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Smarter, Faster, Cheaper Lib/E: Non-Boring, Fluff-Free Strategies for Marketing and Promoting Your Business

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Save time and money in building, marketing and promoting your business

With huge recent shifts in the way enterprises are built, marketed, and monetized, these are "wild west" times for business. In this new landscape, entrepreneurs and small business owners actually have an edge in marketing without spinning their wheels or going broke.

"Smarter, Faster, Cheaper" gives you an innovative, approachable new guide on how to market, promote and improve your business drawing on real world examples and offering practical advice as opposed to fluffy theory. It presents a complete roadmap for marketing and promoting your business with the latest techniques.Draws from author David Siteman Garland's extensive experiences as a successful entrepreneurBased on countless interviews with successful leaders, including conversations with entrepreneurs and owners of businesses large and smallStrategies and ideas are easy to understand, digest, and immediately put to use

From learning when to skimp and when to splurge to mastering the art of online schmoozing, "Smarter, Faster, Cheaper" will save you time, money, and aggravation whether you're building your tenth business or your first.

Audio CD

First published November 18, 2010

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About the author

David Siteman Garland

4 books2 followers
David Siteman Garland is the creator of The Rise To The Top & Create Awesome Online Courses. David (aka DSG) helps people create & sell online courses. He's taught more than 4,000 students in over 100 countries to create successful courses on everything from baby sleep training to clarinet lessons for adults. He is also the co-founder of Course Cats software which makes it super simple to create an amazing online course website without needing a designer, web developer, a psychiatrist and a team of 1,000 nerds. David is the author of two books Smarter, Faster, Cheaper: Non-Boring, Fluff-Free Strategies For Marketing & Promoting Your Business (2010) and 7 Steps To Creating, Promoting & Profiting From Online Courses (2018). He lives in St. Louis, Missouri with his way-smarter-than-him wife Marcie and children Aviva & Coby.

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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
Profile Image for Loy Machedo.
233 reviews214 followers
October 24, 2012
Loy Machedo’s Book Review – Smarter, Faster, Cheaper by David Siteman Garland

In the 80’s, it was the dawn of Computers.
In the 90’s, it was the dawn of the Internet.
In the 00’s, it was the dawn of Information Overdrive.
Today it is the dawn of Social Networks.

In each of the era, anyone who didn’t catch the wave, faced dire consequences.
But here is the catch.
Not everyone who jumped in, did well.
The early adapters didn’t face much competition, but the risk of failure was also pretty great as they were headed into unknown waters.

David Garland is among those who not only adopted the changing landscape, he has managed to do pretty well himself. Being the founder of The Rise to the Top - The #1 Non-Boring Resource for Building Your Building Smarter, Faster, Cheaper; he is also host to a number of networks including RISE – A Web show for entrepreneurs as well as The Rise to the Top TV Show on ABC. Because of his expertise, he has been featured on CNN, ABC, NBC and CBS and is also a regular contributor and columnist for a variety of sources including Small Business Trends.

So now comes his book – Smarter, Faster, Cheaper as he calls it the Non-Boring, Fluff-Free Strategies for Marketing and Promoting Your Business.

On his cover, he has endorsements by The Rebel Marketer - Seth Godin, CEO of Zappos.com Tony Hsieh, Best Selling Author of Drive - Daniel Pink, Chris Brogan – The Best Selling Author of Trust Agents and David Meerman Scott of The New Rules of Marketing and PR. So obviously, I was dying to read and complete the book.

This is my humble analysis.

Around 16 chapters of roughly 200 pages.

Chapter 1 – The Shift.
Well has a few many examples with just the usual material. Other than the examples and a few details about HARO (Help a Reporter Out), nothing more.

Chapter 2 – Create Your Foundation.
Examples of Gary Vaynerchuck and his Wine Library, Tony Hsieh of Zappos and a few tips on expertise.

Chapter 3 – Become a Trusted Resource
A short chapter with tips on how to become a Trusted Resource and a small example of Hubspot.

Chapter 4 – Selling Sucks
Example of Timothy Sykes who makes 1.4 Million Dollars per year, then a wee bit about 37signals and finally David’s own personal story of how he catapulted The Rise To The Top.

Chapter 5 – Be Your Own Media Source
Just a bit of here and there and everything in between. Nothing specific in this chapter.

Chapter 6 – The Art and Science of Experimenting and Creating Content
Bit of Motivational & Inspirational Content here. More like ‘You Can Do It’ philosophy. Good example of Josh Shipp, Mashable, Robert Scoble and Rackspace.

Chapter 7 – Tapping into the Power of Online Video.
Practical advice into the Power of Online Video. I liked this chapter. Good examples of Shama Kabani, Brain Clark, Tim Ferris, Kevin Rose, Amber MacArthur and Leo Laporte.

Chapter 8 – Market and Promote Your Business By Helping Others
A very short chapter. Not much here actually apart from the letter he wrote to Seth Godin for an Interview.

Chapter 9 – The Keys to Marketing, Promoting and Building Your Community.
The chapter focuses on patience, building a slow but steady community, ways to market and get noticed and differences between various terminologies.

Chapter 10 – Creating a Sharable and Spreadable Website
A few important requisites to websites. More like uncommon common sense. I liked this chapter as well because it focused on making the website more real, likable and sharable. He also shared another personal story – which made the chapter pretty interesting.

Chapter 11 – Expanding Your Network
What is Schmoozing, Methods, Benefits of being one and Rookie Mistakes. This chapter is a bit detailed and has more content than the other chapters. And top that with a personal account from the author.

Chapter 12 – Your Reputation in the Transparent World We Live in.
I felt this chapter gave the essence of what being online was all about – Reputation as the World Wide Web never loses out on the content that once posted online. A few tips about Guests Posts, Articles, Negative Comments, and Negative People was also put up.

Chapter 13 – Respect the Blogger and New Media
The importance of Networking was stated here with the people who actually benefitted from doing this very well. A good example of Tim Ferris & Seth Godin was stated and how they managed to get people to purchase their products and services. I also liked the examples of 1-800-GOT-JUNK, Chris Brogan and Liz Strauss. Including the tips he put up there of checking out other websites. Another bonus bit in this chapter is stating the do’s and don’ts people need to know when getting in touch with Media people.

Chapter 14 – How to Connect with Anyone You Want
The fundamentals of giving first and not asking.

Chapter 15 – Traditional Advertising is Dying
How Advertising was before and how better and more productive measurable methods of advertising online have come into play and stay.

Chapter 16 – Take If Offline
How to make it happen not just on the internet but how others have done it professionally in the non-internet based world.

So now the moment of truth. What do I think about the book?

For a new comer online, this book would serve as a the perfect road map to help them grow and become successful online. However, for someone with say a year or two years experience online, this book serves more as a refresher – rather than a guide.

Overall, I rate this book a 6.5 out of 10 for the fact that I have read these points before. But to someone who is looking at starting something online – this book can provide the inspiration and guidance necessary. So yeah, may be to someone new it would be a 8 out of 10.

Loy Machedo
loymachedo.com
Profile Image for Nicole.
464 reviews9 followers
March 6, 2018
Listened to this via the library audio app.
The topic was very interesting and could be used across the board on all different types of jobs, careers, hobbies etc.
Gave me lots of things to think about and also a way to think about when other interact with me.
112 reviews
Read
March 5, 2016
March 2012 - Save time and money in building, marketing and promoting your business.

With huge recent shifts in the way enterprises are built, marketed, and monetized, these are "wild west" times for business. In this new landscape, entrepreneurs and small business owners actually have an edge in marketing without spinning their wheels or going broke.

Smarter, Faster, Cheaper gives you an innovative, approachable new guide on how to market, promote and improve your business drawing on real world examples and offering practical advice as opposed to fluffy theory. It presents a complete roadmap for marketing and promoting your business with the latest techniques (such as online marketing, blogs, online video, etc.)

Profile Image for Arthur  Charlez.
73 reviews4 followers
February 8, 2011
Reads like a blogpost. Engaging.. personal.. conversational and all round magnetic. You cannot stop reading this book. The advice you get from this guy is real. No textbook fluff. he's either lived every aspect of entrepreneurship he expounds on in the book or he knows someone that lives in - on a first name basis.

David Siteman Garland is one of the authors of whom I will eventually own a collection of books.
Profile Image for Phil Simon.
Author 28 books101 followers
March 27, 2011
Hi. I'm Phil Simon and I've written three books. I read quite a bit and had the pleasure of checking out David's first book. If you're new to social media or are unsure about how to navigate this brave new world, this is the book for you. I know a great deal about social media, so the content wasn't entirely new to me. Still, Garland's passion and accessible style coupled with real world examples make this a valuable book for those looking to do more with their online presences.
Profile Image for Shawn.
609 reviews50 followers
September 8, 2012
For those unfamiliar with social media should really think of reading three books on how to. First a book on why they need to do it, second a book such as this one on methods on how to market cheaper with social media, and then a book on how to do it.

This book offers some sound advice to follow, but if you're unfamiliar and contemplating getting into it, then this book will get you excited to do it, but you'll need to look further on for the how.
Profile Image for Andy Perdue.
Author 2 books7 followers
November 10, 2012
This is a solid book with a lot of great, if basic, information.

I was not particularly fond of the writing style, which tended to be amateurish, too breezy and "blog-like" (which might be the point, I suppose). Additionally, the near-total discount of traditional media's continued important was short-sighted and probably not a service to the author's readership.

Overall, I'm glad a read it, but I probably won't refer back to it, as I often do with books by Seth Godin.
Profile Image for Steven Goodwin.
Author 2 books5 followers
March 20, 2011
My doctoral mentor highly recommended this book as THE new marketing tool for entrepreneurs! I am intrigued to begin reading it.
Profile Image for Marc.
15 reviews5 followers
July 13, 2012
I'm already liking the knowledge, passion and personality of the author. I was drawn in and energized by the second page.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews

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