The Social Media Marketing Book 87
brothke writes "The fact that President Barack Obama has over 7 million Facebook fans, and First Lady Michelle Obama over 650,000 fans, are confirmation that social media has come of age. That is a far cry from former President Bush's comment in 2006 that he used the Google. While it is relatively easy for the President to get millions of followers, the challenge for businesses of all sizes is how to use social media to get fans and followers, and use them to drive business." Read below for the rest of Ben's review.
Many spam messages recently have such enticing subjects as 'Make Money on Twitter' or 'Be a Facebook Money Machine'. While those are clearly scam emails, the truth is that social media is a tidal wave. The challenge for everyone, how to get in front of that wave.
| The Social Media Marketing Book | |
| author | Dan Zarrella |
| pages | 224 |
| publisher | O'Reilly Media |
| rating | 9/10 |
| reviewer | Ben Rothke |
| ISBN | 978-0596806606 |
| summary | Excellent introduction to social networks and the marketing opportunities on the social web |
At about half the size of a regular book at 224 pages, The Social Media Marketing Book is lean to begin with. Given that about half of its pages are screen prints, one would think that such a book is a sparse approach to the topic. But the book is indeed a highly-tactical guide of significant value to any individual or organization looking to get into social media.
Many are looking to get into social media for either themselves or their business, but are clueless on how to do that. For those, the book provides an easy to understand and implement guide to using the major social networks. This includes information on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn.
The book does a good job of showing the difference between different social media sites, such as pure networking (LinkedIn, Facebook), media sharing (YouTube, Flickr), blogs, microblogging, and bookmarking (Reddit, Delicious, Digg) and more.
While others would take three times the books length to make their point, Dan Zarrella is able to do that succinctly and to the point. His real-world experience in the social web is evident throughout the book. It is clear the author is one who is enmeshed in the topic in which he is writing. A lot of books show the promise of what social networks can do, but do not show how to get it done; this book does and shows what it can, and can't do.
The book(TM)s organization places an emphasis on practical use and readability. For the social media newbie, the first two chapters provide a superb synopsis of the history, protocols, and content strategies around social media. The introduction to social media provides the reader with an overview of the use, history, definition, and description of the various types of social media. Each chapter is full of actionable items that the reader can put to immediate use. The book is zero theory and complete actionability around social media.
Zarrella has also done significant research on what makes for a successful social media presence. In chapter 3 on Twitter and microblogging, he writes of the importance of an effective Twitter bio. In the chapter, he also looks at the relationship the content of a user's bio has on the number of followers a user has. He also writes about the relationship between follower number and gender and family roles. For those looking to make the most of Twitter, his paper The Science of ReTweets is a great resource.
Another benefit of The Science of ReTweets and this book is that Zarrella has not a single high-level suggestion that is impossible to put into practice. All of his advice is based on solutions that work. Zarrella's analytical marketing approach is based on science, statistics, experimentation and real data. Quite a novel concept in the world of marketing.
Throughout the book, there is good advice and it tells you what works and does not work. The book is easy to read and it makes significant use of screenshots, which are meant to give the reader a specific visual explanation of the steps they need to take.
In the section on Facebook, Zarrella makes an observation that is crucial to ones success for a business use of Facebook. He notes that for businesses, the best social media marketing is always going to be done by your fans, not by you. He notes that nearly every company engaged in social media marketing should have a Facebook page, as it can often serve as a central place for the integration of others parts of a campaign.
In chapter 8, on the topic of forums, he reiterates the importance of fans, writing that a business should not underestimate the power of networks of niche forums to drive impressive numbers of visitors to your site. Once again, the best promotion comes not from the business, but from its fans.
One of the mistakes far too many companies have made, and which the book strongly advises against, is the use of forum marketing services. These organizations promise a lot but rarely deliver results. They use myriad bogus accounts to create a false buzz on behalf of the business they are trying to promote. Such an approach only serves to wreck the reputation of the business due to the zero value they post from bogus accounts.
While getting into the social web is important, chapter 10 is the books most important chapter, on the topic of strategy, tactics and practice. A mistake many make is in thinking a social web presence alone is enough, which is far from the truth. The chapter details all of the intricacies of strategy, tactics and practice to make it work. The chapter notes that strategy and tactics are inseparable, and that any successful social network presence will require both.
In an interview, Zarrella observed that the biggest challenge in social media is learning how to incorporate social media into their daily work and life. With Twitter for instance, there are many good marketers who don't Tweet that much, or do for a little while and then stop. It's a marathon, not a sprint and the savvy businesses are going to have the best results when they can learn to integrate social media with what they are already doing.
Overall, The Social Media Marketing Book is an extremely valuable resource on understanding and applying social media for both the individuals, and business. The book is a great introduction that can help you to get started. Once done, you can move onto the next level. Hopefully, Zarrella is working on that book now.
Ben Rothke is the author of Computer Security: 20 Things Every Employee Should Know .
You can purchase The Social Media Marketing Book from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Why Barrack made social marketing come of age. (Score:4, Interesting)
How does the number of fans Barack Obama has confirm that social media has come of age?
It has become politically important enough for Barry Obama to have a Facebook page, and market that page to get 7 million fans. The fact that it caused an adjustment to a business process of politics, means it has penetrated society enough to take it seriously from a budgeting perspective. To start with that, the authors would have you buy their book.
A ton of new books like this (Score:3, Interesting)
When did /. become linkedin (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously, I joined Linkedin for the whole of 5 minutes before seeing it was nothing but "use social media to enhance your business" spam...
Re:Why Barrack made social marketing come of age. (Score:5, Interesting)
I may be overreacting just a little bit on this, but:
Is it really the responsibility of the President to be reacting to social media site fans for the decision making process? I mean, the President has a very defined and strict role to carry out and execute the laws placed by us upon our government. (Executive branch...) This means making sure Congress doesn't pass a law granting them uncontrolled power over everything as well as making sure Government is doing what it should. The President's not tasked with creating policy and running the country like a king. The President has a very small, but important role and somehow over the years the Presidential seat has become more of a "strong mayor" position. The grab for power/influence is frightening, to say the least.
Giving the President a direct link to the social media is probably the worst thing we could be doing. Social media can change it's mind two or three times a day based on what news channels report upon and it quite literally has no bearing on running the country. It's sole purpose is catering to the loudest squeak and getting re-elected so you can continue to entrench your role as the "leader" of the free world. The President is NOT a leader. It's a position of self control, not a position for expansion of control.
Re:When did /. become linkedin (Score:5, Interesting)
7 years ago, when I joined it, it wasn't.
sconeu's law of social media:
Whatever it is, it will devolve into "enhance your business" spam
Re:Is /. considered social media? (Score:3, Interesting)
I think that social media would be considered media where the object is to express social conventions. Slashdot exists to discuss technical news items, and while social aspects can sometimes arise, that is not the focus.