With all of the great books out there, how do you decide which book, especially business and marketing book, is right for you? Roger C. Parker has done the legwork and compiled a brilliant list of books perfect for marketers and content marketers alike. What have you read? What is your favorite? Do you have any to add?
2. The Essential #BestBooks Reading List for Content Marketers
Over the last few years, Content Marketing Institute has published biannual roundups in which
Roger C. Parker highlights books that he considers must-reads (and we agree!). They range from
big-name best-sellers that can benefit any businessperson to under-the-radar gems that offer
detailed guidance on managing specific challenges.
A great number of these books come from within the content marketing community, but as Roger
points out, the most productive content marketing ideas often originate outside the content
marketing world — for example, in the areas of traditional advertising, creativity, personal branding,
and psychology.
As such, we have categorized our list by the function each book primarily serves:
Content Marketing & Content Strategy
Writing & Content Creation
Marketing & Branding
Creative Ideas & Business Inspiration
Processes & Productivity
Introduction
3. The Essential #BestBooks Reading List for Content Marketers
Regardless of whether it explicitly focuses on the topic of content marketing, each of the following
books includes valuable insights that we believe will benefit every content marketer.
As is the case with any of our lists, we are sure there are plenty of other books out there that can
inspire, improve, or simply inform your content marketing journey. Did we miss your favorite one?
Feel free to share additional suggestions in the comments below!
Special thanks to Roger C. Parker for his invaluable reviews, suggestions, and source materials!
4. The Essential #BestBooks Reading List for Content Marketers
CONTENT MARKETING & CONTENT STRATEGY
APE: Author – Publisher – Entrepreneur:
How to Publish a Book
By Guy Kawasaki and Shawn Welch
APE is an extensively documented guide to the steps involved in
writing, publishing, and profiting from printed books and e-books.
It offers significant value for any professional (content or otherwise)
looking to publish a premium book and sell it using online channels
like Amazon, Apple, Google, and Barnes & Noble. Even if you’re
not interested in publishing a book, APE offers valuable lessons
on navigating the options involved in creating and leveraging short,
inexpensive premium reports and user guides — powerful tools for
attracting qualified prospects and boosting buyer satisfaction.
5. The Essential #BestBooks Reading List for Content Marketers
The Language of Content Strategy
By Scott Abel and Rahel Anne Bailie
Even the best-designed and most-well-written content creation and
curation messages are wasted if they don’t reflect a coherent content
strategy. With refreshing clarity and conciseness, The Language
of Content Strategy takes content marketers deep into the field of
content strategy, introducing the vocabulary and resources needed to
implement an efficient and sustainable content strategy program.
Organized in five logical sections, each of the 52 topics covered is
explained in a concise, highly readable two-page spread — not a
single word is wasted. Written by specialists in a narrow discipline but
understandable by all, it’s recommended for content entrepreneurs,
managers, and other business professionals who have created an
efficient content platform but want to take their planning and strategy
capabilities to the next level.
6. The Essential #BestBooks Reading List for Content Marketers
Content Chemistry: An Illustrated Handbook
for Content Marketing
By Andy Crestodina
The expanded second edition of this book by popular Content
Marketing World presenter Andy Crestodina proves that even the
best books can be improved upon.
The latest edition retains its unique, college-chemistry-course-
inspired metaphor of Part One: Lecture and Part Two: Lab Work, its
emphasis on atomizing your content, and its signature Periodic Table
of Content, but adds new sections and enhanced visuals. Reflecting
Crestodina’s unique combination of insights, concise writing, and
visual appeal, the book is recommended for both newcomers to
content marketing and veterans looking to be re-inspired.
7. The Essential #BestBooks Reading List for Content Marketers
Global Content Marketing: How to Create
Great Content, Reach More Customers,
and Build a Worldwide Marketing Strategy
That Works
By Pam Didner
As content marketing grows, more and more topic-specific books have appeared.
One of the best is Pam Didner’s Global Content Marketing, which provides
the perspective that content marketers need to extend their reach beyond the
borders of their country.
Using case studies and examples that many will find familiar, Didner reviews
the well-known four Ps of marketing (Product, Price, Place, and Promotion) and
adapts them to the realities of today’s global content marketing:
1. Plan: Create a strategy before executing, in conjunction with stakeholders
around the world.
2. Produce: Create content that matters and systems that can continuously
provide fresh content in appropriate formats for key market segments around
the world.
3. Promote: Distribute and promote content using both paid and social media.
4. Perfect: Continuously measure and optimize results, creating an ongoing
feedback loop.
8. The Essential #BestBooks Reading List for Content Marketers
Subscription Marketing: Strategies for
Nurturing Customers in a World of Churn
By Anne H. Janzer
By identifying a key concern faced by all content marketers and
sharing a system to address it Anne Janzer has created a niche that
she can dominate within the content marketing world.
Janzer has positioned her book in terms of length and value. In less
than 150 pages (print version), she convincingly describes:
1. The problem (i.e., the symptoms and implications of the
subscription shift)
2. The solution (i.e., an alternative: a series of value-nurturing
strategies)
3. The implementation (i.e., how to put the strategies into action)
9. The Essential #BestBooks Reading List for Content Marketers
Content Marketing Works: 8 Steps to
Transform Your Business
By Arnie Kuenn and Brad Kuenn
Content Marketing Works is an excellent one-stop guide for
entrepreneurs, small-business owners, and corporate managers
who need to convince the powers that be to allow them to invest in
content marketing.
The eight steps are well chosen and provide a useful framework for
change. Each chapter contains enough detail to structure the tasks
involved in each step. The cover and chapter title pages also provide
a useful example of tasteful design and inside-page branding.
10. The Essential #BestBooks Reading List for Content Marketers
Buyer Personas: How to Gain Insights Into
Your Customer’s Expectations, Align Your
Marketing Strategies, and Win More Business
By Adele Revella
You may think you’ve learned all there is to know about buyer
personas from Adele Revella’s frequent Content Marketing Institute
blog posts and Content Marketing World presentations.
But no matter how much you already know, Revella’s book will show
you how to go deeper into buyer personas in ways that your clients,
co-workers, and C-level executives will appreciate. And, if you’re self-
employed, you’ll learn how to gain a better understanding of your own
clients and prospects, and will be better able to align your content
marketing to their needs.
11. The Essential #BestBooks Reading List for Content Marketers
Experiences: The 7th Era of Marketing
By Robert Rose and Carla Johnson
In Experiences: The 7th Era of Marketing, Robert Rose, the Content
Marketing Institute’s chief strategy officer, and Carla Johnson, a
frequent Content Marketing Institute storyteller and contributor, offer
an informed guide to what content marketers can do today to prepare
for the future.
It outlines an action plan for serious marketers who want to escape
the “copy and graphics business” and, instead, become mission-
critical leaders and decision-makers for their firms. Consider it a
handbook for those who seek growing influence and responsibility at
every touchpoint of the buyer-seller experience.
12. The Essential #BestBooks Reading List for Content Marketers
The Content Code: Six Essential Strategies
for Igniting Your Content, Your Marketing,
and Your Business
By Mark Schaefer
The Content Code addresses the problem of “content density,” the
tsunami of content competing for your prospect’s attention. It offers a
simple but scalable six-step framework. It’s written in a conversational
style, using colorful language like “content shock” and “ignition
strategy.” In particular, you may find Chapter 3, “Building Shareability
Into Your Content” and Chapter 4, “22 Practical Ways to Achieve
Content Ignition” especially helpful.
13. The Essential #BestBooks Reading List for Content Marketers
Epic Content Marketing: How to Tell a
Different Story, Break Through the Clutter,
and Win More Customers by Marketing Less
By Joe Pulizzi
Epic Content Marketing lives up to its title by providing the type of
detail-oriented implementation advice needed to produce the type of
inspiring content Pulizzi describes.
The chapters are organized into five logical sections that build upon
each other, and within those chapters, Pulizzi has helpfully balanced
discussion and interviews with bulleted lists, insightful thoughts,
and useful resources. Epic Content Marketing is a “dictionary of
possibilities.”
14. The Essential #BestBooks Reading List for Content Marketers
100 Things Every Presenter Needs to
Know About People
By Susan M. Weinschenk, Ph.D.
Over the past few years, Susan Weinschenk has published several
engaging books about marketing and communications that are
written from her perspective as a psychologist. They are filled with
stories that summarize the latest research on how the brain perceives
and processes information. Her latest book offers 100 ideas for
increasing the effectiveness of your presentations, as well as stories,
tips, and takeaways. Its lessons are as valuable for content marketers
who are preparing e-learning courses or embedding SlideShare
presentations as they are for those using PowerPoint at staff
meetings.
15. The Essential #BestBooks Reading List for Content Marketers
Accidental Genius: Using Writing to Generate
Your Best Ideas, Insight, and Content
By Mark Levy
Mark Levy’s idea is very simple: Nothing will happen unless you start to
write something. When you are unable to conjure up the words you are
looking for, just write anything that comes to your mind — a letter to your
mother explaining why you can’t write what you’re trying to write, a letter to
your client or your boss explaining why you can’t deliver your content, etc.
Levy is a corporate writing coach who encourages stuck business
professionals to set a timer and write for 7 minutes, then stop (without
reviewing what you’ve written), then write for another 7 minutes. Soon,
quality ideas and appropriate words and sentences will begin to appear.
And, you’ll be on your way to success!
Accidental Genius is a great book for any freelance content marketer’s
library or for a shared bookshelf in a marketing department.
WRITINg & Content CREATION
16. The Essential #BestBooks Reading List for Content Marketers
Help! for Writers: 210 Solutions to the
Problems Every Writer Faces
By Roy Peter Clark
Bringing a journalist’s pragmatic approach to content marketing
productivity, this third book in Roy Peter Clark’s writer’s series is
organized around a seven-step writing process, with three chapters
dedicated to addressing the most common problems associated with
each step.
Unlike many media-specific writing guides, (i.e., how to write a book,
how to write for the web, etc.), the 210 solutions presented in Help!
for Writers are appropriate for all experience levels and all types of
writing — articles, blog posts, books, speeches, etc.
17. The Essential #BestBooks Reading List for Content Marketers
White Papers for Dummies
By Gordon Graham
Any content marketer looking for a structured approach to creating
white papers — or e-books and reports that are structured like white
papers — will benefit from the “everyman” positioning and step-by-
step organization of Graham’s instructional book on the subject.
One of the book’s features that demonstrates the author’s extensive
experience (derived from preparing over 600 white papers) is his
continuing emphasis on the planning and marketing phase of this
type of content. Freelancers, in particular, will likely appreciate the
detailed advice he provides on how to position and price white-paper
marketing services.
18. The Essential #BestBooks Reading List for Content Marketers
The Visual Marketing Revolution
By Stephanie Diamond
Stephanie Diamond was the marketing director at AOL during its
period of greatest growth. Her latest book is an illustrated how-to
guide to putting the best visual marketing tools to work.
In her definitive guide, Diamond describes the primary characteristics
of and best uses for myriad visual content formats and shares
resources and tips for creating great graphics. Keep this book on
hand in your department’s library (or your home office) and use it
to help select the best images for your articles, blog posts, white
papers, or any other content you are creating.
19. The Essential #BestBooks Reading List for Content Marketers
Picture Your Business Strategy:
Transform Decisions with the Power of Visuals
By Christine Chopyak
If you attended Content Marketing World 2013, you were likely
fascinated by the way Kelly Kingman used graphic recording to
create eye-catching visual content — in real time — during the
keynote presentations. Picture Your Business Strategy shows how
the technique of graphic recording can also be used to facilitate
meetings and encourage attendee participation at content marketers’
staff meetings and brainstorming sessions.
20. The Essential #BestBooks Reading List for Content Marketers
How to Write Short: Word Craft for Fast Times
By Roy Peter Clark
How to Write Short is loaded with surprises and practical tips.
Clark begins by showing that there’s nothing particularly new about
effective short-form writing (think Facebook posts, Twitter updates,
and the like), and provides numerous examples of how short
messages can have long life spans.
As he does in his previous books, Clark also suggests specific habits
and practices that can improve your ability to deliver compelling
content in a brief format. As he puts it: “In the digital age, short writing
is king.”
21. The Essential #BestBooks Reading List for Content Marketers
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 this
medium; you can apply its lessons to any type of successful content
marketing project.
Gallo 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.
As one example, Gallo’s 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 accompanied by three
supporting points. You can use it for planning everything from
articles, blog posts, and presentations to e-books and white papers.
22. The Essential #BestBooks Reading List for Content Marketers
Show and Tell: How Everybody Can Make
Extraordinary Presentations
By Dan Roam
In Show and Tell, Roam summarizes the essence of extraordinary
presentations in three points:
1. Tell the truth.
2. Tell it with a story.
3. Tell the story with pictures.
He then describes the four types of presentations, each requiring a different
story and timeline (or sequence):
1. Reports, which convey facts
2. Explanations, which introduce insights or abilities
3. Pitches, which recommend a new action
4. 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 Roam’s universal presentation tools, you’ll find it easier to organize
and plan your own presentation text and graphics. You’ll probably find Roam’s
storyline examples relevant for other types of content, as well.
23. The Essential #BestBooks Reading List for Content Marketers
Everybody Writes: The Go-to Guide to Writing
Ridiculously Good Content
By Ann Handley
Handley’s original co-authored book, Content Rules, introduced many
marketers to the basic concepts of content marketing. Everybody
Writes, however, takes content and writing to new levels.
Though it is a serious, in-depth analysis of a complex topic with which
many struggle, Everybody Writes reads as easily as a letter from a
long-time friend. In a story world, Handley tells her story — the writing
challenges she encountered, how she overcame them, and how she
balances her need for privacy (i.e., building a house in the backyard
for writing) with the challenges of leading a successful virtual
corporation of collaborators who rarely meet face to face.
Everybody Writes offers detailed advice for just about every aspect
of writing, but the two themes to which she frequently returns are
the need for brevity and for clarity — the keys to writing for today’s
primarily online readers.
24. The Essential #BestBooks Reading List for Content Marketers
The Art of Explanation: Making Your Ideas,
Products, and Services Easier to Understand
By Lee LeFever
Explanations form the heart of content marketing success. So it’s
particularly helpful that Lee LeFever starts his book by detailing
the planning and writing steps necessary to create an effective
explanation. He then describes how to make explanations as visual
as possible using animated, simple drawings.
In a world filled with books stressing persuasive copywriting
techniques, it’s a rare pleasure to see a book dedicated to
explanatory writing.
25. The Essential #BestBooks Reading List for Content Marketers
MARKETING & BRANDING
Book Yourself Solid Illustrated
By Michael Port
For years, Michael Port’s Book Yourself Solid has been a best-
selling guide to marketing success for self-employed professionals.
This latest, illustrated version improves on the original and sets new
standards for using design to differentiate, organize, and add value.
Port partnered with a visual strategist, Jocelyn Wallace, who took
a 90,000-word manuscript and breathed new life into the ideas,
with 800 pictures and workbook exercises. Each two-page spread
clarifies Port’s advice and invites readers to take advantage of his
process by systematically completing his steps for service business
success.
26. The Essential #BestBooks Reading List for Content Marketers
The New Rules of Marketing & PR
(4th edition)
By David Meerman Scott
With over 300,000 copies in print in more than 25 languages, David
Meerman Scott’s New Rules of Marketing and PR has become the
bible of online marketing and can be considered the best all-around
introduction to today’s changed marketing world.
The latest edition is the best one yet. Scott revisited every chapter,
updating stories and adding resources, in addition to adding new
chapters on topics like social media, online video, and mobile
applications.
27. The Essential #BestBooks Reading List for Content Marketers
Youtility: Why Smart Marketing Is
About Help Not Hype
By Jay Baer
Youtility is an “attitude” book that inspires by the strength of its
examples and the logic of its arguments. It’s the perfect book for
content marketing skeptics who say, “This wouldn’t work for my type
of business,” because the examples come from businesses of all
sizes, across all types of fields. From Baer’s opening perspective
that, “your friends and family are now competing with you,” to the six
blueprints he provides, Youtility delivers, both as a book and as an
overall content marketing philosophy.
28. The Essential #BestBooks Reading List for Content Marketers
Marketing the Moon: The Selling of the
Apollo Lunar Program
By David Meerman Scott and Richard Jurek
Marketing the Moon is the first content marketing case study to move
from the home office to the living room coffee table. It’s an exhaustively
researched, carefully written, and graphically rich book that contains
hundreds of photographs and images of documents (like memos and
letters) that aren’t typically accessible to the public.
The fascinating story describes how, ultimately, the success of the Apollo
Lunar Program was based on NASA’s focus on content and storytelling,
instead of on a governmental entity “pushing an agenda.” NASA provided
unprecedented access to the key players in its program — in particular,
the astronauts — allowing the media to tell the story everywhere.
As a result of this early example of “letting go of the conversation,”
America’s media and citizens “bought into” the story of Apollo and
willingly supported the huge expenditures, which made the successful
moon landing and return possible.
29. The Essential #BestBooks Reading List for Content Marketers
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 that actually provides a methodology (the
6-pillar Difference Method) and a tool (the Difference Map) to help
you identify your points of distinction.
Working with the downloadable Difference Map template and
referring to the completed Difference Maps she provides will help
reinforce the book’s lessons and makes it easy to develop a fresh
perspective on your firm’s (or your client’s) key differences.
30. The Essential #BestBooks Reading List for Content Marketers
The New Rules of Sales and Service: How
to Use Agile Selling, Real-Time Customer
Engagement, Big Data, Content, and
Storytelling to Grow Your Business
By David Meerman Scott
The New Rules of Sales and Service integrates Scott’s narrative of the
changed world of business that began with his international best-seller, The
New Rules of Marketing and PR, by showing how businesses large and small
are either profiting from the internet or falling behind through apathy or
mismanagement.
It’s particularly relevant for savvy marketers and business owners who
have a blog and web presence but haven’t fundamentally evolved the way
they do business in the digital age. Scott does an excellent job of inspiring
by showing how to use technology to prosper and take advantage of
opportunities in all types of businesses. In addition, his impatience with poor
customer service and lost opportunities is as inspiring as his excitement over
those who are on the cutting edge of internet-enabled customer service.
31. The Essential #BestBooks Reading List for Content Marketers
Launch: An Internet Millionaire’s Secret
Formula to Sell Anything Online, Build a
Business You Love, and Live the Life of
Your Dreams
By Jeff Walker
Jeff Walker and his Product Launch Formula may be new to many content
marketers, but his name and signature product are well known to a
generation of internet marketers who have (or claim to have) made millions
from his advice.
Launch echoes now-accepted content marketing tenets, including a focus
on building and carefully cultivating email lists. Walker begins by describing
the four steps of the Product Launch Formula, and the tasks associated with
each step:
1. Pre-prelaunch: a learning phase
2. Prelaunch: where you build anticipation for your product
3. Launch: where you begin to take orders for your product
4. Post-launch: where you follow up with new clients as well as
prospects who didn’t purchase.
Even if you read no further than this, you’ll be exposed to plenty of ideas that
could be adapted for your content marketing strategy.
32. The Essential #BestBooks Reading List for Content Marketers
The Marketing Performance Blueprint:
Strategies and Technologies to Build and
Measure Business Success
By Paul Roetzer
Paul Roetzer’s second book addresses two of the biggest challenges that have
emerged from the B2B, B2C, and nonprofit research conducted by the Content
Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs — the need to create more content and to
become more confident about content’s ROI.
A hands-on management guide for content marketing agencies and departments,
its chapters are organized into four sections:
1. The Backstory discusses challenges like the need to address gaps in talent,
technology, strategy, and performance through an ongoing program of
adoption, adaptation, and evolution.
2. Marketing Talent addresses real-world issues like finding the right staff
members and keeping their skills sharp and current.
3. Marketing Technology addresses the connected customer experience, its
significance, the impact of automation and artificial intelligence, and the need
to provide appropriate experiences to customers at the right time.
4. Marketing Strategy addresses the issues that are emerging as the lines
between marketing, metrics, and technology vanish
33. The Essential #BestBooks Reading List for Content Marketers
Hello, My Name Is Awesome: How to Create
Brand Names That Stick
By Alexandra Watkins
This is a slim (under 100 pages), inexpensive book with a wealth of
knowledge from the founder of a firm that specializes in developing
product and business names for firms like Adobe, Disney, Dunkin’
Donuts, eHarmony, Hasbro, and Microsoft.
Although Watkins’ background is from the corporate world, her
methodology can be applied by all. Hello, My Name Is Awesome
covers all the bases, including tips for choosing the right domain
names (while avoiding frequently encountered traps). There’s even a
chapter comparing the pros and cons of name changes.
34. The Essential #BestBooks Reading List for Content Marketers
CREATIVE IDEAS & BUSINESS INSPIRATION
The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks
and Win Your Inner Creative Battles
By Steven Pressfield
In this book, which Seth Godin has called “the most important book
you’ve never heard of,” Pressfield contends that inside all of us is a
Resistance, an inbred predisposition to avoid change — even positive
change. As a result, we experience distress, anxiety, and sometimes
even writer’s block when expected to complete creative projects (like
that blog post you’ve been struggling with all week).
The War of Art is not always a pretty book. Hopefully, no one
reading these words will ever experience the angst that even most
accomplished authors suffer from. But, we should all thank Seth
Godin for bringing The War of Art to new audiences so that we
recognize these triggers and take appropriate action.
35. The Essential #BestBooks Reading List for Content Marketers
Red Thread Thinking: Weaving Together
Connections for Brilliant Ideas and Profitable
Innovation
By Debra Kaye, with Karen Kelly
Debra Kaye’s Red Thread Thinking provides an inspiring alternative
to creativity books that focus on “Aha!” moments of breakthrough
innovation.
The book shares “red threads,” those more predictable and realistic
sources of innovation that can be found in everyday business
situations — not just in isolated geniuses or deep-pocketed research
departments. Illustrated with case studies and interviews, this is one
innovation book that won’t put you to sleep on your next flight.
36. The Essential #BestBooks Reading List for Content Marketers
The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth
Behind Extraordinary Results
By Gary Keller, with Jay Papasan
Personal productivity and time management play key roles in
content marketing success; The ONE Thing is an insightful book
about “getting it together” and making a major leap forward in
accomplishing your personal, departmental, or business goals.
Reflecting the experiences of Gary Keller, the founder of Keller-
Williams Realty — the largest real estate franchise in the U.S.
— the book serves as an excellent example of the marriage of
content, illustrations, and design. The premise is simple, and the
implementation is easy, but it really works.
37. The Essential #BestBooks Reading List for Content Marketers
The Power of Visual Storytelling: How to Use
Visuals, Videos, and Social Media to Market
Your Brand
By Ekaterina Walter and Jessica Gioglio
The Power of Visual Storytelling provides a detailed overview of what
you need to know to take visual content marketing to the next level,
including a description of the importance of the technique and its
seven key elements.
At every step, there are useful lists of best practices, options,
questions, tips and tools — including a particularly helpful rundown of
image sizes to use for popular social media platforms. Best of all, the
extensive lists are keyed to each specific platform, such as tips for
engaging on Facebook, Tumblr, SlideShare, etc.
38. The Essential #BestBooks Reading List for Content Marketers
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
— an underestimated tool that creative thinkers as diverse as Steve
Jobs, Albert Einstein, and Nikola Tesla have relied upon.
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. (If you attended Content
Marketing World 2013, you may remember Kelly Kingman’s graphic
note-taking in real time.)
39. The Essential #BestBooks Reading List for Content Marketers
The Advertising Concept Book: A Complete
Guide to Creative Ideas, Strategies and
Campaigns
By Pete Barry
The Advertising Concept Book provides content marketers with a
valuable source of content and design inspiration based on the best
examples from the past. You won’t find this much insight, analysis,
and detail in one volume anywhere else.
Each page is a visual treat. Classic ads have been redrawn to
highlight the key ideas, free from distraction. This is a book to be
read slowly on paper, giving your mind time to digest the ideas.
40. The Essential #BestBooks Reading List for Content Marketers
Stand Out: How to Find Your Breakthrough
Idea and Build a Following Around It
By Dorie Clark
Stand Out (a companion, implementation guide for Clark’s first book,
Reinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future) describes a
three-step process for:
1. Finding your breakthrough idea
2. Building a following around it
3. Making it happen
Stand Out covers the tasks and details involved with each step with
examples, interviews, and tips. To help you begin your journey, each
chapter ends with challenging, thought-provoking questions that will
help you identify which ideas may be worth pursuing.
41. The Essential #BestBooks Reading List for Content Marketers
Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the
Obstacles Between Vision & Reality
By Scott Belsky
Scott Belsky’s Making Ideas Happen addresses a broad range of real-world
productivity issues for a broad spectrum of content marketing writers and
designers — as well as those who hire and manage them. It describes the
challenges shared by creative individuals and outlines specific, actionable
ways the challenges can be overcome.
Making Ideas Happen avoids a “one size fits all” solution. Instead, it outlines a
variety of strategies for enhancing content marketing productivity, such as:
1. The action method: This is based on immediately following up new
ideas by identifying the specific tasks needed to bring an idea closer to
reality. It involves prioritizing, delegating, and monitoring progress.
2. Creative’s compromise: In this approach, managers must encourage
writers and designers to explore new restraints and best practices that
may initially be uncomfortable.
42. The Essential #BestBooks Reading List for Content Marketers
The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We
Do in Life and Business
By Charles Duhigg
Charles Duhigg’s best-selling book shows content marketers how to improve their
habits so they can become more efficient and get more done in less time. It’s a
proven, jargon-free approach for harnessing existing talents and abilities without
endless introspection.
It begins by describing the “habit loop” — the building blocks of repeated
behaviors that put our brain on autopilot:
1. Cue: A sensation, emotion, or other stimulus that triggers a habitual behavior.
2. Routine: Behaviors that occur without conscious thought (e.g., tying your
laces when you put on your shoes).
3. Reward: The benefit you enjoy after you’ve performed the routine (e.g., a
feeling of accomplishment, a burst of energy, an emotional connection, etc.).
By consciously manipulating routines and the rewards, The Power of Habit shows
you how to replace inappropriate behaviors that can be interfering with your
content marketing productivity — or the productivity of those you work with.
43. The Essential #BestBooks Reading List for Content Marketers
Universal Methods of Design: 100 Ways
to Research Complex Problems, Develop
Innovative Ideas, and Design Effective
Solutions
By Bella Martin and Bruce Hanington
Design-inspired best practices, habits, and approaches to problem
solving can recharge your ability to plan, write, and manage all
types of content marketing tasks, from writing and publishing to
conversions.
Universal Methods of Design also provides a case study in creating
an efficient structure for visually organizing and presenting a complex
topic. The book’s consistent text formatting and layout for each of
the 100 ideas may suggest an artful solution to challenges like
publishing a premium book, creating a series of white papers, or
syndicating your message over time through multiple blog posts and
media outposts.
44. The Essential #BestBooks Reading List for Content Marketers
The Sketchnote Handbook:
The Illustrated Guide to Visual Note Taking
By Mike Rohde
This is a must-read for content marketers who dislike taking
notes but recognize the importance of documenting meetings and
information-filled events (like this year’s Content Marketing World
conference).
Even if you think you have lousy handwriting and no artistic
experience, with Michael Rohde’s help and the techniques he
describes, you’ll likely find yourself enjoying the act of taking notes
for the first time ever.
45. The Essential #BestBooks Reading List for Content Marketers
The Art of Doing: How Superachievers Do
What They Do and How They Do It So Well
By Camille Sweeney and Josh Gosfield
The Art of Doing profiles 30 “superachievers” — people who have
achieved significant success in building their brands in a variety of
fields. Sweeney and Gosfield’s list includes both high-profile media
professionals as well as an eclectic mix of individuals who are well
known in other areas of experience. Based on interviews, each
chapter tells the story of an individual, describing his or her success
and providing 10 lessons that others can learn from the person’s
experiences.
The Art of Doing is fascinating reading, both for its narratives and the
conclusions the authors have drawn from their interviews.
46. The Essential #BestBooks Reading List for Content Marketers
Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less
By Greg McKeown
Essentialism’s four sections describe 19 tactics that business owners
and managers can use to distance themselves from distraction and
disturbance without alienating co-workers.
Each tactic is illustrated with anecdotes and stories and is supported
by the latest psychological research. There are also ideas and tips for
implementing the ideas, backed up by a visual summary so gorgeous,
you may even want to photocopy it and hang it on the wall.
47. The Essential #BestBooks Reading List for Content Marketers
Value Proposition Design: How to Create
Products and Services Customers Want
By Alex Osterwalder, et al.
For years, visual thinkers like Alex Osterwalder, Dan Roam, Nancy
Duarte, and Sunni Brown have been showing marketers how to use
imagery to make better, faster decisions while communicating with
greater efficiency. Value Proposition Design is the latest and most
sophisticated example of the visual revolution.
This is the second book in the Strategyzer series and it provides a
visual platform for addressing the core challenge of every business
— creating compelling products and services customers want to buy.
It provides tools and a process for analyzing your market’s needs,
stress-testing your assumptions, and generating meaningful metrics.
48. The Essential #BestBooks Reading List for Content Marketers
Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence
By Daniel Goleman
This is the easy-to-read and immediately applicable progression of
the ideas Goleman first introduced 10 years ago in his best-selling
Emotional Intelligence. Focused on career and workplace issues, it’s
less of a general textbook and more of a guide to best practices for
day-to-day interactions when dealing with bosses, co-workers, and
clients. It’s an excellent example of psychological research boiled
down to day-to-day acceptance, recognition, and self-management.
49. The Essential #BestBooks Reading List for Content Marketers
PROCESS & PRODUCTIVITY
The Pomodoro Technique
By Francesco Cirillo
Francesco Cirillo’s The Pomodoro Technique is a proven and established writing,
productivity, and time-management system. Used since the 1980s, it continues to
gain enthusiastic followers. It’s based on focused, short, “beat the clock” writing
sessions, frequent breaks, and strategies to handle interruptions.
In addition to the book, there are four valuable, free resources available for
download at the Pomodoro Technique website:
• Pomodoro Technique e-book: A 45-page, illustrated overview and
implementation guide.
• Pomodoro Technique Cheat Sheet: An exquisitely formatted one-page
introduction to the Pomodoro Technique.
• To Do Today Worksheet: One of the Pomodoro Technique’s most important tools.
• Activity Inventory Worksheet: If your content marketing productivity is
frequently interrupted, the Activity Inventory will help you document the tasks
you’re trying to accomplish and help you see how you actually spend your time.
50. The Essential #BestBooks Reading List for Content Marketers
Visual Teams: Graphic Tools for Commitment,
Innovation, & High Performance
By David Sibbet
Envision stronger teamwork and partnerships.
Rather than being a solo effort, content marketing success usually
involves collaboration with clients, management, vendors, and
freelancers. Visual Teams is an important read for any content
marketers who are looking to strengthen and better manage these
partnerships.
This third book in David Sibbet’s Visual Teams series focuses on
the role that graphics and graphic templates can play in facilitating
information sharing and encouraging collaboration. The numerous
examples, captions, lists, and sidebars alone offer invaluable tools to
help content marketers deal with everyday.
51. The Essential #BestBooks Reading List for Content Marketers
The Disorganized Mind: Coaching Your ADHD
Mind to Take Control of Your Time, Tasks,
and Talents
By Nancy Ratey
Have you ever noticed how some of the most brilliant, creative,
people you know experience difficulties completing even routine
tasks? Nancy Ratey offers a possible explanation: They may be
suffering from ADHD: Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.
The Disorganized Mind is not a “medicine” book, but rather it’s a self-
coaching book. It’s about learning how to acknowledge the way your
brain operates and developing self-monitoring strategies to assign
priorities, resist distractions, and focus on what needs to be done
right now in order to achieve long-term goals — something that every
busy content marketer can relate to.
52. The Essential #BestBooks Reading List for Content Marketers
Manage Your Day-to-Day: Build Your
Routine, Find Your Focus, & Sharpen
Your Creative Mind
By Jocelyn K. Glei
This slim anthology of 20 essays about the origins of creativity
reflects the mindset behind Scott Belsky’s Making Ideas Happen (see
above) — in fact, Belsky wrote Manage Your Day-to-Day’s foreword,
and many of the book’s ideas reflect the goals of his group’s website,
99U.
The book’s small format, low price, and 8- to 10-page essays make
this a particularly suitable gift for content marketers who like to read
during their daily commutes.
53. The Essential #BestBooks Reading List for Content Marketers
Driven to Distraction at Work: How to Focus
and Be More Productive
By Edward M. Hallowell, MD
Distraction is ubiquitous in today’s 24/7, always-connected world and,
ultimately, it is probably content marketing’s biggest productivity killer.
Pioneering ADHD researcher Hallowell coined the phrase “attention
deficit trait” to describe this growing problem in the workplace. In Part
1, he describes the six most common work distractions (and how to
overcome them), while in Part 2, Training Your Attention, he shares
seven specific ways to increase your focus. Imagine how much more
productive you could be if you mastered just one technique a month
starting now.
54. The Essential #BestBooks Reading List for Content Marketers
A Beautiful Constraint: How to Transform Your
Limitations Into Advantages, and Why It’s
Everyone’s Business
By Adam Morgan and Mark Barden
Not only are constraints found everywhere — both in marketing and
in the world at large — they’re inevitable. However, constraints are
often considered obstacles, rather than the drivers of creativity they
can be.
A Beautiful Constraint offers a comprehensive, detailed, and tastefully
designed description of the “opportunity power” of constraints, and
outlines 11 different approaches to turning them using resonant
examples you’ve likely encountered or read about in the business
press. If you liked Robert Cialdini’s landmark Influence: The Power
of Persuasion, you’ll love this book: It builds on many of the same
principles, positioning them in a real-world corporate marketing
environment.
55. The Essential #BestBooks Reading List for Content Marketers
Content Inc.: How Entrepreneurs Use Content
to Build Massive Audiences and Create
Radically Successful Businesses
By Joe Pulizzi
Though currently only available for pre-order (available Sept. 11,
2015), you’ll have to take our word for it that Content Inc. will be a
must-read for anyone seeking to start a brand-new business or drive
innovation in an existing one.
Content Inc. provides everything you need to reverse-engineer the
traditional entrepreneurial model for better, more sustainable success.
Simply put, it’s about developing valuable content, building an audience
around that content, and then creating a product for that audience. Joe
Pulizzi’s radical, six-step business-building process is practical, cost-
effective, and proven to work — after all, it’s the foundation on which
Pulizzi built Content Marketing Institute from the ground up.
BONUS BOOK
56. The Essential #BestBooks Reading List for Content Marketers
What are your book recommendations? Have we omitted any of your
favorite recently published content marketing books or books in adjacent
areas like career management, creativity, or psychology? Also, if you’ve
read any of the books we mentioned, please share your experiences,
impressions, and key takeaways — including value.
Looking for more advice on how to manage your content marketing
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57. The Essential #BestBooks Reading List for Content Marketers
Content Marketing Institute is the leading global content marketing education and training
organization, teaching enterprise brands how to attract and retain customers through compelling,
multi-channel storytelling. CMI also runs the Intelligent Content platform focusing on content
strategists, and the Content Inc brand platform on entrepreneurs and startups. CMI’s Content
Marketing World event, the largest content marketing-focused event, is held every September in
Cleveland, Ohio, USA, and the Intelligent Content Conference event is held every spring. CMI
publishes the bi-monthly magazine Chief Content Officer, and provides strategic consulting and
content marketing research for some of the best-known brands in the world. CMI is a 2012, 2013
and 2014 Inc. 500 company.
ABOUT CONTENT MARKETING INSTITUTE
58. The Essential #BestBooks Reading List for Content Marketers
Roger C. Parker is a popular and prolific Content Marketing
Institute contributor who has a lifetime of experience
examining the DNA of successful business, design, and
marketing productivity books. He’s written over 40 titles (which
have been published in over 37 countries) that help readers
master the skills needed to succeed in today’s world.
He’s also helped thousands of clients and newly minted authors
save time organizing their content marketing and book ideas at
Writing to Sell, where you can also find dozens of interviews
with top content marketers.
Roger invites you to visit his Read and Remember resource
page, where you’ll find ideas, tips, and a free worksheet to help
you retain more about the books you read and act on the ideas
they share.
ABOUT ROGER C. PARKER