This week is a little different than normal because, even though it’s guest post week, I don’t actually have a guest post for you. Instead, I have a review of The Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing and Digital PR from Charlie Marchant, Luke Nicholson, and Tim Cameron-Kitchen over at Exposure Ninja.

Before I get into the review itself, I want to make sure everything is transparent:

• Am I being paid for this review? No
• Is the link to purchase the book on Amazon an affiliate link (meaning I will make money if you buy)? Yes
• Did I get my copy of the book for free? Yes
• Do I honestly recommend the book? Yes

Just so you know, people give me free review copies of books often enough and I usually end up not actually posting the review because I don’t have anything nice to say. This book was the exception.

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If I’m honest, when I started reading this book I was sort of dreading it because I had agreed to read it but was expecting it to be like most of the other review books I receive and be a waste of my time. I was almost immediately intrigued – and thought I might actually like this thing – though, when the book began by explaining the importance of identifying and understanding your ideal customer so that you’re not wasting valuable time and energy on marketing that won’t land with your target group and highlighted the importance of measuring the return on investment of your marketing activities. Amen to that! Anyone who does marketing for a living and goes out of their way to tell potential customers that they should actually track ROI and make sure they’re not just wasting money has me listening because I know they’re honest and not just in it to make a quick buck.

I also liked the structure of the book: in each section they started out explaining why a given tactic was important and for whom it would work and then went into the how of actually implementing that strategy, complete with lists of tools, examples, and step-by-step guides. This structure is perfect for someone without much background in the area because it allows them to get a good picture of both strategy and tactics as it comes to implementing some of the marketing methods covered in the book. It’s accessible to beginners but not so dumbed down as to be useless.

The examples provided – both good and bad – are also an excellent addition so that readers can see what a given tactic would actually look like in practice. I can vouch for the accurateness of the examples given in the section related to blogger outreach. I was actually chuckling to myself as I was reading because I have received countless emails that almost exactly match the examples given in the book, including the ones that seem too terrible to be real, and either deleted the email immediately, grumbled but responded, or was actually excited to work with someone and get something live based on whether or not they followed the guidelines in this book. I actually have a blog post coming up that will highlight this issue but these guys beat me to it.

If you’re interested in learning more about how you can promote your business online, this is a great, quick read. It covers everything from goal setting to blogging to giveaways to social media and is full of enough value that you don’t even mind at all that they’re using this book to help sell their services. In fact, it makes you appreciate the advice more because you’re literally experiencing them succeed at content marketing while they teach you about content marketing, so you feel confident that they probably know what they’re doing. Plus, they offer a money-back guarantee so, if you hate the book, just return it. I doubt you will.