The Business of Influence: Reframing Marketing and PR for the Digital Age [Kindle Edition]

The Author starts off his book by stating that he is not 'an academic' I would have therefore expected his book to be a more practical approach to this topic. However it was not. It was very much like reading a textbook. A reference containing facts which you could learn and regurgitate later. He also mentioned that he wanted to fully explain 'A' before going down the route of how to get to 'B' so that the road would be easier. My satnav gives better directions!

I have spent the last 20 years in business and marketing and have learnt most of what I know through hands-on experience with some large international companies, small companies and my own business alike. I had hoped that this book would have been an easier more accessible guide to what the basics of digital marketing is all about and how to apply it in the growing social web arena.

Marketing is the psychology of influence at its core with an underpinning of business to apply it for results in some way. Influencing consumers, whether it is to buy a product or to think in a particular way about something or someone is the sole purpose of marketing. Facts and figures are necessary for any business approach but only if they are analysed and used to provide some practicaly application to the business. Personally, I felt this book was more a research project which needs taking further to produce something useful.

I initially found this book hard going. I struggled to settle into it and see where it was heading. It was like reading a bad 'who dunnit' without a proper plot and without the clues. I had hoped for some refreshing insight into digital marketing but the author merely presented a lot of facts, which although clearly well researched, just left me 'zigzagging' through this book trying to find a natural flow to his presentation of ideas. In fact, I do not feel that I found any particularly 'new' ideas in here but that could be because I was having difficulty staying interested and focused on what he had to say.

I guess I had expected this book to be more from a viewpoint of new research done on how marketing influences the consumer into thinking or acting in a certain way and how digital marketing and 'social or web' media can be used for this purpose for the ultimate benefit of your business on a long term basis. In actual fact, what it is, is a highly technical marketing analysis which is great for laying out new guidelines for the CIM but I had hoped for a more humanistic, practical approach for marketing practitioners not students or academics wishing to analyse marketing for research purposes.

Having previously been impressed by The Marketing Century which itself contains a section by same author and concisely sums up a number of different aspects of marketing effectively, I was hoping for something similar from the Business of Influence. Sheldrake sets himself up as having been a mechanical engineer by trade rather than an a academic and I was therefore hoping he could sum up the points he was going to make in a practical and applicable way. Basically the key point of the book is that "It's all about influence," positive and negative and everything should be evaluated as such. Sheldrake attempts to show how this came about and how it can be used in practice by the use of an "influence scorecard," but fails to actually show how to create one and the introduction is littered with quotes from academic papers which whilst attempting to dismiss them in parts distract more than they add to the authors case.

Overall, having been involved with marketing in various parts of my job I definitely agree with the points Sheldrake is trying to make. What I don't agree with is the way he makes them, the sometimes confusing and small diagrams, the overuse of quotes and failure to apply in detail to real life situations. It comes closer than most academic work in marketing to reality, but still not close enough to apply easily. Stick to the summary in the first few chapters and just read the ones on influence and beyond.

This is a very grown up book aimed at strategists. It certainly isn't light reading and the diagram on page 155 of The LinkedOpenData Project is one of the most complicated diagrams I have ever had to put my reading specs on for. But the book is cleverly laid out, concise and intelligently crafted. A vital tool for anyone masterminding a campaign in this digital and challenging age.