Ian M Rountree

Freelance Copywriting and Digital Marketing

  • Copywriting
    • Content Marketing
    • SEO
  • About
  • Contact

Thoughts from Average is Over

June 6, 2015 by Ian Leave a Comment

On Google Play, where I bought this book, I wrote the following terse book review;

This is not a book that you understand in the first twenty pages.

The concept is pretty simple – boredom and a want of simplicity are keeping us from working with all of the tools we have to build a better world, a better economy, and a better life. However, the volume of detail Cowen goes into on just how that world might look is compelling, dangerous, and a little scary – but in a good way.

I’ve already recommended this to at least 3 people – and will continue to do so in the future.

Average is Over - Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation - Tyler Cowen | Google Play Books
Oddly, I found this book via Imgur – not via a business blog.

The ability to work with and interpret for computers is a big deal – and it’ll continue to be bigger and bigger as computers get better. All those soft skills your councillors tried to foist on you will pay off, if they already haven’t. However they won’t necessarily just pay off with people – they’ll pay off with your ability to be the back-channel between those who understand computer work, and those who do not.

This is a core part of what Cowen is getting at, but the reasoning behind it is very important to understanding the why for why this interpretation is so crucial to developing personal and cultural economic success.

Bizarrely, while this is an economist’s book about computing, and it comes very clearly from a statistical thoroughness I can’t possibly recognize in a book review properly, Average is Over feels very much like a galvanizing agent for knowledge workers. It’s not going to teach you to handle margins, do statistics in any real way, or anything like that. What this book offers is an understanding – from a non-business point of view – of just why the rush in knowledge work is so meaningful, against the backdrop of “normal people living normal lives.” It’s also a fairly damning account of just why the middle class is evaporating – though, thankfully, the book has some things to say about why that’s not necessarily a bad thing either.

What I appreciate most, personally, is that Tyler Cowen is and behaves like a knowledge worker himself.

If you follow him on Twitter, or read the blog at Marginal Revolution, you’ll get a broader sense of what fuels Cowen’s work, and where his passion is; making life better through adding value to information, which should be the knowledge worker’s mantra.

Without becoming too exhaustive, I’ll leave some key thoughts I had from the reading of Average is Over – and hopefully they’ll either spark some discussion or urge you to read the book itself;

  • The “average” being discussed is the middle class, without a doubt. Strangely, how I read this is that – and I’m nowhere near equipped to back it against data – there’s going to be far more room to get into the “have” category none the less, for those willing to do so. We’re not all going to like that, on both sides. Barriers to entry to the have-class are going to relate much more to personal effort in the future than legacy advantages.
  • Elitism is OK, as long as it puts on a polite face. We see this in gaming culture all the time. Even the most staunch “git gud son” players of online games can be the best of people – if they understand, and have the soft skills available, how to manage their environments and the people in those environments. As a force for internal personal development, or even external encouragement, “good enough isn’t good enough” is actually really powerful.
  • Median inflation adjusted income is dropping, have we compared this to an increase or a decrease in consumption? What gets me is that, if needs-and-expenses are also dropping, then inflation might be more related to wants. Again, we’re seeing that “effort” as above, may relate to force of will and personal austerity in some areas. Maybe people who don’t get the Apple Watch are the winners, in other words.
  • Your data is your most valuable and irreplaceable currency – and I’ll probably talk about this a little more soon. Tim Cook (Apple) very recently threw a pooh-pooh at Google and Microsoft for making business out of people’s’ data. What’s interesting about this, as relates to the book, is the idea that aggregates most often trump individuals as far as big-enough-data is concerned, and oddly that makes us safer and not less secure.

There’s so much more here as fuel for discussion. What I’m electing to take away from the book en mass though is the idea that setting your expectations, and then learning how to back those expectations out toward reality, is a killer app in terms of thought technology.

Get Average is Over by Tyler Cowan on Google Play Books – or, you know, that other place that used to be nothing but books and now sends you toilet paper overnight.

Filed Under: Reviews Tagged With: book review, books, business, economics, success, tyler cowen

Book Review – Content Rules

April 4, 2011 by Ian 6 Comments

Can’t see the video? Click here: Business Book review – Content Rules

If you’re a content producer of any flavour, you need to read Content Rules by CC Chapman and Ann Handley.

If you’ve read part of this book, perhaps the first chapter through Amazon or the like, and dismissed it as more fluff and cheerleading over content marketing – you obviously didn’t read the entire book.

If you’ve read the entire book, and haven’t done anything with the massive volume of information in it, you’re obviously missing the boat.

Content Rules is making me reconsider some of my personal content strategy.

It’s also making me rethink the advice I give to clients – not only about blogging, but about creating other content as well. I’ve never produced a podcast, written an eBook or a white paper, or created a Webinar. I’ve done video – as above – but I’m not the best at it yet.

The Skinny on the Book: You need to diversify your content.

As I said in the video – barriers to entry for business on the web are falling at an alarming rate. It’s easy enough to set up a Blogger or a WordPress.com blog – or even a simple WordPress.org website and start tossing up content about your business. Getting images on the web is really easy with Flickr, Picasa and other photo sharing services. The ease of use of current web tools have made the idea of “having a website” more of a stepping stone than a destination for most businesses.

And, when everyone’s got something, how does getting that thing help your business? It doesn’t – unless you’re using it better, and doing more interesting things with the tool.

By all means – get a good looking website, have a great design, match your web branding to your other branding. These are givens. What isn’t yet a given (meaning you can win if you do it) is having better content than your closest competitor. Having a more interesting blog, better videos, more engaging webinars, and more entertaining and informational ebooks and white papers.

Building a business position on the web involves some consideration.

Not every tool in this book will help you in every aspect of your content marketing work – some businesses just aren’t right for webinars, or white papers. Some are perfect for it. What Content Rules will help you do is identify which cases fit which content type, and what to do with the content you’re producing to make it more effective in those perfect-fit cases.

The Skinny on The Authors: Why you should care about them.

C.C. Chapman has been doing content work for a number of years – he’s produced a variety of podcasts, worked on interactive marketing campaigns, and delivered some great talks. If there’s a better advocate for content marketing and strategic content creation, I don’t know who they are.
But wait – there’s also Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer at Marketing Profs, who produce a massive volume of information aimed at helping marketers do a better job on the web. Ann’s a fantastic resource for content marketing information on her own – nothing said of Marketing Profs as a group. The online seminars they produce are some of the best available, and everything from their blog to their ebooks shines as examples of content done right.

I’ll be keeping Content Rules as a reference book – and I think every web content producer ought to have their own copy as well.


Content Rules is part of the Connected Commerce 101 Book List

A few months ago, I built a social media study curriculum called Connected Commerce 101. Content Rules is part of that curriculum, in the section on New Media Production and Publishing. The books I mentioned in the review video are also all part of Connected Commerce 101 – check out the book list, more reviews will follow to fill out the remainder of the list and – of course – if you have any recommendations to add to the course (or, which might become part of a new course), send them my way by way of comment on either this blog post, or on the Connected Commerce 101 page itself.

Filed Under: Reviews Tagged With: Ann Handley, Blogging, book review, books, cc chapman, content marketing, content strategy, ebook, podcast, Videos, webinar

Genre Dodging (or) the Curse of the Self-Proclaimed Anything

March 12, 2011 by Ian Leave a Comment

Dodgeball by iShane on FlickrOne of the most insidious problems fiction has to deal with is the issue of Genre Dodging.

Simply put, Genre Dodging is what happens when authors ignore an element necessary for their stated genre to function. Like missing an opportunity for the first female victim in a horror movie to run in obviously the wrong direction.

When you remove a key element of a genre, even with good intention, the entire narrative suffers.

This happens all the time. We’ve got lots of examples. Whether it’s having vampires that can survive sunlight, or another form of applied phlebotinum – it breaks the rule of cool pretty thoroughly.

What you get, when you try to dodge your own genre too thoroughly, is something too far from the box.  The quality of any genre-based work lies heavily on interpretation of that genre, not necessarily in making if better, worse, or pear-shaped.

I have to deal with this working on the Dowager Shadow.

When I built the world that the story takes place on, I very intentionally turned a few elements of the fantasy genre on their sides. I didn’t remove them (which is a key element in genre dodging), but I did twist them a bit. When you think fantasy, you’re liable to think warriors and magic users, dwarves and elves. If the book doesn’t have any of these, is it fantasy? Maybe.  Or maybe it’s strategic. The trick is that those four things, while recognizable, are not pillars of the genre. Not all fantasy has elves. Not all fantasy has magic.

But all vampires ought to be unable to walk in the sunlight, right? And, while we’re at it, if science fiction doesn’t have awesome tech, is it actually science fiction or just fiction?

Where else does this apply?

Blogging? If you’re a blogger without comments on your site, are you just publishing?

Twitter? If you don’t discuss anything with anyone, or lock your tweets, what happens to the chances of gaining a following?

If you’re a business person, and don’t actively build your network and create relationships, where’s the longevity of your business?

Building a world – whether it’s fictional planets, a business community, or a personal network – requires addressing the pillars that hold up the kind of world you’re building needs to function as a well-oiled, recognizable machine.

Are you missing any key elements in a non-strategic way? You might be Genre Dodging. And it’s not usually a good thing.

Photo by Shane Adams.

Filed Under: Content Strategy Tagged With: advice, books, fiction, mediatropes, rant-alert, tropes, writing

The Future of Media – Dowager Shadow

February 21, 2011 by Ian 2 Comments

I’m writing a novel. But it won’t be Tor, Orion, or Bantam Press publishing my work; it’ll be me.

Chris Brogan just dropped a perfect opportunity for me to hold myself to account here. You see, I’ve missed my deadline for having the promotional site for the book up. It was supposed to be finished on February 2nd, with some content available to act as a teaser for the actual volume coming in summer. Nearly a month late, I still have 10 hours of work to do on the promo site, and no time budgeted to it.

Before you finish reading this, jump out and read/ watch Chris’ video post, The Future of Media.

Back? Good. Now I’ll explain.

The Dowager Shadow Promotional SiteThe Dowager Shadow, which I’ve spoken of before here, is a fantasy fiction parallax that has been where I’ve put most of my energy for the last four years. It started making its way from ongoing roleplay to novel with 2008’s National Novel Writing Month – my co-author Leila and I smashed the 50k word barrier easily, and immediately had what amounts to a full first volume of book.

Last year, I began publishing the novel as a serial – you can still read some of it on dowagershadow.com until I get the new site up, but I warn you, the manuscript has seen a lot of editing since then.

Here’s what you’ll see once the new site is actually up, and I’ve got the manuscript finished and produced:

  • The first volume will be available for purchase as an eBook, with built in interactivity like an appendix, maps, and other information.
  • In addition to each volume, there will be a few rounds of shorter stories available for free through Pay With a Tweet. This will take care of some of the promotion of the book.
  • Each subsequent volume will be released in two ways: stand-alone purchase, or bundled with the previous volumes, each of which will have been updated with information pertinent to the new volume.
  • There will be a print version, produced through a self-publisher, which can be ordered alongside the eBook. I’m aiming to have two production runs per year for the physical artifact.

It sounds like a lot, but it’s really no more work than this blog.

Building interactivity into a book is a very new media thing. It’s the kind of thing that’s going on all over the place. Usually, though, it’s products like Digging Into WordPress. However, given the success of products like DigWP, and the many thousands of well produced eBooks out there, I can’t help but see this kind of thing as the future of media.

We’re going far beyond the entrepreneurial journalism that blogging has been for the last decade, and moving into an era of entrepreneurial publishing of all flavours. That, I believe, is the future of media.

Filed Under: Content Strategy Tagged With: books, business, chris brogan, dowager shadow, fiction, media, media production, publishing, the-web, writing

The NOW Revolution – A Guide For New Businesses

February 18, 2011 by Ian 13 Comments

Viewing this on a feed, or having trouble seeing the video? See the original article, or watch the video on YouTube.

The NOW Revolution is one of those books that’s approachable by a broad audience, applicable in a wide variety of situations, and instantly appealing from page one. These three qualities alone make it worth buying.

There’s a lot about this book I liked. However, there was one thing that stuck out as a little weird. Throughout the book, there are an array of Microsoft Tags – proprietary QR codes – which direct the reader to further meta-data about the book. While I think this is perfectly appropriate for the book’s subject, it’s a choice made on behalf of the audience; to get everything the book has to offer, you’ve not only got to be savvy enough to understand how, when, and why the Tags are there (they are explained in the beginning), but also be willing to install an app on your smartphone to read the tags themselves. I delayed doing so, in fact, in order to finish the book quickly and not rabbit-hole in the meta data.

Despite this hiccup, The NOW Revolution picked up the ball where other, more theoretical books left it off.

The book really begins to shine, though, around Shift 3. By the time you’ve built the bedrock of your new business, and found some talent you can trust, you’ll be prepared to organize your new armies to do good in the world.

You should go buy The Now Revolution: 7 Shifts to Make Your Business. It’ll help you really dig into setting up the scaffolding you need in order to make the most of the current, super-connected business landscape.

If you’re still struggling with the idea, read Six Pixels of Separation and Trust Agents first, in that order. Once you’re done those, and have the NOW Revolution well studied, read Inbound Marketing.

Disclosure: I got the book through the authors’ blogger review promotion. I was sent two copies of the book, on the proviso that I review the book (good, bad or ugly) and give one copy away in an interesting way.

How you can get my second copy of the NOW Revolution…

I believe in using social tools for social good. So, I want to see how much good can be done by means of social media.

Leave a comment here. I’d like to hear your ideas for how we can make businesses smarter, faster, and more social. In particular, I’d like to know what you think of using social business for social good. Is your business involved in charity of any kind? What do you think of using your wattage as a business to benefit social causes? If you’re in a position to make this kind of action through your business – will you? Or, if not, why?

The winning comment will also have a donation made for the cost of the book, to the charity of their choosing. Now. What can we do with this social media thing?

Filed Under: Reviews Tagged With: amber naslund, book review, books, connected commerce, jay baer, now revolution, social business, social media

  • 1
  • 2
  • Next Page »
  • Copywriting
  • Blog
  • Reading Lists
  • Colophon

© Copyright 2019 Ian M Rountree · All Rights Reserved