Mike Abasov

“Trust Agents” is a bestselling book written by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith about social media, networking, and… well, building trust for success.

The book explains how the rules of branding has changed not only in terms of HOW you should brand, but also WHY. 

It mixes theory and interesting stories, and showcases with direct practical action plans that will get you on top of the new trends in personal and corporate marketing.

My favorite point in the book is about changing your perception of life and viewing it as a game. To some extent, this point is described by me in one of my latest posts. 

The authors also talk about building your network and leveraging your connections in a good, trustworthy way.

In my opinion, it is a great book for students, because it shows a lot of great timeless tools you didn’t know about before. It also makes you rethink you current activities and start planning your future career with better understanding of the cultural shifts that are happening right now.

“Rework” is a bestselling book written by the founders of a great company, 37signals.

I picked it up a couple of weeks ago, and I have to say that it has many interesting insights on how to improve the way you work as an individual and as a business owner.

I don’t agree with everything the authors say, but most of the stuff is good.

It will be most interesting to business students of any kind, though I’m not so sure about other professions. In any case, I believe that it’s better to learn such things now, before you graduate.

I think you should check it out, and let me know what you think.

I finished reading “Ideavirus” by Seth Godin about 2 months ago, but never had a chance to review it. So here we go.

The book is great from a theoretical standpoint. It really says a lot about how viral messages spread and how the marketing perception should switch from selling products to selling ideas. A large part of the text though, I found to be common sense, but some things were new and interesting to read.

The book is old; some examples feature such brands as ICQ, for instance. But what made reading twice as awesome, was buying the Vook edition for iPad. It has a lot of cool videos recorded just now, so you can see how the same principles work again and again.

Final thoughts: read it.

*Both links to the books in this post are affiliate. I decided to play around with Amazon. However, monetization is NOT the purpose of this blog at all. I am truly sorry, if you feel in any way offended by this move. I do mean every single word I write here.*

Gary Vaynerchuk’s “Crush It!” is simply awesome. Just as many other people, I found out about Gary by watching his presentation on TED’s website. From the first moments, I knew that this guy appeals a lot to what I believe in, especially, when he was talking about “donating to Haiti for retweets” trend, which I hate with every bit of my soul.

Gary’s doesn’t sell a dream of doing nothing and being reach, which many bloggers try to sell. He talks about working very hard and loving your job in order to succeed. This is exactly the kind of philosophy I follow.

So, after getting my iPad, I went to Amazon and bought a copy of Gary’s book. (By the way, it cost $2 less on Amazon than on iBooks). I read in in two days from cover to cover, and it’s just extraordinary. Fact is, this is a book I will remember and, maybe, the one that will change my life in the same Alina Wheeler’s “Designing Brand Identity” did three years ago.

Have you read it? What do you think?