Creative Business Books

Big Shoes Network partners with Amazon.com to bring you the top five or six latest and best-selling books in the creative industry. Keep in step with the latest content here!


The Business of Social Media: Clients & Customers Not Just Likes & Followers
The Business of Social Media: Clients & Customers Not Just Likes & Followers
by Angela K. Denton

Do you want real, paying clients, not just "Likes" and "Follows" from your social media marketing strategy? This book shows you how!

There is an illusion that Social Media marketing is all about the number of likes you receive, but it is so much more than that. A Like can quickly seem insignificant when you need actual living, breathing (and paying) clients and customers.

This is a guide for every small business owner who has been trying to demystify the world of social media marketing, whether on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn or harnessing all of them. A how-to manual that will show you what needs to be done to attract your customer base, interact with genuine interest and in the process - create real paying customers and clients for life.

The author has run her own social media marketing agency for many years, with clients ranging from small local businesses through to national and international companies. In this time she has gained the experience of how to retain clients by proving a return on investment. In other words: consistently attracting genuine paying clients and customers to a wide range of businesses, large and small, whether they are providing tangible products or services.

This book is full of relatable real-world examples for different business types from the author's own experience. It's easy to read for anyone in business, marketers or business owners, new and established. This book will help you focus on the platforms right for your type of business and build a strategy that will build an engaged following with plenty of potential paying clients and how to convert them into real-world sales.

If you want to create a lazer focused digital marketing strategy that translates into increased profits or if you want to find out why your current social media marketing isn't working and how to turn it around - this is the book for you.

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To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth about Moving Others
To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth about Moving Others
by Daniel H. Pink

From the best-selling author of Drive and A Whole New Mind comes a surprising - and surprisingly useful - new book that explores the power of selling in our lives.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, one in nine Americans works in sales. Every day more than 15 million people earn their keep by persuading someone else to make a purchase.

But dig deeper and a startling truth emerges: Yes, one in nine Americans works in sales. But so do the other eight.

Whether we’re employees pitching colleagues on a new idea, entrepreneurs enticing funders to invest, or parents and teachers cajoling children to study, we spend our days trying to move others. Like it or not, we’re all in sales now.

To Sell Is Human offers a fresh look at the art and science of selling. As he did in Drive and A Whole New Mind, Daniel H. Pink draws on a rich trove of social science for his counterintuitive insights. He reveals the new ABCs of moving others (it's no longer "Always Be Closing"), explains why extroverts don't make the best salespeople, and shows how giving people an "off-ramp" for their actions can matter more than actually changing their minds.

Along the way, Pink describes the six successors to the elevator pitch, the three rules for understanding another's perspective, the five frames that can make your message clearer and more persuasive, and much more. The result is a perceptive and practical book - one that will change how you see the world and transform what you do at work, at school, and at home.

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Persuasive Copywriting: Cut Through the Noise and Communicate With Impact
Persuasive Copywriting: Cut Through the Noise and Communicate With Impact
by Andy Maslen

Enhance your copywriting skills with psychology-driven techniques to create stand out copy that taps into consumer decision making and sells, using this second edition of the ultimate copywriting survival guide for the 21st century - essential to every marketing or creative professional's bookshelf.

With many professionals now developing their skills on the job, it is notoriously difficult to benchmark successful copy. This book provides a step up for those who already know the basics of writing copy, and are seeking more advanced, psychology-driven techniques to gain the competitive edge. With practical insight into human decision making and consumer engagement, it will inspire the clear-cut confidence needed to create, quantify, and sell stand out copy in a cluttered marketplace.

Complementing the 'how to' perspective of copywriting, with impressive interviews from leading ad agencies and copywriters across the globe, this second edition addresses the everyday issues faced in a multitude of roles, including:

  • Practical advice to measure and benchmark effective copy
  • Guidance on creating and critiquing briefs
  • New chapters on how to weave copywriting skills into the wider industry
  • Storytelling and content marketing
  • The impact of evolving channels like mobile and social media

Practical, inspiring and extremely digestible, Persuasive Copywriting is the only vibrant, all-encompassing guide to copywriting that you need.

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Happen to Your Career: An Unconventional Approach to Career Change and Meaningful Work
Happen to Your Career: An Unconventional Approach to Career Change and Meaningful Work
by Scott Anthony Barlow

There’s only one thing standing in the way of your ideal career: You.

This book is for you if you want to do meaningful work that pays well. If you want to make a big career change without going back to school or taking a step down. If you’ve often wondered if there could be more out there for you. Spoiler alert: there is!

Career coach, podcast host, and CEO Scott Anthony Barlow shows you that it really is possible to find your way to a career that feeds you and fulfills you; one in which you get to use the talents, strengths and skills you already possess to get just as much back out of it as you put in.

Drawing from his years of studying Happy High Achievers—high performers who are fulfilled in their careers—Barlow delivers a series of real-life case studies and insights to help you join their ranks. You’ll learn how a lawyer who’d spent a decade trying to remove himself from law successfully transitioned to content strategy. How an engineer made a career change upwards instead of laterally while moving cities, jobs and industries. And many more.

Along the way, you’ll learn about the Four Major Milestones that all happy high achievers cross, and the Five Obstacles to Change that each needs to overcome. You’ll see that it is possible to have a career you’re enamored with—one that is good for you, your family, your bank account, and even your long-term health. And not only is this possible. It’s critical. Because the world of work is undergoing a transformation. And it’s led by people like you.

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