I read a lot of books – mostly nonfiction and normally several at a time. While I also spend (probably too much) time on the internet, I still love traditional printed books – the act of turning the pages, getting absorbed in new ideas, even the smell of them. Just lately however, I seem to have had a bit of a bad run of books. Poor writing, recycled ideas pretending to be new ideas – you get the picture.
So it was a pleasure to read Bill Tancer's book Click, What We Do Online and Why It Matters.
Bill heads up research at Hitwise who, for those that don't know them, track what people do on the internet and advise companies on what to do about it. Essentially, this means he has access to every quirk and foible that ever gets entered into a Google search box. And the results (and what they mean) are fascinating.
Amongst other things, he looks at:
- Who we vote for and how that shows up in search terms
- New year resolutions and false hope
- What scares us
- And who would win Strictly Come Dancing
While the individual subjects are interesting, there are few real 'take it and use it' nuggets that I will pick up and begin to use. In this way it is more in the Freakonomics and Malcolm Gladwell traditions of 'ooo that's interesting'. What I will take out is the patterns of activity. This is what really hooked me – particularly how one thing influences another and back again.
It simply goes to show how totally interrelated everything is these days and, for me, how marketers and communicators need to think in a radically more holistic way to succeed.
Ironically, I did not find this book online (as I do with most of the books I read), I stumbled across it in a shop at some motorway services. Not sure that would show up in Hitwise's statistics.