Confessions of a Media Manipulator

Trust me; you haven’t read a book like this one before. However, Tim Ferriss disagrees with me.  “Holiday is part Machiavelli, part Ogilvy, and all results…this whiz kid is the secret weapon you’ve never heard of.”
–Tim Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Workweek

Spoken like a salesperson with a touch of conscience, Ryan Holiday unravels the internet marketing game he played. You won’t be able to put down his book, Trust Me, I’m Lying. It’s more than a great title.

Bloggers Are Powerful

When blogging started, bloggers did not know the power they wielded. Even Holiday didn’t realize the powerful game he played. He certainly did not know it would backfire on him. In twenty-four fast-paced chapters, Ryan weaves the argument that down home, backyard bloggers exert a powerful influence on the world.

Average bloggers and blog readers do not investigate deeply. They tend to believe what they read even if writers exaggerate. And writers do. Sometimes they lie.

Tryst Ryan. He knows. He did it. He lied to start a controversy. The contention led to high traffic and more clicks. Additional clicks resulted in more sales.

Be Careful What You Read and Blog

Trust Me, I’m Lying is a cautionary book. Ryan writes from an insider’s viewpoint.

Bloggers, desparate for traffic, comb the internet for delicious local news tidbits. When they find a good story, polish it, and publish it. Then, they credit you, Ms. Hobby Blogger as their trusted source. You published it. Obviously, you are honest and checked all your facts. If you did not, it does not matter. It will be old news soon enough.

Their mantra is to post often to keep their blog traffic soaring high. No time to investigate. No time to waste on the truth! Right?

You are happy, someone noticed you. They are happy because they got their job done.

But  Wait, There Is More.

The next level of news reporters, see the story, trust that bigger, high traffic blogger, repackage the story again, and off it goes to the online warehouse of news stories. at Huffington Post or some other big name online news source.

Then someone reports a mistake. Oops! Someone’s life or business got smeared or ruined. Sorry! By this time, the old news lies buried in a graveyard under a pile of multiple blogs. Most people don’t go back to read the original, corrected story.

Trust Me; This Book Makes an Impression

I can’t tell a joke because I can’t remember the punchline for two seconds, but I will remember this book and the stories inside for years.

If you blog, you need to read it. You won’t necessarily like everything you read.

Other Readers Opinions

One reader called his stories chilling. Another thought they were merely “compelling.” I wonder what the exposed marketing strategies compelled the reader to do. Kirkus Reviews wrote that Holiday’s book was disturbing and “more than a dyspeptic diatribe.” My vocabulary increased more from reading the reviews than from reading the book. I don’t think I could have waded through 270 pages of dyspeptic diatribe. Do you?

Tucker Max profited from Holiday’s marketing techniques. “The strategies Ryan created to exploit blogs drove sales of millions of my books and made me an internationally known name.” And we bloggers had a part of that game, according to both Max and Holiday.

Don Rakeshaw stated Holiday’s thesis as “modern blogo-journalism is hopelessly broken.” Meet another new term to me, “blogo-journalism.” Like President Trump, both Holiday and Rakeshaw had words to say about “fake news.” “The stories on sweatshop blogs cannot help but be fake news.” So if you run a sweatshop blog, you just made the news. OK, that was fake. 🙂

My Recommendation

Ryan Holiday does not need my endorsement, for his book, but maybe you do. I would not have known about it without Jon Morrow. You got the word from me unless you’re taking Jon Morrow’s course, too. Tell me if you buy this book because I recommended it – because I found every chilling detail of the blogo-journalism story compelling.

About the Author

“Ryan Holiday is a media strategist for notorious clients such as Tucker Max and Dov Charney. After dropping out of college at nineteen to apprentice under Robert Greene, author of The 48 Laws of Power, he went on to advise many bestselling authors and multiplatinum musicians. He is currently the director of marketing at American Apparel, where his work is internationally known. His campaigns have been used as case studies by Twitter, YouTube, and Google and written about in AdAge, the New York Times, Gawker, and Fast Company. Holiday has written four previous books, most recently The Obstacle Is the Way, which has been translated into seventeen languages and has a cult following among NFL coaches, world-class athletes, TV personalities, political leaders, and others around the world. He lives on a small ranch outside Austin, Texas,” or maybe in New Orleans. (from the Amazon biography)

Additional Books by Ryan Holiday

Related Posts

• How to Make Ideas Stick – Review Made to Stick
• Are You Still Looking for the Influencers?