Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)When I bought Stephen Wilson's "Mobile Search and Local Search Marketing", I skipped over one little fact in the product details section on. That was the length, 26 pages. Subtract the title page, the author bio and the "Final Comments" section, which has pithy advice like "learn from your competitors," and what you have is 23 pages of introductory material dealing with local search. This book didn't need the 6 stock photographic images of smiling seniors riding bikes, young women raising their arms in victory while gazing down at their laptops or shocked shoppers staring into empty purses. Especially so since each photograph added nothing to the content but took up a third of a page. Likewise the three-quarter to two-thirds page-sized screen shots could have been trimmed and still been adequate examples of points made in the text.
After ten pages of making the case for doing something with local search Mr. Wilson gets down to it. Kind of. He spends a further three and a half pages talking about what kind of content you might want to include in your local listings. The final seven and a half pages are composed of brief descriptions of his pick for the top six local search sites, Google Maps, Yahoo Local, City Search, Yelp, At&T Yellow Pages and Magic Yellow.
This book looks like Mr. Wilson has taken the advice of one of the current "Self-Publishing" gurus and published a book using Amazons in-house self-publishing arm, Create Space. He can then order these books in quantity at a couple of bucks apiece and hand them out as promotional items, with his business card stapled to the front cover.
I would have preferred an honest explanation, in detail, of how to simply maximize one or two of the local search sites he mentioned, with screen shots of the steps involved. A book that spends almost half of itself trying to sell me on the importance of local search, when I have already purchased the book can't help but appear as a puff piece promoting Mr. Wilson's consulting business. He could have done better.
In the interests of helping to prevent the worst of this kind of thing from expanding across the net, a couple of tips for self-publishing consultants.
1. Avoid stock photographs that have nothing to do with your content
2. Don't have the book description on the back of the book written in all caps
3. When quoting text from other sources (presumably web sites) have them inset, not simply pasted in a different font, three type sizes larger or smaller. In fact use a consistent style - don't alternate between two or three
4. Trim your screenshots to half a page. Covering seven-eights just looks like you are trying to take up space
5. If the title of your book uses the word "guide" then have over half of your book be content that provides "how-to" information, as opposed to filler material or context setting. Presumably, if I bought a guide, I want to know how to do something, not simply be convinced that it is good to want to do it.
Actually, after reading back over my review, I am forced to change my original two star ranking to a one star. Sorry Mr. Wilson, but that is all it deserves. Anyone could do better than this by searching Google videos for "local search marketing" or picking up a different Amazon listing, and reading the reviews.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Mobile Search and Local Search Marketing: The Small Business Survival Guide
Google Maps, Yahoo Local, Yelp, City Search and a host of other resources are offering small business new opportunities to market on the Web to local customers. A new trend in business sometimes called ROBO (research online and buy offline) is changing the nature of shopping and marketing in these competive times. The book explains how small business can utilize these services (often for free) to showcase their products and services and succeed in a tough marketplace. The author is a consultant who helps small business utilize online marketing in their communities to reach new customers and build their business. This guide highlights the most effective techniques and strategies.
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