If I ever become a professor of Community Driven Marketing, my syllabus would have two must-reads on it.

These are the two books that explain, above all else, the fundamental macro-shifts that our economy is undergoing.

These are:

1. The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual
2. Here Comes Everybody

To those, I now add a third.

Emanuel Rosen’s book The Anatomy of Buzz Revisited: Real-life lessons in Word-of-Mouth Marketing

Rosen breaks down in a way that no one else has for me, how word-of-mouth is generated and how it spreads.

Honestly, I just wish I could download the ideas in this book directly into my brain and my model for driving marketing success, it is that good.

He talks about the difference between network hubs and expert hubs and where and when to use them.

How to actively seed a network (and thinking of buzz in terms of networks) plus other ways to accelerate “natural contagion.”

He challenges many assumptions, including my own, about whether advertising still matters (he says it does and he does so quite convincingly).

And the book ends with some concrete examples of what to do.

I feel like I need to read this about 5 more times.