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The Social Media Marketing Book
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
How does the number of fans Barack Obama has confirm that social media has come of age?
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
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.
This is my sig.
By the time the books start coming out about $_technology, said technology has already jumped the shark.
Sent from your iPad.
...social media means nothing.
Social media is nothing more than the commoditization of attention. It has done for attention very much what China has done for physical products; made them plentiful, cheap, and extremely shitty.
Okay, so Obama has millions of Facebook follows. But he has such a small slice of their attention that it's virtually irrelevant. If he sends out a message that's transmitted to those millions of users, it will still be nothing but a sentence or two within their Facebook message list. They'll glance over it, and soon forget about it.
It's much the same for Twitter. The messages are so short and plentiful that they have virtually no value, and thus only grab a very, very small portion of the reader's attention.
While the Web was one great for having all sorts of in-depth articles about a huge range of topics, the whole Web 2.0 and social media movements have been about getting rid of the quality and value, and replacing it with meaningless quantity.
A book called Socialnomics had some impressive marketing last summer. I wonder how it compares to the book above.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
If so I might have some great stock tips to sell 'ya. Than again I have been here long enough to know /. is closer to anti-social media.
One of the heavy hitters that drove the implementation of the net made the comment that social networks and commercial Internet activity made possible the use of the net by researchers and academics at next to little cost. Web 2 and social networking drove me off the net for over three years. It also motivated me to unplug myself from commercial TV. I've never been to Facebook and have only dropped in on Youtube once or twice, but by way of my mp3 player and smart phone backed up by my netbook I've lecture series on every, IMHO, worthwhile discipline given by world leaders in their field. I can drop in and update almost any topic. So although social networking now owns the Internet and I still abhor web 2 and it's hell spawn, I'd like to say "thanks for all the fish".
ideopath @ play
Oh yeah I love
CHAPTER #3 HOW-TO protect your unconstitutional pay pal account
is what it should be called.
Please, please do.
I was at Barnes & Nobles yesterday, and I noticed there was a whole shelf of books like this. There was even one book about Viral Marketing placed prominently in the middle of the store. This has just happened in the last few months, I'm not sure what happened to cause this blossoming. To be honest, I wouldn't have guessed that 'marketing executive' would be more than a niche audience, not something worthy of so many books. I can't imagine that with everyone trying to do viral marketing, it will be such a useful technique. More like one more advertising medium no one will trust.
Qxe4
Outside Craig's list and maybe few others, they are all crooked scams.
Seriously, I joined Linkedin for the whole of 5 minutes before seeing it was nothing but "use social media to enhance your business" spam...
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
i'm just another fucking slashfag.
hail linus!
I might be in the minority here, but who actually uses facebook to take a look at someones business? definately not me.
I mean my 90 year old Grandma has a facebook account to keep in touch with the family and I'm sure to also build up her Mafia Wars account, but seriously, every time someone sends me a "Hey, join this group or support this company" invitation through there, I just ignore it.
In all honestly, I would love to figure out how to make money by putting a game up there for people to play, but that has nothing to do with actually promoting a company like your local plumber or some big box store.
Indeed... Even Sarah Palin — a private citizen, with one book to her name (and a lousy one at that, according to the enlightened people) — has 224,248 Facebook fans at the time of this writing.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
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.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
WALLACE: You said earlier there are some things [George W. Bush] could fairly be criticized for. Are you willing to tell me any of those?
G.H.W. BUSH: No, I don't need to go into that. You can go back to your -- what do you call it? -- your Google and you figure out all that.
(From here)
it's not like facebook has just given the presidency or the executive some sort of massive increase in power
the presidency has always wielded a certain amount of populist appeal, and it has always been tweaked by presidents since the dawn of this country
social media does not change this game, nor adjust any sort of power dynamics in washington dc
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The Presidency has evolved significantly from the days of the Constitutional Convention, and has been doing so pretty much continuously since Washington. What you're describing is a very outdated view of the Presidency, and does not reflect at all what people expect out of the President these days. People expect the President to guide policymaking (not make policy, but guide the Congress as to what they should be focusing on), as well as act in a leadership role in any number of different areas. Like it or not, people expect the President to be a leader.
That being said, the expansion of the powers and responsibilities of the executive has been going on since the beginning, and whether or not the President is on Facebook has little to no impact on that. Social networking will not appreciably affect the power of the Presidency, as the President already has the power to command the nation's attention whenever he feels like it. Therefore, he already is, by default, the "loudest squeak" if he chooses to be so.
Please don't taint this site with marketing articles. This is news for nerds I thought?
Wait... the President should be walled off from the public, safe within his bubble of Washington advisors... and if too many of the unwashed masses make contact with him, he will gain dictatorial powers??
I get that you're trying to say that the public should not be able to micro-manage it's government. Totally understandable.
But given the abuse of the fillibuster in Congress, it takes a disaster (natural or man-made) to get the Government to do anything.
Also, remember, the LAST President could not even USE a computer never mind social media, and "the Decider" did have and use dictatorial powers to strip other Americans of their Constitutional rights, without trial. I wouldn't so quickly connect the two things.
Goes to show that the art of monetizing digital information still has a way to go. Would you pay $13.59 to access a web site with the same info? $5.00 even?
*Nope, not available on Kindle either.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
That because anyone can be in marketing. Seriously. It is, by far, the easiest discipline in business school. Because of that, anyone and everyone can join the marketing program and get a degree. You see, if you join finance, management info systems, logistics, or some other "hard" business discipline, then you actually have to work and learn something. Marketing, by nature, is a "softer" discipline and therefore, caters to a lower common denominator.
Why do you think there are so many goddamn marketing graduates?
Never underestimate the path of least resistance.
Theres also 7 million pieces of bacteria on a piece of dog poop. hmm coincedence? I wonder.
"Computers are a lot like Air Conditioners" "They both work great until you start opening Windows"
It has become politically important enough for Barry Obama to have a Facebook page, and market that page to get 7 million fans
Good to learn that President Obama is actually white and not black Muslim. That's really politically important. Thanks for telling us.
It's not about dictating power. If you read it as that, you read too much. All I'm saying is that we are placing the President in a position to absorb all the good and bad of an administration when we should really be focusing our efforts on the Congress and keeping information flowing from there. It's almost as if we want the President to be CEO of the US... for only 4-8 years. We know how that'll work out.
I think people look to the wrong person for answers. They should be contacting their District Representative to get things done, not the President. We should be in better contact with the ones we vote in. Most people don't even remember their name or vote. The government was designed to be a slow and lumbering beast. Putting the President in a position to change the course of this country every 4 years (or 8 years if he keeps a lot of fans on Facebook) is asking to be totally confused and ignorant about what is law this year and who is to blame.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
It may be old, but it's not outdated. There's a reason that centralized "power" is corrupted.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
I thought it was Sarah Palin who was governing 140 characters at a time.
Obama's seven million fans are most likely people who would not normally vote. So if he reaches out to them in the 2012 election, if even 20% of them make the effort to cast a vote then it could make the difference.
Thus, every other presidential candidate will have to do the same, just to even the playing field. It won't be enough to be a serious person with serious ideas, a candidate must be able to appeal to the American Idol audience as well as the usual voter blocs.
But given the abuse of the fillibuster in Congress, it takes a disaster (natural or man-made) to get the Government to do anything.
Oh come. It's only an abuse of the filibuster process when your political party is the one in power. When the Dems were in the minority, they totally abused the filibuster process to block everything they could, and Republican noises about getting rid of the filibuster were met with hails of protest.
Also, remember, the LAST President could not even USE a computer never mind social media, and "the Decider"
All I have to say is, if the "Decider" were a Democrat and President right now, you'd have single payer national health care. "The Decider" got the congress to pretty much him give him what he wanted, because he knew how to hold the keys of his own party and actually, despite his misgivings, could always rally his base.
Obama can't do any of that, and his first year in office has been a total failure. SO far, regardless of whether you like his policies or not, George W Bush JR was a way more -effective- president than Obama is.
I mean, come on, the Democrats lose a single Senate race to what conservatives will ultimately label a RINO, and they fold up the tent on their whole agenda. For f--- sake, grow some balls. Bush lost the whole congress in the biggest disaster in Republican history, on the issue of a war, and what did he do? He put in 20,000 MORE troops!
That's some balls of steel. By contrast, Democrats are pussies.
This is my sig.
Fortunately too, both Mr. and Mrs. Obama regard each of their respective fans as a close personal friend, and actually take the time to craft considered individual replies to any message or query, even helping with their homework on occasion.
nope, this book is soo different.
read it, u will see.
Why is it that every comment for this review talks not to the review or the book? Has anyone read the book? Do they differ with the reviewer? Has anyone gone to Zarrella’s web site? All the banter is about extraneous topics. Focus people, focus!