Marketing must-reads: Christmas gift guide 2020

Looking for a present for a professional or fancy some career boosting reading yourself? Here are our festive favourites to supercharge your marketing skills for a successful 2021.

Confident Digital Content: How to Create & Manage Amazing Social Media & Web Content for a Futureproof Career

This updated second edition features advice on the latest trends, including fake news, the importance of stories and social listening analysis. Though trends, fads and hashtags change, the principles of great online content remain the same. Covering the essentials of online content, this book takes you through all things content marketing - from how to write effectively for online platforms, through to video, audio, graphic design and photography. Featuring inspiring case studies from individuals at companies including CNN International, Mumsnet, Bunster's Hot Sauce and HuffPost UK, this practical guide includes guidance on content marketing strategy, metrics and community management.

Humour, Seriously: Why Humour is a Superpower at Work and in Life

Humour is a superpower. If you're not using it, the joke's on you. When we're kids, we laugh all the time. The average four year-old laughs as many as 300 times a day, while the average forty year-old laughs 300 times every two and a half months! We grow up, start working and suddenly become "serious and important people", trading laughter for bottom lines, slide decks and mind-dumbing conference calls.

But the benefits of humour for our work and life are huge. Studies have shown that humour makes us appear more competent and confident, strengthens our relationships, unlocks creativity and boosts resilience during difficult times.

Here the authors are on a mission to help everyone discover the power of humour. This book will show you how to mine your life for material, explore the Four Deadly Humour Myths and help you figure out which style of humour you fall into - The Magnet, The Sweetheart, The Sniper or the Stand Up.

Understanding Digital Marketing: A Complete Guide to Engaging Customers and Implementing Successful Digital Campaigns

The world of digital media is constantly changing, as technologies continue to transform the way we interact and communicate on a global scale. This hot-off-the-press fully updated fifth edition provides a practical, no-nonsense guide to digital marketing, from strategy and digital transformation to best-practice basics and trends. Clear, informative and packed with case studies and examples, it gives an essential grounding in SEO, email marketing, social media, content marketing, voice-based marketing, influence marketing, data insights, privacy considerations and much more. Complete with first-hand account of what success in digital marketing looks like with new global case studies and expert views.

The Power to Change: How to Harness Change to Make it Work for You

How we work, the way we live, even how long we live are changing at such a breathtaking pace that only those who can embrace everything that's going on and reinvent themselves will survive and thrive.

Yet change - even good change - is tough. Most of us feel utterly powerless when confronted by it, but we're not. Learn to harness challenging situations and see the new opportunities with this book. It does more than simply enable you just to cope with change - it gives you the tools and approaches to embrace and celebrate change. It provides a genuinely unique approach to celebrating change that will resonate with you, no matter what sort of change you have to confront. The Power to Change will give you the permission to feel emotional and have doubts and fears about change. It provides a range of techniques to put change into perspective, and will allow you to embrace and prosper from the challenges it presents.

Excerpts from Experts: Marketing

And now, something a little bit different. Excerpts from Experts was published by Fortune Hill in August 2020 in the midst of the global coronavirus pandemic, to raise money for NHS Charities Together in the UK, with 100% of the profits on all books sold going to the charity. The book recognises not only the vital contribution that marketing delivers to businesses during times of flux, but captures the need to come together and share insights, advice and comradery during testing conditions. This book captures over 5,000 years of cumulative marketing expertise from leading spokespeople across the industry, distilled into 400 pages. It is a must-read for anyone looking to gain knowledge of what it means to be a modern marketer, all for a fantastic cause. 

Start shopping now and buy all of these titles at the CIM Bookshop (excludes Excerpts from Experts, which is only available through selected retailers).