It's back-to-school week... what are you planning on learning this year?

The other morning, I watched the pitter-patter of feet drag their way back to school. The brand-new schoolbags scratched by the pavement, the half-tied shoelaces, and the general sluggish malaise can be best summed up in three words every child despises: "Back to school." Many professionals give off that same sluggish malaise every Monday morning as they wrestle their way through rush-hour traffic to make it to the office while daydreaming about the chance to go back in time and spend the day at school, learning, kicking the empty drinking boxes around the schoolyard - and, lest we forget, the two-month summer break.

Most people leave university with a degree and do not look back.

Some pick up a non-fiction business book here and there, but most would rather spend their free time away from the office in front of the television watching 30 Rock or surfing the Web for LOLcats. Beyond heading down to your favorite bookstore, it has never been easier to read and learn from some of the great business books out there. Amazon just released its latest version of the Kindle, the iPad is amazing for books, but (as I am learning) nothing beats having multiple iPhone apps that allow you to download and read books on both the iPhone and the iPad (I'm currently running the Kindle, iBooks and Kobo apps.)

In the spirit of everybody heading back to school this week (and, yes, we're talking about you, too!), here are 10 recently released business books to get you back in learning mode (in alphabetical order):

1. Brains on Fire - Igniting Powerful, Sustainable, Word of Mouth Movements by Robbin Phillips, Greg Cordell, Geno Church and Spike Jones (Wiley). If you don't follow Spike Jones on Twitter (@spikejones), you should. Brains on Fire looks at word-of-mouth marketing in the social media generation. This clearly written (and fun) book breaks through the clutter of mass media and helps businesses understand the value of one consumer and how he or she can tell your story for you.
2. Business Model Generation - A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers and Challengers by Alexander Osterwalder, Yves Pigneur and more (Wiley). This features perhaps one of the most beautiful layouts for a business book. With more than 35 contributors, this is more of a roadmap than a textbook that looks at how business models are created, and how to free your organization from linear and traditional thinking.
3. Extra Lives - Why Video Games Matter by Tom Bissell (Pantheon). You're going to think very differently of your kids if all they do all day long is play xBox. After reading this book, you may wind up joining them. It turns out some our greatest leaders in the future may well be the hardcore gamers of today.
4. The Future Arrived Yesterday - The Rise of the Protean Corporation and What it Means for You by Michael Malone (Crown Business). The virtualization of the corporation is a reality. In other words, you may not be working from a cubicle for much longer, as wireless technology and more portable computing devices flood the marketplace. What does this mean for business? Read this book and find out, because, trust me, you don't want to be the last person standing without a chair in this very real game of musical chairs.
5. Macrowikinomics - Rebooting Business and the World by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams (Portfolio). Even though this book is slated to come out only next month, the buzz is high for the follow-up to the best-selling Wikinomics. In Macrowikinomics, Tapscott and Williams look at the new business models and social innovations from companies that are leveraging our new digital tools, channels and platforms to make the world a more prosperous and sustainable place.
6. Marketing Lessons From the Grateful Dead - What Every Business Can Learn From the Most Iconic Band in History by David Meerman Scott and Brian Halligan (Wiley). While it may not be a great idea to drink the green Kool-Aid at the corporate picnic, it turns out there are many lessons businesses can learn from how the legendary rock band built its audience, changed its business model and turned people from reasonable human beings into diehard Deadheads.
7. MicroMarketing - Get Big Results by Thinking and Acting Small by Greg Verdino (McGraw-Hill). Marketing seems to be about "the big idea" (just watch an episode of Mad Men), but maybe the real winners are the companies who think small. Verdino is on to something with his first book, which looks at the many little things that take a great brand from here to there.
8. Open Leadership - How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead by Charlene Li (Jossey-Bass). Li's first book, Groundswell, put hard data against the power of online social networks and social media. In her second book, she looks at what it takes for a corporation to maintain control of the brand (both internally and externally) by leveraging social technologies to open up and transform the organization from within.
9. The Referral Engine - Teaching Your Business to Market Itself by John Jantsch (Portfolio). Jantsch is the champion of small businesses. His first book (named after his successful blog and podcast, Duct Tape Marketing) helped companies enjoy a champagne marketing experience on a beer budget. In his latest, he helps us understand that importance of referrals and word of mouth as the primary business driver before mass media advertising and PR.
10. The Upside of Irrationality - The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home by Dan Ariely (HarperCollins). If you ever wondered why large bonuses make CEOs less productive or why revenge is so important to us as human beings, then Ariely's second foray into behavioral economics is the perfect fare. The author of Predictably Irrational is back with another thought-provoking book that includes humor and insights that will make you the highlight of the next networking event you attend.

Don't forget what Mark Twain said: "I've never let my schooling interfere with my education."

Which recently released books are on your back-to-school reading list? Please share with the rest of the class...

The above posting is my twice-monthly column for the Montreal Gazette and Vancouver Sun newspapers called, New Business - Six Pixels of Separation. I cross-post it here with all the links and tags for your reading pleasure, but you can check out the original versions online here:

• Montreal Gazette - The stuff I didn't learn in school -but I did read about.
• Vancouver Sun - Back-to-school business reading.

By Mitch Joel

There is a reason why traditional media professionals will have a hard time making the transition to a new media world.

Just the other day I got into a debate with a seasoned traditional journalist about what the new media means. This individual is still in a highly coveted and well-respected position, so I was surprised by their core thesis as to why we can't trust new media. Ultimately, it boils down to the cold, hard fact that new media shows little to no signs of accountability. Traditional media (newspapers, magazines, radio and television) check their sources. There is a process to how news is created, curated, edited and then produced for mass consumption.

The Internet is an equalized place where any one lunatic's opinion resides on par with those of the professionals.

Afterall, you can't trust anything you read on Wikipedia, but you can be fairly certain that what you're getting out of The New York Times is accurate. Is WikiLeaks the future of media or pure evil? It's an easy debate to get sucked into. It's easy to start discussing how often the respected traditional media gets it wrong (check out Regret The Error by my good friend, Craig Silverman). It's easy to look at the owners of these large media outlets and make a direct correlation between their political leanings and the partisan slant of their media outlets. It's easy to say that the mass populous needs us (because without us they will believe anything and everything). It's easy to not like, respect or understand something that threatens your very vocation.

We are moving from a world of fact to a world of opinion.

Maybe that is the new reality. Maybe that is the new truth. Maybe we are moving from a world of "fact" (as traditional media had delivered it) to a world of "opinion" (where Blogs, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and more act as a platform to spread ideas, but it's incumbent on the reader to check the sources for themselves). There were always three sides to every story (and a couple more beyond that), so in a world where any one individual can publish a thought in text, images, audio and video instantly (and for free) to the entire world, we are in dire need of a new definition for the words "media," "journalism," "credible source" and more.

That is a paradigm shift.

What if society has already dictated this creed? What if society is fine moving from this world of fact to a world of opinion? Who is the mass media to say to us that a book review in The New York Times is any more credible or relevant to us than the one that Sarah from Carefree, Arizona posted to Amazon? Are the masses too stupid and lazy to make up their own mind?

What's good for us, being fed the truth through mass media or the masses of opinions from all over the place or a hybrid of both?

By Mitch Joel

Is Mad Men a true representation of how great creative happens in Marketing?

In a typical Mad Men episode, research comes back saying something plain about the insights surrounding a brand. But the creatives, led by a cape-wearing Don Draper, rage against the machine and follow their gut instinct to create breakthrough creative that could have never happened had the team followed what research was telling them. It's the kind of Americana story that we all love to hear: those who won't follow what "The Man" is telling them, coupled with that burning desire to express themselves and put one's genius out into the world. It's a story as warm as apple pie and baseball (or maple syrup and hockey, depending on your chosen country). And - as with everything - there are always two (or more) sides to the story.

Creatives in marketing have to constantly grapple with what research and strategy is bringing to the table.

Most of the time, the research "lies" or isn't able to define any true insight that will ignite the creativity towards the red carpet at Cannes. Web analytics has come a long way, and actually being able to see what consumers are doing (and the ability to even know why they're doing it) gives us more insight than even the best creative brief can. Despite all that real data, marketing professionals en masse can't seem to wrap their heads around it. In fact, if you look at the majority of online campaigns - even the ones that are taking home the Cannes Lion Cyber award - they are not leveraging even the basest web analytics to optimize and adjust the campaigns based on what consumers are actually doing.

The left brain doesn't like the right brain. The right brain doesn't like the left brain.

Both sides of the brain (and the entire body that goes along with it) are being stubborn... and stupid. The truly amazing creative directors of the near future (will the next Alex Bogusky please stand up!) will be the ones who realize that you can't have one without the other. Prior to the maturation of these web analytics tools, it made sense to buck the trends from research and push creativity out of your subconscious on to Photoshop, but now there's no excuse not to change, adjust and optimize the creative process to use these metrics and analytics as a way to be many times more creative.

Think about this from a primal angle. If the analytics told you - in plain numbers - that when you use the color red instead of green you get a 20 per cent better conversion, what would you do?

Some traditional creative directors might see this as a limitation, but others might argue (myself included) that knowing this key piece of information -- and being able to overcome it -- is the true definition of creativity. Avinash Kaushik is the Analytics Evangelist for Google. He has a tremendously popular blog on the topic of Web Analytics, and he is the author of two best-selling books on the topic (Web Analytics - An Hour A Day and Web Analytics 2.0). Upon broaching the subject of dealing with creative teams when web analytics are in play, he pointed me to a post of his titled, Experiment or Die. Five Reasons And Awesome Testing Ideas.

As Avinash puts it:

"It is less risky to try big and bold things online than it is in the offline world of faith-based initiatives. So why not let your creativity soar? Why not let all of your ideas democratically flourish? Why have HiPPOs (Highest Paid Person's Opinions) second-guess and make decisions? Why not think of awesome insane crazy magnificent things? With web analytics and marketing optimization tools, anybody can construct a quick test. Why are marketers so afraid to let their customers tell them what works? Testing is awesome for all of us (both the qualitative and quantitative people).  I love showing creative people that one thing the analytics can help do amazingly is to help them focus on what's important and what to fix, rather than just going by what you think is wrong or where to focus on to get the biggest bang for the buck."

Thinking like this requires a fundamental shift in how we create our creative.

Instead of the creative brief leading to production, we are well into an era when, prior to final production, we can test multiple variants in-market, follow the analytics and optimize the campaign. From there, we can launch the campaign and still have the humility to know that it might change, adapt and even be redone based on how it performs.

Why don't the majority of advertising agencies do this? What are we so afraid of? Why do our egos hold us back?

In the end, would that episode of Mad Men have been as exciting if Draper and his team listened to research, followed the analytics and put out creative that just simply worked? The story may not be as exciting, but it does line those corporate pockets and provide bottom-line economic value to the corporation it serves. While it may not be a story worthy of it's own hit television series, it is a great story.

It is also a story that is well worth pursuing if we're looking at bringing marketing to the C-suite.

And that is what this is all about: marketing deserves to be an integral part of the corporate head table, and the sooner creatives embrace web analytics, the sooner everyone will be able to truly blend world-class creativity with mind-blowing results. These are the kind of campaigns that will get the real attention they deserve. These are the campaign of the future.

Now it's your turn: what do you think about the place of creativity in the age of web analytics?

The above posting is an article from Applied Arts Magazine. I cross-post it here with all the links and tags for your reading pleasure, but you can check out the original version online here:

• Applied Arts Magazine - Creativity In The Age Of Web Analytics.

By Mitch Joel

As Twitter evolves and grows, the etiquette and "rules" change, morph and evolve along with it.

Recently, a very influential person on Twitter sent me a direct message saying that they were insulted because I had thanked a few people for retweeting one of my tweets, but I forgot to thank this individual. They were even more insulted because the people I had thanked were actually retweeting this individual's tweet (and not mine).

I suck at Twitter.

I sort of knew that before (more on that here: The Trouble With Twitter - Confessions Of A Twitter Snob), but as the platform grows, I'm getting even suckier at it. I find it hard to follow everyone back. I don't like following companies or brands that I am not in love with. I rarely thank anyone for retweeting my content. It takes me forever to respond to direct messages. People often ask me questions, but by the time I respond they've usually forgotten what their question was in the first place. I tend to be on Twitter when most people are busy enjoying their lives, etc...

Maybe we're all still getting used to how real-time chat in 140 characters really works... and it's not so obvious/easy?

The hardest part about all of this is that I am actually trying. I spend quite a bit of time on Twitter, and I'm constantly trying to post relevant content and context about Marketing, but I can never seem to really get my head above the wave and - more often than not - I feel like I'm barely treading water. Beyond apologizing profusely to this individual with a sincere mea culpa, I also wondered...

What do most people think of thanking those who retweet their content?

So, I hopped over to Twitter and asked. It turns out I'm not alone in my thanking suckage. That being said, the responses ran the gamut from "I thank people publicly for every retweet" to "there really is no point in just thanking someone for a retweet." The general sentiment expressed back, was that most people don't thank others for retweets because they feel that it clutters up the twitterstream. Beyond that, a lot of people agreed that while they do not thank people for retweets, they make sure to respond to every question asked of them.

So, what do most people think about thanking those who retweet their content? Here's what I learned:

• People do thank for retweets, but claim they do so because they don't have that many followers, and it's fairly easy.
• People try, but think they fail at it (like I do).
• People try, but say that they only do it hours after it first appeared and they often get a message back saying, "thanks for what?"
• People don't do it publicly but send that person a direct message (sometimes).
• People don't publicly thank for any retweets.

There were also these tweets of wisdom:

• "I always think 'Thank you' but I don't always type the words." - via @MegMathur.
• "Not if it just a RT, I treat it as a little gift. If RT with a interesting comment then I reply w/comment. But not a thanks." - via @avinash.
• "A better way to thank someone for RTing you is to RT something interesting of theirs. Sometimes I DM them instead." - via @aussiegoldy.
• "I try to acknowledge near 100% of nice direct comments, but retweets only upon occasion. (Though I obviously appreciate!)" - via @tom_peters.

Now, it's your turn: what do you make of all of this?

By Mitch Joel