This review may not appeal to everyone. I’m just going to put it out there that it’s not quite as interesting or entertaining as Skinny Bitch or my lightning round post. But I read The New Rules of Marketing and PR by David Meerman Scott and there are a few (actually more than a few) valuable pieces of information that I thought I would put out there.

As most of you know, I’ve been doing a little business blogging here and here. Business blogging is about marketing and public relations. While anyone can set up shop and call themselves a blogger, that doesn’t mean that they understand how to write content that drives traffic and converts to sales/subscriptions/donations. Rather than just calling myself a business blogger and hoping that my blog posts drive enough traffic for my employers/potential employers to believe that I am qualified to blog, I decided to educate myself. I’ve found myself more and more interested in social media marketing and so I’ve been experimenting with it. I’ve created blogs and twitter accounts all over the place just to see what I can do with them. (Keeping all of them updated is definitely something that I cannot do!)

All of this interest drove me to read The New Rules of Marketing and PR and I am so glad I did! While the ideas in this book are not revolutionary–especially not to those of us who have been using social media for many years– the book did remind me to do some things I had not been doing and it provided a new perspective on things I was already doing.

My personal favorite chapter was on public relations. Let us not forget that, although we are writing press releases for the press, we are writing for the general public. Find a way to speak to the public that they actually understand. Scott’s best advice: If your grandmother can’t understand your press release neither will journalists (or your potential clients). Scott talks about staying away from industry catch phrases and over used words. You really just need to read the book, if you have any interest in all of this!

I love that Scott wrote this book as though it were a blog. In fact, he wrote most of it as a blog first! The conversational tone of the book makes it an easier read than some technical books that I’ve opened, skimmed through and then promptly returned to the shelf. For any aspiring community manager, social media guru or professional blogger, this is a must read. I will say that it doesn’t have some little known secret that is going to jump start your social media marketing efforts overnight. (I looked for that book…it doesn’t exist!)

In another social media marketing news…

I’ve built up quite the collection of social media and/or marketing blogs. I’ve subscribed to them using Google reader. While there’s no feasible way for me to stay up to date with all of them, I do try to spend some time on the weekends reading Chris Brogan, She-economy, Mashable and Shannon Paul’s Very Official Blog. I wonder how much time I’ll have to do that now that school is starting.