Customer Reviews

Engage!: The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate, and Measure Success in the New Web

5 star:		(33)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

The book clearly explains that we're in the process of a paradigm shift here regarding marketing/PR and the like. So props for that. I guess I was looking for more of a manual of "how-to's" in the social media realm. There was some good stuff in here. But as a small business owner I found myself skipping over a fair amount of the pages that were discussing how different departments should respond and what their goals should be. I would say pick this book up if you're part of a big organization trying to better understand "social media" and you want to find a place for it in your mid to large size company.

"Perhaps the biggest mistakes committed by businesses, personalities, and brands in social media occur when people jump into social networks blindly without establishing guidelines, a plan of action, a sense of what people are seeking and how and why they communicated, an understanding of where people are congregating, a definition of what they represent and how they will personify the brand online, and the goals, objectives, and metrics associated with participation." Albeit fairly late in the book, this sentence sums up the purpose of Brian Solis in Engage! One more book about Social Media, sure; but this one is one of the best written. It's almost reassuring to read sentences that exceed 140 characters (or twenty words), and, while you can find all the trendy buzzwords and expressions on virtually every page, the author authentically tries to assist social media managers as they transition from the broadcasting age to the intricacies of a new form of netcasting architecture where both users and corporations exchange "social objects." How well or efficiently can they do so? This book provides social media managers with the background knowledge and practical notions that they can leverage to design a consistent strategy.

The first half of the book surveys the world of social media in general, describing all the aspects of social interactions and their impact on corporate marketing and communication, as well as customer service departments. Traditional marketing schemas have irreversibly imploded under the pressure of a crowd represented in a "conversation prism" that factors in behavioral guidelines implicitly or explicitly set by the multiple socialization channels. So marketers must listen. What can they do with so much information? "Instead of inhibiting the pace and breadth of information flow, we must channel relevant details and data," a task that does not only require "attention" (nice reference to Linda Stone's Continuous Partial Attention), but also some understanding of applied social sciences or researchers' and analysts' categorizations (such as Charlene Li's and Jeremiah Owyang's Socialgraphics). Achieving a state of the art "unmarketing" to use a time-stamped word by Scott Stratten - i.e. rebuilding a marketing strategy from the bottom up - entails, for many companies, a serious reassessment of some entrenched marketing habits. Hence the resolutely didactic approach of the two parts of the book: "The New Reality of Marketing and Creating Customer Service" and "Forever Students of New Media."

The second half of the book comprises four parts that detail the new responsibilities that come up with the potential of social media, and focuses more specifically on what a "new marketing" approach may look like. One of the most remarkable sections is related to "defining the rules of engagement." It unambiguously shows to the skeptics that the social media revolution is not a passing phenomenon spurred on or controlled by influencers, but the reality of today's computing, one of the incarnations of the social Web, and that it is set to transform every single company from the inside. The examples of IBM's and Intel's guide-lines (and its digital IQ Program) do not only demonstrate the forward-thinking intelligence of people like Bryan Rhoads or Ken Kaplan, but also the proactive approach of highly regarded companies as they define new roles and responsibilities to adapt to a new world. Digital intelligence is not simply the prerogative of a handful of gurus appointed to task forces or advisory boards, it will also be part of the job description of most employees in the close future if they want to be up to par with educated customers. The scope of the book stops here, but it's clear that the social media revolution will lead to the reassessment of corporate cultures, employee empowerment methodologies, and linguistic and artistic skills. "Unmarketing" just like any vibrant "marketing" starts from within. Corporate stonewalling doesn't have too much future.

End result: a serious book that gathers the Zeitgeist (and will bring many people up to speed with trends and idioms). Somewhat voluble, yet kindly extroverted and definitely useful if you want to create a social media plan.

Much like the de rigueur necessity of having a website a decade ago, it has become increasingly apparent that any company looking to establish a direct connection with their consumers now needs to have a social marketing strategy as well. Yet, with a daily growing array of platforms and tools now available to accomplish such goals, the choices and strategies needed to achieve such relationships can often seem overwhelming at best.

With a surfeit of so-called social marketing `experts' now in the marketplace, how can a brand be sure they are getting the best advice and a full understanding of the expanding number of options available to accomplish this mission? Enter Brian Solis. In recent years, Solis has emerged as one of the foremost experts on social marketing. His new book, `Engage! The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate and Measure Success in the New Web,' offers a truly comprehensive guide to managing a company's online brand awareness and customer interaction that is second to none.

Solis opens the kimono on everything from establishing a company's initial messaging goals and approach to a deep dig into the tools and platforms currently available to facilitate and evaluate the success of an effective social media campaign. While admitting various brands have different needs, Solis lays out his program like a college curriculum offering fourteen chapters that create the rubric for `The New Media University: 101 to MBA.'

`Engage' reveals the best practices for establishing brand identity, reputation, rules of engagement and feedback, both through carefully planned corporate planning as well as through the use of tools ranging from social networks, widgets, feeds and more designed to facilitate the best messaging systems, listening devices and conversational workflows. Solis provides access to a broad array of resources, some so new that they aren't actually even in full operation yet when we tested their websites!

At the end of the day, Solis appears to cover every single aspect of social marketing and while the book eventually gets into some very heady stuff regarding feedback metrics, charting and tracking programs, it is clear that this book goes further than any volume we have yet to see on this subject. Whether most companies can keep up with the extensive options Solis presents has yet to be seen. Of course, this new medium is far from a static state and therefore there are clearly more platforms and tools just around the corner (Gowalla, anyone?) For that Solis offers a website to carry on from here. Well done!

First things first, Bryan Solis is extremely knowledgeable, passionate and plugged into the Social Media space. This book, his blog, his professional experience, they all prove that beyond a reasonable doubt.

He is no social media pretender or self proclaimed Social Media Guru, he is the real deal and I highly value his insight.

That said, I really did not enjoy reading this book. Sure, there is some valuable information in there, but it's buried in a sea of overwritten prose, that flat out sucks the fun out of Social Media. Words like "elucidate" "facilitate" "social architecture" and "threshold" dominate, making my eyes heavy and my interest wane. I wish Solis would have put away his thesaurus and just told it like it is.

Social media really isn't that complicated, so why make it so?

After finishing university, I promised myself, I would never again read a piece of over stuffed academic writing again. Sadly, I just did. Sorry self, I'll try not to break our promise again. Or as Solis would say, "I will strive to follow a course of action, that will ensure in the utmost that I will not again breach a condition set verbally, or otherwise in regards to my personal conduct, henceforth.

Content = 4*
Readability = 1*
Overall = 2*

I recently switched positions within my company to a position that required me to make recommendations to clients about how best to engage their audiences in webcasting and virtual events in a variety of industries. While I'd been in the virtual event industry for over six years, I felt that I needed to be more versed in social media engagement and marketing. I came across "Engage" at the store and thought it would be just what I needed to gain a deeper understanding of social media.

Less than 10 pages into the book, I knew that I had found something more than a primer on social media; I had found a text book that was to be studied and given the utmost attention. I found myself highlighting passages, taking notes and re-reading whole chapters to make sure I fully grasped the concepts being put forth. By the end of the book, I had a firm handle on social media marketing, to say the least. I also had a notebook full of websites and services to review, ideas of how to incorporate the techniques into my professional work as well as my volunteer efforts and a true move forward plan.

"Engage" serves as the foundation for anyone looking to launch their own social media marketing campaigns. It has all the tools a person would need to understand, evaluate, plan and execute a successful campaign. More than that it has methods for evaluating the campaigns to know what is successful, what is working for competitors and how to constantly grow.

"Engage" is critical for all marketing professionals to read. I, also, highly recommend this to any business professional who wants to understand their business, competitors and marketplace better.

As communication channels evolve at what seems like lightening speed, the art of communication and marketing involve a life long commitment to learning. To even begin to keep up with the various angles, tools, and nuances, engaging in a community to share in the learning journey is key.

Brian Solis has written a book that is informative, practical, and filled with tools and illustrations, to help you provide value through today's communication channels. His "rules of engagement" alone make the book well worth the read. But don't stop there. Engage is a great tool to spark dialogue with your team to strategically position your organization.

Brian Solis saw the future of social media before most of us. With "Engage" he takes us inside the evolutionary technology that changed how we communicate and interact in life and business.

In Engage, Brian pulls together incredible amounts of information that he breaks down as a way of clarifying social media in its multiple, interconnected layers and moving parts. Then he shows us how social media should intersect with businesses and suggests ways businesses can transform and maximize these new opportunities.

If it all sounds complex and overwhelming, that's because it is. If you're in the business of marketing or promoting anything, this is a book you want in your toolbox. Read "Engage" and you've significantly improved your chances of winning.

-S Neil Vineberg
Vineberg Communications

This book is an invaluable resource to read and refer too (as well as loan to staff). But if reading this book is all you do, then you missed getting "engaged". There are tons of web links and internet driven resources in this book. Recently Brian did three webinars with []. Again these are full of ideas, things to try and strategies that are good to have in your tool kit. I have had many take aways. One was SEO to SMO. Another is a SMO dashboard. I would like a little more information on where (source) of SMO data comes from, however the link the author provides is great. I like his truth-telling style. He is direct and honest. All of this takes time to learn, research your industry and to not have a one size fits all approach but rather to have a wide variety of options to draw from. Right now it is my most popular loaned book on my bookshelf. Having exposure to such a wide variety of thinking and solutions is really refreshing. I enjoy the truthful more tactical approach. Very refreshing.

The promise of this book is terrific -- learn how to engage your online audience effectively -- plus it was published recently enough that I might trust most of the insights to be fairly up to date. Unfortunately, "Engage!" is a poorly written, poorly structured mess with very few if any groundbreaking insights. The book is far too long for how little information it actually contains, and to access that limited information is a slog, to be generous. For a book titled "Engage!" the author has a very difficult time engaging his reader. Beyond just not being able to write well, he seems unjustifiably impressed by his own buzzword coinages ("statusphere," "egosystem") and that he's advised Ashton Kutcher in this arena. Finally -- and I don't fault the author for this -- the book is designed poorly as well: extremely bad typographic choices paired with a total lack of, yes, engaging layout. One should be able to open a book like this to almost any page and glean something useful -- impossible here.

After trudging through 2/3rds of this book I finally gave up. Filled with a mixture of too much inane detail of little use and out of date references (usocial.com as one example) I found the book to be of no value to our social media efforts whatsoever.

If you are completely new to the internet, have a tremendous amount of patience and time, maybe this will interest you. For a practical guide to developing and integrating social media as a brand component, I cannot recommend this book.