Social Media 101: Tactics and Tips to Develop Your Business Online [Kindle Edition]

Chris Brogan (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

100 ways to tap into social media for a more profitable business

In Social Media 101, social media expert and blogger Chris Brogan presents the best practices for growing the value of your social media and social networking marketing efforts. Brogan has spent two years researching what the best businesses are doing with social media and how they're doing it. Now, he presents his findings in a single, comprehensive business guide to social media.

You'll learn how to cultivate profitable online relationships, develop your brand, and drive meaningful business. Brogan shows you how to build an effective blog or website for your business, monitor your online reputation and what people are saying about your business online, and create new content to share with your customers.

• Presents specific strategies, tactics, and tips to improve your business through improved social media and online marketing
• Looks at social media and the wider online universe from a strictly business perspective

If you aren't using the Internet and social media to market your business and stay in touch with your customers, you're already falling behind. The Social Media 100 gives you 100 effective, proven strategies you need to succeed.

Five Things to Do at a Social Networking Meet-Up
Content from author Chris Brogan

Meet-ups (and, more recently, “tweetups,” which are meet-ups organized via Twitter) are the online manifestation of our social networking efforts. With Twitter and Upcoming.org and Facebook and all the other social networks, putting together a bunch of like-minded people is relatively simple. You find a venue that doesn’t mind a bunch of nerds, preferably with a place you can be loud (because social media types are often the loudest bunch in there, unless there’s a bachelorette party), and, hopefully, some delightful libations to ease social interaction. But what do you do there, once you’ve walked in and identified that you’re in the right place? Here’s a recipe.

Say Hi to Your Known Friends
Oftentimes, someone at the meet-up is known to you. Make sure you say hi to that person earlier in the night rather than later. I’m working on this one, because sometimes, I’ll be somewhere with friends and never get over to see them because time gets eaten up so fast. I’m going to make a point of saying hi to my longer-known friends first at meet-ups, so that they’ll feel acknowledged.

Find the New People
Look for folks who might be new to your local scene, or those you haven’t met before, and introduce yourself. My favorite opening line is to ask them what they normally do when they’re not hanging out with a bunch of Twitter geeks. If that doesn’t work, I like to ask people about their passions.

Don’t Crowd-Surf Too Much
There’s a tendency that’s easy to follow to just flit among the crowd. It’s not a wedding. You don’t have to hit every table. If you find something interesting, don’t be afraid to dive deep into the conversation for a bit. Get into some deeper waters with people, because otherwise, time will wash over you like a wave and you’ll be out without much to show for it.

If You Need to Do Business
Try to think of these meetups as a first date. Don’t put your tongue down our throats. In other words, if you’re there fishing for new business, play it cool and be part of the gang. Talk about what’s relevant, and don’t swerve instantly into your line of business and how you can help (sell) us. However, it’s okay to say that you’re hoping to build business relationships or the like. Just save the details for a follow-up conversation.

Talk About Something New
Whenever possible, bring along some really neat new idea to throw into the mix. Think of it as mental show-and-tell. Or, if you have a nifty new something to show people, do real-world show-and-tell. Bringing something new to the meetup will enrich everything. (Don’t force it into the conversation, but have something new in mind.)

Browse more social media tips from the author:

• 50 Blog Topics Marketers Could Write for Their Companies

• 50 Ways Marketers Can Use Social Media to Improve Their Marketing

Review

‘…interested in social media…and want to establish ways it might work for you this is a good place to start.' (Financial Advisor, March 2011).

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Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 520 KB
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (January 29, 2010)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
• Language: English
• ASIN: B00371V7JC
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Lending: Enabled
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #201,520 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

More About the Author

Chris Brogan speaks and consults with large Fortune 100 and 500 companies on the future of business communication such as the impact of social networks and mobile technology. He has worked with companies like Pepsico, GM, Microsoft, Citrix Online, Comcast, Molson, AMD, and many more. He is fortunate enough to keynote many events anually as a professional speaker, and creates custom presentations for each event.

Chris is President of Human Business Works, which provides tools and smarts for small businesses, including projects like The Owner's Mind, Kitchen Table Companies, and 501 Mission Place (for nonprofits).

Chris co-founded the PodCamp unconference series, with well over 100 events held all over the world by people interested in learning more about podcasting, blogging, and other media technologies.

Chris lives in northern Massachusetts and has a daughter and son that already threaten to eclipse his knowledge of technology and media making. He has recently begun practicing Shambhala Buddhism.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars More a blog than a book, April 24, 2010

By 

Robin (Bethesda, Moldova, Republic of) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Social Media 101: Tactics and Tips to Develop Your Business Online (Hardcover)

Will books be replaced by blogs? Social Media 101 is a blog in book form. While there's some good information here, the book lacks narrative, mixes cliches with some worthwhile tools and serves up a lot of scattered information.

The longer I read Social Media 101, the more I wondered if author Chris Brogan had read a book lately and realized that what works in an interactive medium looks like a mess on the printed page. Readers of blogs find their minds wandering after 800 words. Book readers expect more than a bunch of ideas that flashed through someone's head. Moreover book buyers expect a product that provides more value than something free. Much of Social Media 101 reads like a stream of conscious conversation. Brogan starts with "Above all else people," gives us a few cliches and then moves on to "People like to be engaged." As he skips from topic to topic the book gets worse. A chapter entitled Velocity, Flexibility, Economy includes a blurb on Google's smart phone, Flexibility, a blub on various applications and Economy, descriptions of things like Skype which reduce the costs of many jobs. The fact that the author, publishers and editors all okay'd this (probably because the topic "Social Media" is such a draw) is pretty sad.

I know that everyone is dying to find out more about social media and what they can do with it. Unfortunately what readers' need is a thoughtful, well organized tool that will help them put together a strategy. This book of tips won't cut it. The author never bit the bullet and took the time to write a real book from the notes in his blog.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars the best of your blog, February 19, 2010

By 

Fernando Colosimo (Buenos Aires, Argentina) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Social Media 101: Tactics and Tips to Develop Your Business Online (Hardcover)

I am a fan of chris brogan blog. He knows a lot about social media. I am a top producer in south america and I am begining to build my personal brand using social media. This book has the best articles of chris`s blog with a lot how to for people like me who want to introduce in the social media arena but it is a little desorganized and I would expect a little more than I read in his blog. Anyway i recomend it because it will become the first book to read for everybody who want to introduce in the social media

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Not a book, just a random grouping of thoughts, July 25, 2010

By 

Steve Walker - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Social Media 101: Tactics and Tips to Develop Your Business Online (Hardcover)

This book was more of a random and disorderly jumble of thoughts than a well structured, well thought out book. I agree with the previous reviewer that said that it is more of a blog than a book. If this were it's only flaw, though, I might have forgiven it. The real problem I had was that there was just too little information of value and there was far too much extraneous information that a reader had to slog through to find those few nuggets of value. For instance, do I really want this writer telling me how to run a meeting? No. I bought this book to get the writer's perspectives on social media. Unfortunately, I got far too little of that perspective and far too much of everything else. I would recommend you avoid this book.