There are dozens, if not hundreds, of social media books out there. So how is a many-hat-wearing business owner supposed to know which ones to read? Here is a list of the 10 social media books that small business owners can read to get the most bang for their social media investment of time and money.
About the List
Putting together this list was challenging because there are so many wonderful books to choose from. Ultimately it came down to creating a mix of books that was targeted to small business owners and that will help us build our brands and grow our businesses. These books run the gamut from those that strive to give you an overview and strategic context for the social media trend — to more detailed how-to books that will help you apply social media in your everyday marketing tactics.
Overall, the intention of this list is to provide a spectrum of information that will leave you feeling better, smarter and faster when it comes to social media.
Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff
Whenever a CEO or small business owner comes to me and says “I’m not sure I understand the business value of social media,” I tell them to read this book first. Groundswell is written by a team of researchers from Forrester Research. These people have done more research on social media for this book (and continue to empirically study social media and document it) than you or I will do in a lifetime.
Because this book was written in 2008 when social media was still “new” to even the professionals, it explains social media in a way that all of us can understand and relate to. Groundswell will give you a framework and a context within which to place new learning. It is well written, easy to read and full of research data that you can trust.
The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World by David Kirkpatrick
If you’re a business history buff who enjoyed the “Pirates of Silicon Valley” movie about Steve Jobs and Bill Gates – then you will also enjoy The Facebook Effect. It was written by a journalist who has interwoven his interviews with Mark Zuckerberg and the key players who turned a school hobby/project into the realization of Zuckerberg’s vision to change the world by connecting people.
This isn’t necessarily a book about how to use social media, but it will take you behind the scenes of several social networking sites and how they succeeded and failed. It’s great business reading in general.
The Digital Handshake: Seven Proven Strategies to Grow Your Business Using Social Media by Paul Chaney
If you’re fed up because the time and money you’ve already invested in traditional marketing like advertising or direct mail isn’t paying off, or you’re frustrated because you see the world of marketing changing and you’re not sure how to maximize the technology for business objectives, then this book is for you.
While it won’t show you detailed nuts and bolts of how to start a blog or how to use Twitter, it will help you to start plotting your next move.
The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools, and Strategies for Business Success by Lon Safko and David K. Brake
When a book has the word “Bible” attached to the subject and in the title, you automatically assume that it has everything you’ll need to get through life as it concerns that topic. And that’s exactly what you’ll find here.
This book covers some history and background, as well as tools and strategies that you can use to grow your business with social media.
The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web by Tamar Weinberg
Let’s say you are now “sold” on the idea that using social media as part of your marketing strategy is probably a good thing. Yet, despite all the books out there, you’re still not sure exactly what to do or where to do it or how to do it – beyond establishing a basic profile or a presence.
The New Community Rules is your next step. This book will give you the specifics you’re looking for. It covers a number of niche social sites you may not be as familiar with, and includes short success case studies.
Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Social Media, But Were Afraid to Ask… by Hilary JM Topper MPA
There is something very appealing about a short, pocket-sized book with the title “Everything you ever wanted to know.” This book gives you short, succinct descriptions and tips on many of the most useful social media applications.
Newbies will love its short, easy-to-grasp style; intermediates will find applications they may not have thought of using before; and advanced users will find a few gems and recommend it to their friends who are just starting out.
Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith
By now you’ve noticed that the social media revolution requires a new and different way of thinking. This makes Trust Agents the perfect book to read next. It’s written by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith and endorsed by Seth Godin — all trusted marketing minds whose work has stood the test of time.
This is an easy read and will get you squarely in the social media mind-set. One warning: You may not agree with what you read. You may not like it. But understand this: It’s how the technology is impacting people and small business. Embrace it.
Viral Loop: From Facebook to Twitter, How Today’s Smartest Businesses Grow Themselves by Adam L. Penenberg
You’re almost a pro now (after reading the 7 books above)!
Have you ever wondered what it is about some concepts, ideas or applications that makes them go viral? Viral Loop has the answer.
This is another business history book that proves that viral marketing has been with us for ages and not just since the advent of the “Forward” button on our e-mail.
Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion by Gary Vaynerchuk
The key to really making a social media strategy work is passion and authenticity. If you’re wondering how you can harness your passion for your business to hit the big time using social media, “Crush it!” will be a fun read for you.
This book will help you understand that in order to be successful, you have to look at everything in your business as potential content. It’s a case study of a traditional wine business and its transformation into a modern, social media marketing driven enterprise whose CEO used his passion for unpretentious-ness as an asset.
Wild West 2.0: How to Protect and Restore Your Reputation on the Untamed Social Frontier by Michael Fertik and David Thompson
Perhaps the best reason (and one not often talked about) to get your business actively using social media is reputation management. The question every small business owner needs to ask him- or herself is, “Do I want to manage my online reputation or do I want to leave it to chance?”
This book will show you how reputations are created, controlled and managed.
* * * * *
So there you have it — a mix of social media books that every small business owner should have on the shelf. If you’re wondering what social media strategies and tactics you should put in your marketing plan this year, you’re guaranteed to find them here.
From Small Business Trends
10 Social Media Books Every Small Business Owner Should Read
Whenever I speak about social media, the biggest question I get is “How much time do you spend on it?” My response? Not as much as you’d think. I use a number of time management tools to help me streamline my activity. The 5 with the greatest impact are outlined here:
1. Hootsuite or Social Oomph
The beauty of Hootsuite and Social Oomph is that they let you manage all of your Twitter activity and relationships in one place. You can post-date tweets for another time. You can monitor direct messages and mentions as well as your Twitter stream. You can decide which posts will go to which social media platforms.
2. RSS Feeds and Subscriptions
These allow you to pull information to you. When you want to know about items of interest to you or your following, or find fuel for articles and blog posts, it’s easier to have the information come to your e-mail or dashboard than to go out searching for it. Whenever you find a blog, podcast or newsletter that you’d like to continue to read, subscribe via RSS feed or subscription box. Then the information will come into your e-mail box.
Another way to use RSS feeds is to pull your social media platforms to a dashboard like iGoogle or Netvibes. Like to answer questions on LinkedIn but don’t want to go there every day to find them? Great! Use RSS feeds to have the questions show up on your dashboard and make it easier to participate online. In the same vein, you can see all of your social media platforms so you can update your statuses in one place – saving you the time of going to each site individually.
3. iGoogle or Netvibes
These dashboards make it easy to monitor your social media platforms in one place. You can also send your blog there. If you make the dashboard your home page, it will come up every time you log on. I use both and keep them open while I’m working. That way I can take a look a couple of times throughout the day and see what’s going on. I can update my statuses easily as well. I have a couple of LinkedIn Question categories that I like to keep an eye on, so I’ve got them on my iGoogle page. They automatically update so I know I am seeing the most current questions.
I have my Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and blog links attached to my Netvibes page. I’ve also added some other blogs that I’d like to follow there. Both websites are very easy to set up and manage. And, once set up, they handle themselves. Imagine the time savings of not having to go to each website to update your status!
4. Google Alerts
Want to know what’s going on in your industry? Looking for interesting articles to tweet or use to write articles or blog posts? Using Google alerts is a great way to have that information come to you. You can put any words into an alert and choose how often you’d like to receive an e-mail with whatever Google found with those words. You can then go to the webpage and read the item for yourself.
This reduces the time it takes to participate online. Instead of having to search the Internet every day, you’ll have the information you need coming to you. The more you can pull information to you, the less time you’ll have to spend accomplishing your online goals.
5. Linking
So you have all of these great Internet profiles. However, having to post to each of them could take over your life. Solution? Link them. Let’s start with Twitter. You can link your Twitter account to your LinkedIn and Facebook accounts. Now when you tweet the post will go to Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. One post, three sites.
Next is your blog. You can link your blog to your Twitter profile by using Twitterfeed.com. When you post to your blog, the post will go to your Twitter profile and then to your LinkedIn and Facebook accounts. One blog post, four sites.
If you write articles and submit them to online article submission sites, you can link those accounts to your profiles as well. When you post an article, the news that you’ve posted will show up on your LinkedIn and Facebook profiles.
As a small business owner, you need to have and maintain an online presence. More than that, you should be building your brand online. The challenge is to do this without spending all of your time on it. Using these tips can help you streamline your activity so you have time to be active online and in your business.
From Small Business Trends
It’s About Time: 5 Tools to Streamline Your Social Media
You know how I often recommend not putting all your eggs into one social media basket? Well, funny thing, because an interesting real-life example just presented itself–and it probably affects you and your business.
Last week Google announced that it had updated the Google Maps review policy. This update did many things, but the most the drastic thing achieved by the new Google Places content policy was that it removed Yelp reviews from all Google Place pages. Yup, all of them. Gone. Google announced that Yelp review content had been “reclassified” and will no longer reside as review snippets.
A Google spokesperson explained to TechCrunch:
Regarding the presentation of Yelp review snippets, neither of us was happy with the data as it appeared, so we reclassified results from Yelp while we reviewed our options. This means that, for the time being, Yelp pages may not appear as review snippets in Place page results, though relevant results from Yelp will continue to appear in the “more about this place” section, which shows pages about a given location. We are working with Yelp to more intelligently crawl and present results from their site.
The removal of Yelp reviews from Google Places is a notable change and comes as both parties were becoming increasingly frustrated with how content was being handled. But that’s for them to figure out. You want to know how Yelp and Google chasing each other around the playground affects you and your small business. And the answer to that depends – were you a small business owner who sought out reviews from a variety of different sources, or did you make Yelp your steady, assuming they’d always be there? If you did the latter, you have some make-up work to do.
Regardless, here are some tips for small business owners looking to manage reviews in a Yelp vs. Google world.
Direct reviewers to your Google Place Page: While Google and Yelp may have taken issue with how reviews were being aggregated, most small business owners did not. It meant that they only had to direct customers to Yelp to populate both sites with reviews. However, now you have to specifically encourage customers to leave reviews on your Google Place Page, and it’s important that you do so. Your Google Place Page is often the first point of contact a user has with your brand given how much weight Google Place Pages have in the SERPs and within Google Maps. That means you want to populate this page with lots of positive reviews and information about your business to build trust with users. Google recently opened up the option to let business owners respond to reviews left on Google Place Pages. You want to make sure you’re taking advantage of that and showing your best face to visitors.
Identify Google-friendly review sites: Google has stopped aggregating reviews from Yelp, but they are collecting reviews from other sources. It’s your job to find out where. Take a place at several Place pages for your city + industry and note where Google is pulling reviews from. Which appear to be their favorite sites? Once you know, are you well represented there? If not, you may want to work these sites into your review efforts so that you’ll be replacing the reviews that you lost from Yelp. Just because Google and Yelp are taking a relationship break doesn’t mean you want to take a break from your customers.
Ask customers to repost reviews: When you’re soliciting online reviews, don’t be shy about directing users to certain sites or asking them to repost reviews on sites that are important to you (and tell them which ones those are!). If a customer left you a glowing review on Yelp, it may be worth an e-mail asking if they’d mind reposting on Google Places. If they were so happy with their experience that they’re leaving one review, it’s likely they wouldn’t mind reposting it somewhere else, as well. Educate them on your preferred review process.
Don’t forget about Yelp: Just because Yelp reviews will no longer appear in Google Place Page listing doesn’t mean you should ignore the site. Yelp remains important to your business because it’s still important to your customers. Your customers don’t care that Google and Yelp are in a tiff. They use Yelp to leave reviews, get information about your business, and to discover other places they may be interested in. Ignoring Yelp and new features like Yelp Deals is essentially cutting off one arm of your marketing efforts. Don’t buy into the knee-jerk reaction to ignore Yelp altogether.
You tell me: How are you dealing with Yelp reviews being removed from your Google Place Page? Are you angry about it? Relieved?
From Small Business Trends
Yelp Reviews Out of Google Places. What Else Ya Got?
When any new technology gets rolled out — whether it’s e-mail, text messaging or social media — it takes some time for best practices and effective strategies to cement themselves. And while many businesses (of all sizes) are still looking for ways to leverage social media, some techniques have already proven fruitful and can help your business expand its reach.
The key to turning your business into a social media marketing success is focusing on the fundamentals that already make your business great, and enabling your customers to spread the word about your exceptional products or services.
Here is a 5-step plan for linking your customers’ experience to the power of their endorsement, which will, in turn, bring more customers to your business:
1. Start with exceptional service.
Though providing your customers with positive, memorable experiences may seem an obvious suggestion, the importance of this first step cannot be understated. Whatever inspired you to first open your doors (or whichever services set you apart from your competition today) is what you need to focus on in every customer interaction you have.
When you’re firing on all cylinders and giving your patrons a top-notch experience, you’re turning casual customers into passionate ones. For better or for worse, these are the types of people who are most likely to spread the word about your business to their friends and colleagues. And for any social media marketing campaign to take off, you need to have all-out fans willing to evangelize your brand and the great experiences they’ve had with it.
2. Engage your customers with interesting content.
Great service is a first step in building a passionate fan base, but the next step involves extending the experience outside your four walls. E-mail marketing helps you reach your passionate customers when they are not in your store by sharing news, tips and other information through periodic communications.
The benefits of e-mail marketing go beyond simply keeping your customers informed. The basic act of asking for an e-mail address strengthens the bond between your business and your customers because they are entrusting you with a piece of their personal information. And while an e-mail address may seem like a tiny detail, when someone gives it to a business, that proves the business is a trusted contact that the person would like to engage with on a deeper level. In addition, e-mail newsletters are easily (and often) forwarded to and shared with friends, so this a simple first step towards leveraging your customers’ contacts, if they choose to forward along your messages.
3. Help your passionate customers spread the word.
Forwarding an e-mail newsletter is still a great way for your customers to spread the word about your company, but social media marketing provides a lot of other ways, too. For example, archive your e-mail newsletter content online. This will allow you to post the newsletter as links on various social networking sites around the Web.
Andrea Herran of Point Barrington, Illinois-based Focus HR Consulting does a great job of leveraging her e-mail content to drive her social media marketing efforts. Every month, she sends out a short e-mail newsletter that features an article about management, and includes links to her recent blog posts and other resources that might interest her subscribers. Before she sends out the newsletter, Herran runs a teaser post on Twitter that often prompts more people to sign up. And after the newsletter is sent, she engages with subscribers about it on Facebook, talking about ideas she shared and learning more from her customers.
4. Turn casual acquaintances into passionate customers.
Sharing information with friends is the very nature of social media marketing, so using this channel to engage your most passionate customers will quickly increase awareness in your business among their contacts. This is why providing content to your most passionate customers is so important: Give them something worthwhile to talk about, and they will gladly share it with their friends. Some examples of items your business could post include:
- Details on new products, or changes to existing offerings
- Specials, deals, discounts and coupons
- News on upcoming events
- Information about community functions your business may be participating in
- Offers, prizes, rewards and contests
As the word spreads about your news, more customers will connect with your business via social media. In fact, customers are more likely to connect via social media than they are through e-mail marketing — but don’t let that discourage you. E-mail subscribers are more engaged because they interact through their inbox, which means they’ll be alerted when your message arrives, while social media contacts get distracted more easily. Social media is very popular right now, but remember that its users tend to be more like casual acquaintances in comparison to the passionate customers that e-mail marketing provides.
5. Keep the “virtuous circle” going.
If the ultimate goal is to convert as many people into passionate customers as possible, then it all comes back to providing a great customer experience. Use social media marketing to lure customers into your business, where you can wow them with the kind of exceptional service they heard about from their contacts. And if these new customers heard about your business via social media, try to get them to sign up for your e-mail newsletter while they’re there. When they do, you’ll know you’ve found another passionate customer, and your efforts will spin onward to their friends.
This creates a virtuous circle that will continue to build buzz and generate followers for your business with every new newsletter and great customer experience you produce.
From Small Business Trends
5 Steps to Building Your Social Media Marketing Plan
If the name KnowEm sounds familiar it’s because we’ve written about the service before. We first introduced KnowEm as a a cool startup to watch and then kept you up-to-date when we got our first glimpse of KnowEm 2.0. You may simply also recognize KnowEm as one of the biggest social media darlings to rise over the past year. Either way, KnowEm is back with even more goodness to share as they unleash the Enterprise version out of beta. And as a small business owner, you’re going to want to pay attention.
If you’re not yet familiar with KnowEm, you should really take a look at what they have to offer because I’d argue it’s one of the most useful social media services around. KnowEm has established itself as the leader in online brand protection and offers brand services at price points affordable to both small business owners and major corporations like Continental Airlines (a KnowEm client). Through KnowEm, small business owners can check the availability of their name or brand name on more than 400 different social networks for free, as well as check domain availability. And because you never know which site will become the next Twitter, you can also have KnowEm go out and secure your brand for you on any number of those networks. In an age where you are your handle, it’s a service any small business can benefit from.
But none of that is what’s new.
This week KnowEm co-founders Barry Wise and Michael Streko opened up the Enterprise version of KnowEm to the public. I had the chance to speak to Barry and he cautioned that small business owners not let the “enterprise” name scare them away. There’s a lot here that SMB owners can benefit from.
Wise added:
Any small business which wants to promote a few brands, products or marks will find our enterprise dashboard useful because we provide one central dashboard to create, review, and track all their different usernames in social media. When you create an order for a new username, our staff go about not only creating accounts on all the popular social networks, but also identifying those networks where the name has already been squatted on or taken. This is the same as our consumer service, except they are included on one dashboard.
Through the Enterprise version of KnowEm, small business owners can track not only their business name, but the names of their employees as well. And they can do it all from one centralized dashboard. SMBs can also take advantage of KnowEm’s social media monitoring and alert feature to help you watch hundreds of social networks and blogs for any mention of your brand, mark or trademarked terms. KnowEm presents this information in real-time and provides a number of ways to break it down, by trend, by author, by source and by geolocation (where available). They’re also in the process of rolling out sentiment analysis for their alert system, providing customers with another way to search and segment the data.
Basically, it’s everything you need to track about your business on the social Web thrown into one dashboard for easy monitoring. There goes your excuse for not being able to track your brand mentions and conversations.
I’ve been a fan of KnowEm since its initial release and it’s nice to see them making such great strides that benefit not only large clients, but small business owners as well. I know that many SMBs are intimidated by social media simply because it seems like there’s so much out there to track and watch. Well, KnowEm helps to take some of the load off so that you can track the conversations and mentions around your brand just like the big boys do. Through KnowEm you’ll also have access to their network research, will can help you identify which social sites are gaining popularity and which are dropping off. This may help you make decisions about where you should be investing the bulk of your time.
What about you? Are you currently using KnowEm?
From Small Business Trends
Checking in With KnowEm.com
