Do you think this approach is more effective than “traditional” marketing methods?

Collegaue Ellen Gerstein, who had been managing the Dummies Man Facebook profile, was recently alerted that Dummies Man was banned from using the social networking site and all evidence of him had been purged.

Your account was disabled because you violated Facebook’s Terms of Use, to which you agreed when you first registered for an account on the site. Accounts can either be disabled for repeat offenses or for one, particularly egregious violation.

Facebook does not allow users to register with fake names, to impersonate any person or entity, or to falsely state or otherwise misrepresent themselves or their affiliations.

I think this is the beginning of a very intersting discussion. We didn’t impersonate anyone – we are Dummies Man, and he was only on Facebook as a goodwill ambassador for the brand. As Ellen says,

Over the months since, Dummies Man has been friending people, commenting on profiles and fan pages, and benignly exploring the site. It wasn’t a huge organized marketing campaign, more a way for us to dip a toe of the brand into the social networking waters.

Perhaps the profile could be considered as advertising a product, which may be the rub. I wonder if this precludes other well-known brand ambassadors from having identities on Facebook? I see that the Michelin Man has a page. I wonder if Disney approached Zuckerberg about a Mickey Mouse profile what the response would be.

What do you think? Should brands be allowed to have Facebook profiles?

Many technology publishers have adopted a series strategy, and every book in that series looks more or less the same.  For example in For Dummies Tech, you can pretty much assume every cover looks pretty much like the others – black and yellow.  The series look and feel is very much a part of the overall branding, which hopefully makes the books immediately recognizable to the consumer.   99% of our Wrox titles looks exactly like the others save the Author’s photos.

D’Arcy from Winnipeg  says if publishers were smart we would put tasty treats on the covers of our books.

However, if you look at the bestseller lists at Amazon.com you will see that most of the titles are not part of any series or brand. Today, 13 of Amazon.com Top 25 Computers and Internet titles are not books from any series.  These “one-off” titles have very distinct and unique covers.

What does this say about series publishing?  One might argue that readers buy books on their individual merit regardless of any series affiliation.  But does that mean a really great book – one that would be a bestseller if it were a “one-off” – gets unnoticed if it’s part of a series?  Does a bad experience with a series book turn readers off for good?

What say you?  What role does a book series have in your buying decision?

Photo credit: QuantanaRoo