by Ted Rubin and Kathryn Rose
Book Details Details
Amazon Rating: 5 stars – 27 reviews
Price: $9.89
Availability: In Stock
Pages: 133
Publisher: Tate Publishing and Enterprises, LLC –
Published In: 2013
Language: English
ISBN-10: 978-1-62295-820-7
Beanstalk’s Review Of Return On Relationship
Historically the axiom “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.” plays out well but when it comes time to give advice or review something it’s not always possible.
As noted above, this book is very well reviewed on Amazon garnering reviews such as:
“Ted Rubin’s and Kathryn Rose’s pearls of wisdom in their new book “Return on Relationship” is a powerful read and marks a mind-shift in building online relationships. I highly recommend it!”
When I read more of the reviews (while scratching my head wondering how it got 5-stars) it made a bit more sense with reviews starting with sentences like:
“When my friend Ted Rubin asked me to read his new book, Return on Relationship …”
and
“I promised my friend Ted Rubin that I would read his book as soon as I got a copy …”
As the owner of Beanstalk I like to keep a ready supply of books handy for staff to read and for me to keep learning from. I suppose this review can best be summarized by my thankfulness that I was the first to read it so it could be pulled off the table and I wouldn’t be wasting staff time reading it when they could be doing something more useful, like watching the Blendtec folks blending Justin Beiber into something more palatable (yes – they did it … see below). 😉
Now, To Be Fair …
It’s not that the book itself gives bad advice, it’s simply that it makes great statements of the obvious and packages it as brilliant truths with statements such as, “We can no longer expect to be successful if we simply just focus our efforts on telling our target market how great we are.”
If you knew absolutely nothing about online marketing and social media the book may be useful to some degree. But then again, so might watching Mad Men.
If you’d like the Cliff Notes version of the book it’s summarized with the following:
- You can’t please everyone.
- Blogging is good.
- Develop relationships with others.
- Be good to your clients and answer their questions.
- Be available in whatever medium your target market is on.
That about covers is. Just stretch that out to 133 pages.
I know of Ted Rubin by reputation and was very surprised to have gleaned so very little from this book. Hitting the end I should have more of a desire to implement some new ideas that I do to recover the hours I just wasted. But that’s how I felt when I got to the end of it.
My instinct was to give it 1 star but I’m going to give it 2 stars out of 5 as it may provide some level of usefulness for those going in with virtually no knowledge. It does provide the information is an easily digested way. That’s about the only positive I can give it. That and learning how to read Amazon reviews prior to purchase.
You can find it on Amazon here if you feel so inclined. I don’t recommend it but then … 27 of his friends do. 😉
And If You Decide …
To follow my advice and enjoy the demise of Justin Beiber instead, here’s that. 😉
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