1. What Would Google Do?
By Jeff Jarvis

This is one of the most fascinating books regarding new media marketing and using the web as advertising tool. The concept of "customers as your new ad agency" is very powerful and has serious implications into patient testimonials and how medical practices decide to present this information. In this "conversation age" people do what others think and this book makes this clear via discussions on blogs and social media. The additional concept of free is a business model is quite intriguing although the applicability of this concepts seems to have less impact than how to utilize happy patients. This is a must read for medical professional hoping to gain insight into the new media mindset.

2. Twitterville
By Shel Israel

Twitterville tells a great story about how people use twitter. I really liked the SXSW discussions and the discussions on how Dell Computer used twitter and blogging to deal with their customer service issues. The beginning of the book does a nice job of providing a company background to how this technology came to fruition. Obviously many medical practices still have not figured out how to integrate Twitter into a social media strategy but this book may provide some out of the box thinking to get started. Other stories include Zappos.com which a great example well done customer service.

3. Blue Ocean Strategy
by W.Chan Kim & Renee Mauborgne

This books takes a deep look into creating blue ocean marketplaces (uncontested market space) VS. red ocean marketplaces (commodity driven and competitive markets). What I liked the best about this book is how they discuss creating a road map to developing uncontested marketplaces by not focusing on competition, but instead using creating outside the box thinking. There are some great reviews of Cirque du Soleil and Curves of what they did to achieve blue ocean marketplaces.

4. The Purple Cow
By Seth Godin

You might be familiar with Seth Godin from his famous youtube video called "sliced bread". The purple cow is a great book for understanding how to stand out in a crowd and how to make a website have qualities that are different from competition. This book is inspirational for thinking about making your company or medical practice remarkable.

From the book:
"Remarkable marketing is the art of building things worth noticing right into your product or service. Not slapping on marketing as a last-minute add-on, but understanding that if your offering itself isn't remarkable, it's invisible."

5. Viral Loop
by Adam L. Penenberg

This book is excellent at explaining viral marketing. Breaking things down to the basic concepts of the original Tupperware company was absolutely amazing and helpful. This book explains the rocket-ship growth of social media like Facebook and Twitter and how their rapid growth is viral in nature. Many people who are seeking to try and understand viral marketing would enjoy this book.

Quote: "The trick is they created something people really want, so much so that their customers happily spread their product for them through their own social network of friends, family, colleagues, and peers."

6. Emotional Intelligence 2.0
By Travis Bradberry & Jean Greaves

This book has applicability to the business development and customer service side of the MIMS conference. When learning about emotional intelligence it becomes easy to see your own character flaws so that you can make improvements. The lessons of quality listening are once again reinforced for developing a better emotional intelligence.