Product Description
The Ultimate Guide To Social Media Marketing
The Social Media Bible will show you how to build or transform your business into a social media—enabled enterprise where customers, employees, and prospects connect, collaborate, and champion your products, your services, and your way of doing business.
Using the systematic approach presented in this comprehensive guide, you’ll learn how to:
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Increase your company and brand value by engaging people in new forms of communication, collaboration, education, and entertainment
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Determine which social media tactics you should be using with your customers and employees
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Evaluate and categorize the tools and applications that constitute the rapidly evolving social media ecosystem
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Make social media tools like Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter, blogging, podcasting, and hundreds of others a part of your business strategy
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Do a social media analysis inside your company to improve internal operations and outside your company to create and monetize relationships with customers and prospects
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Implement social media micro- and macrostrategies to give your business the competitive edge it needs to survive and thrive
Virtually every business can use social media to increase sales and profits, and The Social Media Bible will show you how. Part One introduces you to social media, and gives you a helpful framework, and presents practical and tactical tips for using some of these tools. Part Two introduces you to over 100 social media tools and applications in fifteen different categories, giving you a quick rundown of the features and functions of the tools that should become part of your social media strategy. Part Three offers mini exercises and assessments to help you conduct a social media audit of your company, your competition, and your customers, so you can craft the perfect strategy for your business.
If you want to grow your business, you have to stay connected to your stakeholders- whether you’re a big corporation, a small business, or even a nonprofit. The Social Media Bible will show you how to harness the collective wisdom and viral value of your stakeholders and stay ahead of your competition.
www.TheSocialMediaBible.com
The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools, and Strategies for Business Success
Now, don’t take this personally–all you marketeers out there. But to preface this humble review, I’m reminded of a remark a friend made who never finished college, started out as a salesclerk, became VP of one of the biggest retail companies in the U.S., and retired at 40. She once said to me, “There are no geniuses in retail.” OK. I’m just the messenger. Don’t get mad. But given that statement, this book makes entire sense. Just how ‘good’ could a book be about how to position, promote, and ‘brand’ yourself using social media? It’s really common sense, isn’t it? I’m sure any ‘consumer’ could provide a ten-point ‘to do’ or ‘what not to do’ list in maintaining ‘relationships’ with current, past, or perspective customers. For example, if you’re a tech support person, don’t sigh and act like the person calling is an idiot; don’t say your name is Todd or Jennifer (when you have an obvious Indian/Pakastani accent in your English; if you’re using social media to announce a new product, event, suggestion, free offer, discount, etc., don’t sound overly enthusiastic–people nowadays won’t buy it. Sound HONEST and SINCERE via social media even if you’re not. Consider the brilliant words of George Burns, who stated, “Acting is all about truth, and if you can fake that, you have it made.”
Each chapter of this tome is devoted to a particular ‘genre’ of social media, i.e., e-mail, twitter, blogging, etc., OR a ‘platform’ within a particular genre, i.e., sections are devoted to LinkedIn, Facebook, LiveJournal, MySpace: all the usual suspects (including a few not so usual ones). Just a couple of problems here. First, do we really need extensive info about e-mail at this point as a form of ‘keeping in touch’ let alone a definition of e-mail?? I don’t think so. Then regarding the structure of this ‘bible.’ After each chapter, there is sort of summary in the guise of “commandments”: thou shall do this; thou shall not do this, etc. Now, come on guys. We know you don’t mean this stuff is ‘religious’ or ‘spiritual’ in the traditional sense, but unfortunately, our society is getting closer and closer to day when marketing WILL BE a religion, at which point we are all in deep S–T. Why encourage it? OK, then as for the ‘commandments.’
They really isn’t much more than common sense. Ever get a job and have to sit through a corporate video/dvd of the company’s policies? You sit in an antiseptic room, and after five minutes start staring at the scratch on the door and wonder how it got there because the presentation is so mind-numbing? Now for the good part. Well, if you’re scrolling around a social media site, trying to locate the help link and are ready to go ballistic with your monitor, at least this book does give you a basic summary of the features of the most popular social media formats, and basics in how to navigate them, so perhaps it will cut down on those WTF!@! moments. But other than that, there’s not much else to commend this book. It doesn’t provide the ‘meat’ of marketing, i.e., how to use marketing analysis, psychographics, experiments, etc., which, if you consider marketing to be a form of applied psychology or sociology, are essential to your success. But hats off to the authors for coming up with a bible/commandment structure. That will help sell the book.
Rating: 3 / 5
Want to develop a social networking strategy but need the tools to accomplish the job? Sure you have a Facebook page and maybe even a Twitter handle, but where do you go from there? Well Lon Safko and David Brake (with the help of numerous, well known and not so well known social media players) have devised an `everything you need to know about social media in a box’ book.
Unlike a lot of the new social media books out there, the SM Bible is the best completist’s volume that not only explains contemporary social media strategies, but also covers a lot of ground as to the nature and origins of various social media platforms thus giving the reader more of an in-depth slant as to which methods are best for what purposes.
The authors divide their book into a number of main categories including the usual areas of blogging, wikis, SEO, SEM, RSS, Livecasting, etc. What makes their book a useful reference is two-fold; a) they feature interviews with true experts in the field who actually know how to utilize the specific tool and best practices around said tools, and b) they have a checklist of each product as to how to determine if this is the most useful to achieving your goals based on your type of business, the type of interaction required, etc. Experts from everything from Twitter founder Biz Stone to Mashable’s Pete Cashmore to a whole host of other social web influencers are featured in each appropriate chapter.
If you are looking to expand your social media presence, the Social Media Bible is a fair and even handed and comprehensive look at the platforms and tools currently deployed in the market in service of the online social need. Like many books on this ever-changing topic, the authors provide an up-to-date website for staying abreast of the changes and additions to the basics described in this book. At 818 pages, this `bible’ is a fairly essential reference guide for nearly any meaningful pursuit of the social media agenda. A recommended reference for the modern age.
Rating: 5 / 5
Reviewer: Social Media Marketing Student_Harvard Extension School
Description: This is a practical book and is well referenced with additional readings and resources for the user to explore. The book is arranged into three parts, from the basics and tactics through to the strategy. A chapter each on Social Media SWOT Analysis and Your Implementation Plan are appropriately included.
Purpose: To be a comprehensive guide on the tactics, tools, and applications that make up the world of social media. The book is designed to guide the reader on the history and present use of various social media marketing tools to increase brand value and engage an audience with new forms of communication, collaboration, education and entertainment. Additionally, it takes it a step further and shows how to incorporate social media into one’s overall business strategy to improve internal operations and monetize relationships with customers and prospects.
Audience: This book is written for the student, business owner, marketer or Internet user simply interested in what social media is and how it can be exploited to increase company and brand value. For the savvy social media user or consultant- it could be a reference tool to have on hand to give your teams a place to start and lead them to the right places online to do the real learning.
Features: The book covers all of the current significant areas on the topic of social media or Web 2.0. It features real and relative examples that help the user relate the to the Social Media phenomenon enabled by modern technology.
It also includes Expert Insights, which is a conversation provided by a renowned expert in a particular field of social media marketing.
Assessment: This is good book for the beginner in social media. After reading the book I realized that it’s not really a “how to” book or a “hands on” guide, but rather a collection of thoughtful interviews and history by the founders on some of the tools that everyone is using today. But no matter how comprehensive, the adage remains true, you can’t learn social media through a book.
Rating: 4 / 5
The Social Media Bible provides everything you need to know about Social Media. I’m using the chapters at the back to set our organizational strategy for online presence and Social Media at the moment. One of the best SM books I’ve seen.
Rating: 5 / 5
Are you terrified of Social Media? I am. There are so many social media sites, so many confusing terms, and so much incredible over the top hype. Do you Twitter? Do you Facebook? What’s all this about FlickR? You can go on and on and on and on about Social Media. (I do Youtube at [..].
This book bills itself as the Bible. I suppose that means it’s comprehensive, which it is. It has every social media imaginable in it. The “thou shalt” this and that is a little weird. It has that for each social media.
What’s great about the book is the lists upon lists of social media websites. The interviews with leaders are very superficial and self-congratulatory, but that is the bane of social media these days. It’s hot, and it’s hyped. I am a dot.com survivor, and I have seen all this before. We live in the days of social media hype – so don’t shoot this book, it’s just the messenger of all the hypesters out there telling you you MUST do this or that.
What it lacks is a real strategy or outline. The best, most thoughtful part of the book is Part III / strategy wherein the authors finally get around to helping you think through your strategy. Believe me, you can’t do it all. You can’t Twitter, Blog, Facebook, FlickR, Yelp, Google Buzz, Justin.Tv., Youtube, etc. You will drive yourself insane, and you will go bankrupt. What you need to do is figure out which social media fits your goals and do that, and then do not feel guilty for ignoring the others!
Part III / strategy touches on this, but I wish it were more detailed.
But if you are looking for a good comprehensive overview to all the social media, this is a good start. I enjoyed it, but like the Bible I don’t believe every word of the book just as I don’t believe every word in the Bible. But thematically, spiritually, it’s a great guide and it has every “character” as it were in the social media universe. So, like the Bible, it’s a bit disorganized and a bit over-the-top in its enthusiasm, but like the Bible it has earned a spot in my reference library.
Enjoy!
Rating: 4 / 5