cliches and filler about social media. It's far more technical and insightful about real marketing problems and effective, if sometimes troublesome to implement solutions. There's a lot to understand about building an effective presence on today's internet. This is not a shallow book and if you're anything less than a professional web developer the technical content here will challenge you.
There's brief about engaging real people and branding and all that fun high-concept stuff, but Frick doesn't want to dwell on the countless self-proclaimed social media experts crow on about. He moves fast into the real nitty-gritty day-to-day problem solving needed to make your site load fast, rank well, engage visitors and make money.
Be warned, if you are clueless about internet technology you'll need a translator to understand this book. I could see it being a useful bridge for less-technical people and more technical people to read and talk about. If a project required technology-challenged supervisors to work with web developers and SEO people, I could see this book being a very useful tool for the whole team to get on the same wavelength.
The reach of this book is wide and it makes stabs at depth, including code snippets and technical details you'd expect in an black-and-white O'Reilly technical manual, not in a gorgeous, full-color book.
Highly recommended, but not for the clueless or technophobic.
John P. Jones III said
... could be considered an undated, more hip version of René Descartes famous dictum, provided a very major caveat is observed: that one actually thinks before pounding out the latest message on the keyboard. There are numerous reasons aside from sheer narcissism for having one's own website. Edouard Daladier, a French Prime Minister in the `30's, introduced the expression, the "wall of money," by which he meant the ability of a very few extremely rich families to thwart change in the political process. The "wall of money" is a concept as valid today, in America, as it was in France in the `30's, given the increasing concentration of mega-wealth in the hands of a very few, thereby enabling the few to set and dominate the "agenda," be it political, media, or the market place. The person of average financial means may never be able to "tear down this wall" as Ronald Reagan once urged, concerning a vastly different wall, but the Internet does permit that person to circumvent it. And it can be much more than sharing one's latest vacation photos. In a more purposeful way, it can be about finding and relating to a community of like-minded individuals (and sometimes some very unlike-minded individuals) who share your values and concerns. It can also be about marketing a physical product. The Internet can take the power, and the money away from many so-called experts, as numerous former travel or insurance agent can attest.
If a tree falls in the forest, and no one hears it, does it really make a sound? is a famous philosophical question. If you have a website, and no one knows about it, does it really exist? This excellent book addresses that central problem, and provides a multitude of ways by which your website can function far more effectively for you. Tim Frick helps the website owner synthesize the increasingly segmented skills of the marketer, strategist, writer, designer and developer.
The author provides a global perspective on the skills and techniques of effective website promotion. This starts with an examination of the overall plan: the why of having a website. Frick stresses that content is important, as well as the context in which it is displayed. He then has separate chapters concerning on-site and off-site techniques: the former looks at such items as one's key word strategy; the later on the multifarious methods of promoting one's site at other sites. Frick devotes considerable space to the advantageous use of social network websites, such as Facebook, Twitter, My Space and LinkIn. A static website is a dead website; it must constantly change and evolve. The updating of the website is addressed by CMS (Content Management Systems) and Frick devotes an entire chapter to the subject. Aside from simple CMS, the website needs to be under constant development, and there is a chapter on that also. I'd always wondered what "RSS" is (it is "Really Simple Syndication"). It is an essential tool for getting one's message out. This tool is covered in its own chapter. E-mail marketing is so often associated with "spamming," but the technique is still on the rise. Frick stresses that `proper etiquette', which seems like a fussy, pre-Internet expression, is essential if one is to be effective. No one likes someone "getting in their face," be it in person, or on the Internet, and that is the essence of etiquette.
After all the work is done... and it could take several people several lifetimes if all the techniques are fully exploited, the quintessential question is: Has one accomplished anything? Frick devotes his penultimate chapter to "Measurement," which helps the website owner / webmaster validate and fine-tune the promotional strategy.
Return on Engagement provides an excellent Return of Investment, particularly at the Amazon price, which is only the smallest brick in that proverbial wall of money. The material is rich, varied, and dense, yet is provided in an easy to read and comprehend multi-media style format. It is an absolutely essential 5-star read for anyone with a website, and would be informative even for a Luddite who only reviews books at Amazon.
Garin Kilpatrick said
From on-site to off-site strategy and everything in between this book has it all. I live eat and breathe the web and this book still taught me a ton of great new information that I have already been able to put into action.
Not only did I gain a ton of useful knowledge by reading Tim's book, I also thoroughly enjoyed the read. Every page is annotated with insightful images that make the book very magazine like and fun.
I highly recommend this book for anyone who is serious about creating a powerful presence online.
I tip my hat to Tim for a job well done!
Cheers,
Garin Kilpatrick
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B. Dagiantis said
First off, David Meerman Scott praises the book on the back cover. If you don't know who he is, check out his Gobbledygook Manifesto [...]
In it he says, "Marketers don't understand buyers, the problems buyers face, or how their product helps solve these problems. That's where the gobbledygook happens." He also states, "Because these writers don't understand how their products solve customer problems, they cover by explaining how the product works and pepper this blather with industry jargon." Return on Engagement (ROE) is far from that and exactly the type of book that satisfies David Meerman Scott.
I read Tim's first book, Managing Interactive Products, and Tim sticks to his guns again: be real, have something to offer, and be interesting. He shows marketers how to do that and drive the right audience to your site by focusing earning their trust. Tim explains that the reality is that blogs, social media sites, etc., should be used to help people, build a reputation, earn their trust, and then earn their business as they become advocates for you and your brand.
You probably already know a little bit about the digital technologies mentioned in this book. However, ROE shows how to create a digital strategy and the workflow to execute the tactics. Tim starts by explaining how to listen to online conversations and learn what ideas people have about you and how and why these should form your strategy. He teaches the importance of relevant content, how to publish effectively, and how to integrate your keyword strategy across all touch points/channels.
This books gets you thinking and jotting down notes. All sections contain bullet points with relevant questions that you should answer during your planning stage. Tim practices what he preaches. This book is part of the off-site technique to drive traffic to his site. It's all about driving people to the web. That's why you have to visit the website to download the mobile chapter. Highly suggested!
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