B2B Marketing
Content Callout’s Staff Book Picks
We love our books here at Content Callout. Reading is an essential part of continuous learning, and here at Content Callout, we are big learners. So for this piece, we wanted to look at our staff’s book recommendations for marketing professionals. We hope we can inspire you to pick one of them up.
The Importance of Continuous Learning
Continuous learning is lifelong learning—the ongoing self-motivated pursuit of knowledge for personal or professional development (or both). In the workplace, continuous learning is a concept where employees get the opportunity to make learning a part of their work.
This learning enhances—and some would even say accelerates—an employee’s skill set, knowledge, and abilities, resulting in better work proficiency. But keep in mind that continuous learning is only possible if your employees are keen, enthusiastic, and open to lifelong learning. A considerable part of this is investing in reading.
Different Learning Styles
Learning doesn’t just finish when you leave school and college. It’s a lifelong process that’s crucial for human development and potential. But we all learn differently.
Experts have identified different learning styles—the way we learn. The four main learning styles are visual, auditory, reading/writing, and kinesthetic. Many people are a mix of different learning styles. Keep in mind that as we age, our learning style can often adapt and change to our environment and change in cognition levels.
Our Corporate Culture of Learning
We are big believers in learning at Content Callout and dedicate an hour a day to learning. This involves both management and staff engaging in activities that aid professional and personal development. Our hour of self-education usually consists of activities like reading, listening (podcasts), watching (webinars, online courses), and studying material.
These activities incorporate the four main learning styles discussed. We have this dedicated hour to learning because we understand and appreciate that you must keep your knowledge and skills updated to advance in today’s fast-paced digital world. If you don’t, you run the risk of being outdated. We also believe learning is crucial for human potential and overall personal development.
We encourage you to implement a culture of learning at your workplace. Think about doing the following to make it happen:
- Encourage open discussion about learning
- Inspire employees to be curious and ask a lot of questions
- Incorporate learning into your meetings
- Watch a TEDx video once a week
- Start a book club
- Get employees to do a monthly online course
Our Book Recommendations
A considerable part of our learning culture at Content Callout is the books we read—we adore our books. They are such a vital part of how we approach our work, and we want to showcase a list of books picked by our talented and dedicated staff. Feel free to connect with our staff members on LinkedIn.
Maria Berlando
Title: Everybody Writes
Author: Ann Hadley
In the modern world, we are constantly communicating—whether on social media, email, text, etc.—making all of us writers. The way we communicate can make us look smart, funny, authentic, or capable. As we rely on more digital communication, how we do this becomes more important. Ann Hadley explores the idea of how to translate these communications into content creation in today’s world. This book includes many easy grammar tips, best practices with longstanding rules that still work, and updated versions for the current digital world.
Kayla Graham
Title: Range – Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World
Author: David Epstein
Kayla has long been fascinated by the idea of specialists vs. generalists. We often lean on specialists at work. But when it’s time to get the job done, we all have that person we rely on that seems to know how to do everything. Marketing, in general, is a field that expects people to understand how to do many things. Epstein’s discoveries might surprise you—an interesting take on generalists for all!
Kate Roberts
Title: Contagious: Why Things Catch On
Author: Jonah Berger
Psychology and popular culture are two of Kate’s favorite topics, and effective marketing strategies rely on understanding both. Jonah Berger dives into the psychology of how things become popular. He shares how six basic elements drive something to become contagious among a group of people—and how you can apply that idea of contagion to your marketing strategy. Word of mouth is still one of the most powerful marketing tools for most businesses. People don’t listen to ads; they listen to peers. So how do you get people talking about your products or services? Berger shares some secrets.
Maggie Toth
Title: Ogilvy on Advertising
Author: David Ogilvy
This is one of the classics in advertising books, especially on direct response advertising, which David Ogilvy was a pioneer of. Ogilvy was an advertising giant and known as one of the greatest advertisers of all time. This book is straight from the founder, so you get to pick his brain. Jam-packed with advertising gems that you can use, it’s the type of book you want to have on your bookshelf or on audible if you’re more audio inclined—a must-read for marketers, advertisers, and content creators.
Maggie’s top three takeaways are:
- Layouts should be simple
- Headlines get five times the readership of the body copy
- Big ideas come from the unconscious
Sarah Sunico-Martens
Title: The Hidden Psychology of Social Networks: How Brands Create Authentic Engagement by Understanding What Motivates Us
Author: Joe Federer
This book teaches you how to balance branded social presences across multiple networks, how to develop content that drives sharing and word-of-mouth, and the strategies for delivering more effective marketing that provides value. All brands can learn from its information. As a marketer, Sarah found its lessons practical and highly actionable.
Mark Raffan
Title: Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers into Friends and Friends into Customers
Author: Seth Godin
Seth Godin is one of the most influential gurus in online marketing. In this book, Seth explains the fascinating concept of “Permission Marketing”, and how this method enables marketers to shape their message so that consumers will willingly accept it. Permission Marketing enables companies to develop long-term relationships with customers, create trust, build brand awareness, and improve the chances of making a sale.
Notable Mentions
The following books we thought are worth mentioning as they are classics in the world of marketing and business:
We hope that you’ve enjoyed reading about our staff book picks just as much as we’ve enjoyed reading them and sharing them with you. For help with your brand’s content marketing, book time with our team today.
