Inbound Marketing

Authors:     Brian Halligan, Dharmesh Shah

Published:  2010

Publisher:  John Wiley and Sons

Hardcover: 250 Pages

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The traditional way of marketing is Outbound Marketing where the businesses bombard the prospects with promotional brochures, TV advertisements,  spam mails, telemarketing calls and so on. The authors are of the opinion that  the prospects have become smart enough to avoid such interruptions and get the information they need through online searches. In this book they propose Inbound Marketing as a solution to this problem. Inbound Marketing is all about the businesses creating an effective online presence which results in their "getting found"  by the prospects (vs searching for prospects) through online searches and social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn etc.

The book consists of  four parts.

Part I - Inbound Marketing

This part stresses the need for matching the way one markets the product with the way the prospects learn about and shop for that product. This can be done through inbound marketing. First and foremost the website of the business must change its marketing mode from a one-way sales message to a collaborative hub for its  marketplace. 

They should  focus on creating communities outside of their web site for people to connect with them and others within the community. 

This “outside” focus will drive people back to the website of the business. 

This involves adding some collaborative tools like a blog and creating lots of compelling content (not  overt sales pitches) which people want to consume. 

This should be followed by creating a presence in  Google,industry blogs, and social media sites. 

Through internet one can  reach many more prospects and much more quickly as compared to traditional mode of communication. 

To take advantage of such a reach and speed, one should think beyond the competitors and create alternatives to conventional marketing. 

Also one should strive to offer the best product/service within the market.

Part II - Get Found by the Prospects

This part offers umpteen number of  useful ideas, tips, tools and techniques for creating a remarkable content and getting discovered in blogosphere, in Google through Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and in social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon and YouTube.

Part III - Converting Customers

Visitors drawn to the business website need to be converted into leads by encouraging them through some compelling call-to-action to further engage with the business.

Good calls-to-action  involves giving them helpful and useful information to enable them to do their job better or improve their job prospects. 

This can be asking them to register or subscribe for free Webinars, White papers or reports, short consultation sessions, demos, or trial offer etc.

This part also talks about  various ways of nurturing the leads to convert them into customers.

Part IV - Make Better Decisions

Better marketing investment decisions can be made using the Marketing Funnel technique introduced in this part  to define various levels - prospect, lead, opportunity, and customers - and measuring the conversion rates to  calculate the Return on Investment (ROI) of various marketing channels. 

This part also advises the reader on how to hire  marketing staff  and PR agencies for inbound marketing.

Tools to keep tabs on the competition are also dealt in this part.

Finally the book concludes by reinforcing that age of inbound marketing has dawned and the days of outbound marketing are over. 

However inbound marketing requires commitment, patience and continuous learning. The benefits will be slow in coming initially but the floodgates will be opened once the tipping point is reached.

The book consists of 16 short chapters written in a very simple and easy to understand language, illustrated with several real life examples. In every chapter there are recommended measurements to track the progress in inbound marketing journey.

The chapters also have short case studies in inbound marketing. 

These case studies covered  include - the presidential campaign of Barack Obama, the music group The Grateful Dead, Wikipedia, and Google.

As a bonus there is a fairly comprehensive list of 26 Inbound Marketing tips for the Startups.

Overall a very good introduction to Inbound Marketing..

Useful Links:

• Inbound Marketing - Wikipedia Entry
• Hubspot - Website of the company founded by the authors.

 

The Myths of Security

Author:         John Viega
Published:     2009

Publisher:     O'Reilly Media Inc.

Paperback:   252 pages

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The author John Viega, an IT security expert  is of the view "... and the (IT security)  industry as a whole is broken ". This viewpoint coming from a person who is the CTO of SaaS business Unit at McAfee, a leading security product vendor, is bound to grab attention of the readers who are worried about the security and privacy of their digital information stored in the confines of their computers. 

According to the author, the internet users are at heavy risk, which can be mitigated to a great extent  if the security industry examines itself and changes for better. It is not only the hackers or lay users who are to be blamed for security disasters. Security industry needs to come out with products which provide  the promised security but without  impacting  the performance of the  user's system (most of the security products tend to slow down the system !).

Through 48 short yet interesting articles (4-5 pages average, 10 pages maximum.) , the author provides his  perspectives on the security industry, identifies glaring problems, shows what the industry can do differently to give the end users more value for their money.  He promises no "silver bullet", but hopes that  the security industry takes note of  his criticism and correct the things which are fundamentally wrong. 

The articles in this book gives the author's opinion on a wide range of security subjects and issues like :

• Anti-Virus (AV) products -   why they are slow; why they do not work well; what AV companies should be doing;  is it true that  AV companies create viruses they detect. 
• Is vulnerability research community helping to improve security ?
• Are Macs more secure than Windows PCs ?
• Open Security Standards
• Phishing, Identity Thefts
• Personal Firewall problems
• Why most people shouldn't run intrusion prevention system ?
• Google is Evil - it takes only half-way measures  to check click fraud in its online advertisements. Stringent measures are actually in conflict with its business interest.
• VPNs usually decreases security
• HTTPS sucks: lets's kill it
• CAPTCHA and the Usability/Security Tradeoff

Each article can be independently read, however I felt that the order of the articles could have been better organized - for e.g. AV related articles are scattered throughout the book (widely separated  chapters -6,8,12,22,23,39). Instead all the articles related to a subject could have been ordered closely.

I am not a security expert so I am not in a position to either support or oppose the author's views expressed in this book. But I found the articles written with a sense of humor a very good read and understood around 75 % of what he has to say.

Links:

• Table of Contents

I Have a Dream

Author:        Rashmi Bansal

Published:  2011

Publisher:   Westland Ltd.

Paperback: 350 Pages

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Having posted 100 odd book reviews/summaries in this blog, I get to write  my first commissioned book review !  Blogadda sent this book to me under their Books Review Program.  It offered a carrot (I get to keep this book for free!) and also wielded a stick (a 500+ words review should be posted within 7 days of receipt of the book in order to continue being considered for the future reviews program!).

So I put aside  the other two books  which I was in midst of reading  and confined my  reading to this book alone. Anything to get a good book free! I was sure that it will be a good book to possess since I had bought and read Rashmi Bansal's earlier book "Stay Hungry Stay Foolish" where she has narrated the stories of 25 IIM Graduates who took the hard road of entrepreneurship rather than take up  high-paying jobs which they could have easily got..
 

In this book she introduces us to 20 social entrepreneurs. 
According to Wikipedia "A social entrepreneur recognizes a social problem and uses entrepreneurial principles to organize, create and manage a venture to achieve social change (a social venture)."The stories of the social entrepreneurs featured in this book are classified under 3 sections - Rainmakers, Change Makers, Spiritual Capitalist

Rainmakers set up social enterprises which generate revenues. However profit generation is not their primary motive.
Featured in this section are:

• Bindeshwar Phatak , the  founder of  Sulabh International which brought a revolution in toilets and a rightful place in society for  those who once cleaned them.
• Anita Ahuja whose program Conserve India  employs ragpickers to collect plastic waste, which is then recycled to create export quality handbags.
• Vineet Rai who has set up a micro-venture fund called Aavishkaar for rural entrepreneurs.
• Sumita Ghose who runs Rangasutra, a for-profit venture which sources crafts and textiles from villages and retails through Fabindia.
• Saloni Malhotra who brought technology and business to rural India in form of DesiCrew our country's first rural BPO.
• Ishita Khanna who through Spiti Ecosphere promotes eco-tourism and berry processing in Spiti.
• Harish Hande whose company Selco makes appropriate and affordable solar lighting system for villages.
• Santosh Parulekar who runs a unique social enterprise Pipal Tree, which transforms poorly educated rural youth to highly skilled construction workers.
• Dinabandhu Sahoo who through Project Chilika has trained villagers in Orissa in a profitable sea weed farming technique.
• Anand Kumar of Super 30 who tutors poor but meritorious students for IIT JEEE.
• Dhruv Lakra who invested in a courier service Mirakle Couriers which employs deaf people.

Changemakers are. the ones who instead of complaining about a bad social situation take a small step towards making it good.
Featured in this section are:

• Madhav Chavan who has made 'education' his life's mission by setting up Pratham,  which works for better education of millions of children across India.
• Anshu Gupta whose organization Goonj ensures that donated old clothes are systematically collected, sorted and mended  to ensure that the clothes distributed are the most approriate ones for the persons in need.
• Trilochan Shastry of Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR) whose courageous act of filing a PIL led to a landmark judgement from Supreme Court which requires from the politicians standing in elections to declare their assets and criminal records.
• Shaheen Mistri whose project Akansha is doing a yeoman service in educating 3500 slum children through 58 centers and 6 schools.
• Arvind Kejriwal whose campaign Parivartan pioneered the use of RTI (Right to Information Act) to empower citizens of our country. Now very much known as the right-hand man of social crusader Anna Hazare.
• Bhusan Punani who has tirelessly worked for Blind Person's Association (BPA) to transform it from a single, small school and vocational center for the blind to a multi-campus, multi-purpose movement to bring dignity to the life of the disabled.

Spiritual Capitalists are the individuals who choose to live by the ideal of service because they believe purity of purpose and selflessness of spirit can transcend every limitation
This section features:

• Madhu Pandit Dasa who as head of ISKCON Bangalore initiated the Akshaya Patra movement which combines missionary zeal and modern management to feed 1 million hungry children every day.
• Vinayak Lohani who has established and runs Parivaar Ashram a residential facility for orphans, tribals and daughters of prostitutes.
• Shreesh Jadhav who chose the path of renunciation to become a monk at Belur Math where he works as a registrar of Vivekananda University and also teaches .

Each and every story is an inspiration written in a very simple language which all of us can connect to. It is very touching to note that these entrepreneurs  are highly educated and could have earned lots of money in the corporate world either as an employee or as business entrepreneurs. Yet they choose social entrepreneurship because they strongly believed in serving others. After each story there is a section called "Advice to the Young Entrepreneurs" which summarizes the philosophy and message of the featured entrepreneur.  

Another useful section is  "Start up Resources" at the end of the book. This provides us the email ids of each entrepreneur and the links to the website of their respective organization (except those of  Dhruv Lakra & Madhav Chavan). This will enable the readers who are inspired by their stories to contact them easily for any advice or to contribute to their cause.

This book does have certain limitations though...

• Story of Shreesh Jadhav somehow does not fit in this book. While it is a very remarkable and courageous decision of  an IIT graduate to lead a life of a monk, and work as a registrar and faculty member in an institution run by Belur Math, the entrepreneurial aspect of this venture is not evident.
• While it is the author's prerogative to decide whom to feature in this book, I can't help observing that only two entrepreneurs featured in this book are from South India. This lead me  to question - Does  South India lacks such social entrepreneurs worth featuring in this book or whether the author is not aware of their initiatives. A balanced selection of social entrepreneurs drawn from all over India would have avoided such question.
• Liberal doses of  Hindi sentences are sprinkled in this book without translations. As far as I am concerned, since I know Hindi well, I could enjoy the punch ,humor and authenticity generated by these sentences. However such a writing style alienates readers who don't understand Hindi. Author should not presume that the readers know Hindi well and provide translated text wherever long sentences in Hindi are employed.
• The URL of the book's website is wrongly mentioned on the back cover as http://www.ihaveadream.in. The correct URL  is http://www.ihaveadreambook.in/ 

Apart from the above mentioned limitations which will be hopefully get corrected in forthcoming editions, the stories of the people featured in this book are a very inspiring read for anyone (and not just  for the aspiring entrepreneurs.!)  who at times gets overwhelmed by difficult circumstances.

Useful Links:

• The Book's Website
• Excerpts - from the stories of Bindeshwar Pathak (Sulabh International) and Anita Ahuja (Conserve India)
• Full Text and Video of Martin Luther's Speech  "I Have a Dream" - which inspired the title of this book. 

[This review is a part of the Book Reviews Program at BlogAdda.com. Participate now to get free books!]

The Doctor, The Detective & Arthur Conan Doyle

Author:         Martin Booth
Published:   1997
Publisher:    Hodder and Stoughton
Hardcover:  384 pages

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A fascinating biography of  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle  who got overshadowed by his fictional yet very realistic creation the ace detective Sherlock Holmes.
The author Martin Booth brings out the multifaceted personality  and talent of Conan Doyle in a very convincing manner.  
He enlightens us on several little-known facts about Conan Doyle -  how  apart from being the author of Sherlock Holmes stories, Conan Doyle was an author of several books of different genres - historical novels, war stories, sports, science fiction (The Lost World),  a military doctor, a war correspondent, a spiritualist, boxer, a first-class cricket player  (see his first-class record at Cricinfo ) who played against the legendary W.G. Grace, and a worker for social justice. 
Of course the background behind the plots and characters of several Sherlock Holmes stories is also dealt with at length.
All these make this book a very interesting read.
The book also has a fairly good selection of photographs of  Conan Doyle, his family and friends, the places associated with him. We also have a photograph of Dr. Joseph Bell who was the main inspiration behind the creation of Sherlock Holmes.
However the book lacks a complete consolidated list of all the works of Conan Doyle. That would have been very useful.
However on the whole I enjoyed reading this book  that  awakened in me a desire to re-read Sherlock Holmes stories and other books by Conan Doyle.


Link:
An audio recording of Conan Doyle's voice - Here he describes about the origins of Sherlock Holmes and  his interest in Spiritualism.

Madhouse: True Stories of the Inmates of Hostel 4 IITB

Editors:       Urmilla Deshpande, Bakul Desai
Published:    2010
Publisher:    Westland Ltd.
Paperback: 358 pages



Almost everybody  who has lived in a college hostel  will say that those were the best years in his/her life. We nostalgically remember those days and talk about it when we happen to meet our hostel mates after a long time. But the inmates of Hostel 4 IITB (Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai) have gone beyond just remembering and talking about their tenure in the hostel. They have collaborated to collect their reminiscences and create a book out of it. And they managed to convince a professional author Urmilla Deshpande who happens to be one of the inmate's wife, to edit the book.


The result is a book that is authentic, hilarious and takes you back to the good old days in a student's hostel. The anecdotes in this book are roughly from the period 1975-85, when the life was not gadget driven like the present times. They strike a chord with any hosteler since they touch upon areas like - Ragging, Inter-hostel competitions, Smoking & Boozing sessions, friendly pranks and fights, Hostel Mess, Movies (Clean & Pornos), Music, Girls & Games - which one can easily relate too. I can vouch for it because I myself had been a hostelite (though not in IIT-B) during that era.


There are some unusual and unique stories also - for e.g. a Arun Kaul  riding a horse to go to attend lectures; another one is about  Bakul Desai meeting   the don Vardarajan Mudaliar to organize an elephant for an inter-hostel competition.


Manohar Parriker (ex- CM of Goa), Madhu Pandit Dasa (President, ISKCON-Bangalore) and Subrah Iyar (Founder  & CEO - Webex) are some of the distinguished inmates of the Hostel 4 IITB.  Reading about  their exploits during their hostel life makes an interesting reading, especially the one about Madhu Pandit Dasa's travel in a suburban train.


It would have been better if this book had a short title for every anecdote (some anecdotes do have them) and an index of  names of the persons mentioned in the anecdotes. This would have made locating the portions you want to read much easier. And believe me many of the stories are worth a re-read !


Maybe some enterprising guy can make a movie out of this book too. It might give the blockbuster 3 Idiots a tough competition.


Overall a MUST READ book for anyone who had lived in a student's hostel ! I thoroughly enjoyed it. 


P.S. I only wish I and my batchmates from KREC 1984 batch also get together to write such a book. Surely we will also have lots of similar interesting tales to tell !


Links:

• Madhouse Musings - This blog has some stories which did not make it to the book, but nevertheless gives a you a feel of what to expect in the book

Succeeding with Agile

Author:        Mike Cohn
Published:    2010
Publisher:     Dorling  Kindersley India Pvt. Ltd.
Paperback: 504 pages

Scrum is a deceptively simple agile framework for developing software products in a complex and dynamically changing environment. Theoretically understanding the framework is easy but successfully implementing and reaping the benefits is not.
This book by Mike Cohn aims to provide you the know-how to "Succeed with Agile" (or to be more precise "with Scrum") based on his 15-years experience in implementing Scrum.
This is not an introductory book on Agile or Scrum. It assumes that the reader already knows the fundamentals of Scrum and tried his hands in implementing the same.


The book is organized in Five Parts as follows:


Part I : Getting Started - advice on whether to start small or take a big bang approach; how to create awareness and sense of need for implementing Scrum and subsequently developing the ability to do it; and how to select initial projects and teams, establishing improvement communities and improvement backlogs. 


Part II: Individuals - the changes  that each individual needs to make as part of the process of adopting Scrum; the type of resistance some individuals may exhibit;  thinking about why someone is resistant; guidance on how to help the person get past the resistance; the new roles that exist on a Scrum project and the changes necessary in the traditional roles; some of the technical practices (continuous integration, pair programming, test-driven development, and so on) that should be piloted and introduced to change for better the day-to-day work approach of the individuals. 


Part III:  Teams -  how to structure teams to best achieve the benefits of Scrum; nature of teamwork on a Scrum project; what it means to lead a self- organizing Scrum team; specific advice for what ScrumMasters, functional  managers, and other leaders can do to help a team self-organize for success; changes teams should make to work effectively with a product backlog; need for the whole team to work together to ensure that a sprint's goals are met; planning challenges faced by the teams; advice on separating estimates created by a team from the commitments the team makes.


Part IV: The Organization -  what is necessary to scale Scrum up to work on large, multi-team projects; dealing with complexities of distributed teams; how to make Scrum work when part of the project uses a sequential process or when there are compliance or governance requirements; special considerations of the impact of Scrum on an organization’s human resources, facilities, and project management office groups.


Part V: Next Steps - various approaches to measure how far an organization has progressed in becoming agile; need for continuous improvement to maintain agility.


In most of the twenty-two chapters of this book Cohn organizes his advice on overcoming some universally common problems faced during Agile/Scrum journey  as "Things to Try Now" and "Objection".


Things to Try Now - Recreates the pieces of advice which the author found himself giving most often to his clients or that was most helpful in particular situations. Over 100 Things to Try Out !


Objection - Reproduces  typical objections (around 60 ! )  raised on Scrum/Agile   during author's  training/consulting sessions and author's counter arguments.


Each chapter has a section on Additional Reading which goes beyond just citing the references. Against most of the cited reference  Cohn provides a succinct 2-3 summary of the reference. This helps the reader in choosing the appropriate reference for further reading.


On the whole a very useful and handy guide book for Agile/Scrum implementers at all levels in an organization.  I was lucky enough to get it as a complimentary copy during the Certified ScrumMaster training I attended last month ! Have started reading it all over again !

The Code Book

Author:      Simon Singh
Published:  1999
Publisher:   Fourth Estate Limited
Hardcover: 416 pages

The need for information security which is  widely recognized in this Internet Age is not a new need at all. It,though not as pervasive as today,  has existed for thousands of years and has a fascinating history of its own.


The high risk of secret and confidential messages sent by kings, queens and army generals falling into the  hand's of the enemies led  to the development of codes and ciphers. This heralded the birth of  Cryptography which is a method of disguising a message in a manner that only the intended recipient can read it. To counter Cryptography the unauthorized message interceptors worked on breaking the code. Thus evolved the science and art of codebreaking i.e. Cryptanalysis.


So the entire history of cryptography is the story of ongoing battle between Cryptographers (code makers) and Cryptanalysts (code breakers). And this story - right from the origin of ciphers in ancient Greece till the recent advances (till 1999) in Quantum Cryptography- is brilliantly narrated by Simon Singh in this book.


Singh mentions in the introduction to the book the two main objectives of his writing this book.
The first one is to chart the evolution of  codes. He describes how the battle between codemakers and code breakers involved diverse range of disciplines like mathematics, linguistics, information theory, quantum theory etc. and their associated technologies and inspired a series of remarkable scientific breakthroughs. He also enthralls us with " stories of political intrigue and tales of life and death to illustrate the key turning points in the evolution of codes", just to mention a few - the Babington Plot, the unbroken Beale Cipher, cracking of the Enigma code by  Alan Turing (of the well known Turing Test fame), decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphics through Rosetta Stone.
The second objective of the author is to demonstrate how the subject of cryptography is as relevant today as it was before. Apart from providing one of  the best explanation I have ever come across of the prevalent encryption algorithms , standards and techniques  like DES, RSA, PGP, he explores the promising Quantum cryptography which can lead to unbreakable ciphers. He also discusses the debate between two schools of thought - one which lobbies for  restricting   the use of cryptography to ensure law enforcement and national security and the one which presses for its widespread use to protect the privacy of the individual.


This book also introduces us to the tireless cryptographers and cryptanalysts who had to remain anonymous  and never gained public recognition during their lifetimes. This was due to the politically or militarily sensitive nature of their contributions and inventions which could not be disclosed to public.
For example, by 1975, James Ellis, Clifford Cocks and Malcolm Williamson working for Britain's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) had discovered all the fundamental aspects of public-key cryptography. Yet they all had to remain silent since their work was a classified information. They had to sit back and watch as Rivest, Shamir and Adleman the researchers in MIT rediscovered their discoveries over the next three years and became famous in cryptographic circles for their RSA algorithm.
Similarily during Second World War, the work of Max Newman and Tommy Flowers resulted in development of Colossus machine in Britain. Colossus was a precursor to the modern digital computer. Yet it was destroyed after the war and those who worked on it were forbidden to talk about it. This secrecy on the part of British Government meant that Eckert and Mauchly of the University of Pennsylvania got the credit for the invention of the first digital computer- ENIAC.


The technical concepts in this book are very lucidly explained and should no pose problems for a lay reader. Also an extensive list of further readings has been provided for the readers who seek more details. 


One of the most interesting books I have read this year. It has sparked an interest for Cryptography in me. Hence strongly recommend it as an introductory book on history and concepts of Cryptography and Cryptanalysis !


Useful Links:
Cryptography section of the author's website which has :

• information about the TV series based on this book (The Science of Secrecy)
• some cryptograms(coded messages) for you to try and crack
•  a free downloadable CD-ROM version of The Code Book.

An Interesting Trivia from the Book:
Alan Turing (of the well known Turing Test fame) was conceived in the autumn of 1911 in India, where his father was a member of Indian civil service. His parents were determined that their child should be born in Britain, and returned to London, where Alan Turing was born on 23 June 1912 !