Rohit Bhargava is one of my favorite bloggers for two reasons. 1. His blog, Influential Marketing, is useful. I have actually printed off several of his blog posts for clients. 2. While he is an A list blogger, and soon to be NY Times best seller, he is completely down to earth. We met at SXSW and talked shop. There are no pretensions there.

I am excited to read his new book, Personality Not Included. This interview is about his book and his social media expertise. Make sure you check out all the interviews, and if you like this one, I would appreciate your vote.

1. What industries typically have personalities that are easiest to market in social media?

I’m not sure that there are industries that stand out as having an easier time developing a personality. I did note while I was writing the book that I tended to find lots of examples from industries that have a very direct customer service function (ie – retail, travel, etc.) so one way to answer this could be that more customer facing companies have an easier time with this … however cable TV and airlines tend to be two of the worst industries so this classification doesn’t really work. Ok, final answer – I’m going with “it’s tough to relate ease of use in social media to industries” because it does vary. Sorry about the non-answer, I hate giving those.

2. 2. If the global business community adopted the practices you recommended in your book as gospel, what business behaviors would you like to see change?

I think the biggest change would be the removal of what I have called in the book the “employee silencing policy.” Keeping employees quiet as opposed to engaged in talking about a brand is a bad idea because it represents a great missed opportunity.

3. 3. Is personality a culturally specific thing—will these ideas work as well in Tokyo as they will in Detroit?

I think the way that it manifests itself will certainly be different from Detroit to Tokyo, but the idea of letting people in so they can connect with your brand is a very universal idea because it is based on the human principle of knowledge. The more we know, the more affinity we can potentially have with something. I see that as a very basic core concept that is global in scope.

4. 4. What book of literature has inspired you the most?

Good question. I used to be a big fan of Shakespeare because of the mastery of language you would find within. And one of my favourite author/playwrights is Steve Martin because of how he captures human dialogue. In terms of business books – I do admire Seth Godin and Guy Kawasaki for their writing styles and I think some of the most readable business books come from the word of mouth experts like Andy Sernovitz, Jackie Huba and Ben McConnell and Emanuel Rosen. And I’m a big fan of the large body of work from Al Ries and Laura Ries too.

5. 5. What aspect of this book has been the most challenging for you to concisely explain?

Why there are chickens on the cover! Just kidding, actually the book itself is heavily based on stories and the concepts are pretty straightforward so its not a complicated book. I realized early on, though, that the real trick with promoting this book is to get people to understand and believe that personality matters in their business. For that reason, my entire marketing campaign for the book has the tagline of personality matters. It is what I am calling the book blog which I will launch this week, and it’s also what I will likely talk about in many interviews. My thinking is, if you believe that personality matters for your business … my book is the first and only guide on how to do that. Hopefully it works!

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