I was pleasantly surprised to find a review copy of Guy Kawasaki’s new book, ‘Enchantment’ waiting for me when I got home yesterday, having submitted my details for an early copy a while ago. It’s pretty good timing considering the amount of new projects I’m working on, and I enjoyed reading The Macintosh Way a while ago – you can download it for free by liking the Enchantment Facebook page. (The Art of the Start has been on my list of books to read for ages, and this has reminded me to bump it up the list!)
Having opened the brown envelope last night, I’ve actually just finished it for the first time – with books like these I tend to read them through once just to enjoy them as a book, and then again to go through more thoroughly picking out all the things I need to do or write about.
And the essential message is that it’s good. I’ve tried to think of a one line summary, in case they need to replace Richard Brandson or Steve Wozniak on the book jacket, and I think it’s probably ‘The one essential habit of successful leaders and entrepreneurs’.
Essentially it’s a very readable and enjoyable collection of relevant wisdom on how to enchant your company, colleagues and customers, with simple and easy-to-follow advice and examples of how to inspire and engage people without manipulating them or trying to play mindgames. And the way to do this is to build on your likeable, trustworthy and visionary sides.
In addition to his own knowledge and reading on the subject, Kawasaki has included advice and examples from some other notable marketers and content creators, as well as ending each chapter with an example which was shared with him by a range of people.
There are a few points on which I’d disagree with the tactics recommended in the book, but I’d agree on the logic behind them (One internet-famous example is the advice to hire people to post interesting items and links on your Twitter account, which I’d say is potentially OK for a company, but not so much for an individual due to the difficulties of disclosure etc). And the chapter dealing with the techniques for specific sites (Twitter, Facebook, Youtube) will have dated information pretty quickly due to the nature of those ever-changing platforms.
I’ll try to get a more in-depth review up shortly, and the book goes on sale on March 3rd. In the meantime, the Enchantment Facebook page is worth checking out both for the book, and also as an example of how to create an ‘enchanting’ facebook fanpage.
I’ve become a big fan in recent years. I bought Reality Check then worked backwards. Looking forward to getting this one. cheers.
It’ll be interesting to see your take on it once you’ve picked it up. I started a second read-through and it’s definitely a book which can seem quite quick and easy until you start actually trying some of the suggestions and advice…
I had the same feeling about the Facebook page, I loved to see how it became so engaging and fun in a short time. I can only think about some specific lines from the book, one is about “spreading as many seeds as possible” and the other is about “reaching out to the nobodies as well as to the influentials”. The practical wisdom in Enchantment is revealed gracefully through his interaction with fans on Facebook as well.