Customer Reviews

The Social Media Marketing Book

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I have been moving around social media for some time, though I am by no means a pro, either in marketing or Internet tech.

I appreciate this will be useful for anyone who has not even come into contact with social media networks, but anyone who has dabbled even slightly will find this *extremely* basic. I just cannot understand how anyone can even suggest it might be useful for a pro, never mind recommend it! If you are seriously looking to develop a social media strategy, it means you have a basic appreciation of what it's about, and that's how far this book goes, no further. In any case, don't do serious social media strategy based simply on the know-how in this book!

I just finished reading Dan Zarrella's book and I am very impressed. If you are new to the world of social media or wondering how to make it fit your marketing strategy, this book is a perfect starting point. Dan lays out all the dimensions of social media in an easy-to-understand way, outlining the do's and don't's for each of them. It doesn't pretend to be a Bible of the topic: for in-depth tactics for each leg of your social media marketing strategy, you will need to pick up other titles. But it gives you a very complete feel for what lies ahead, should you want to market your brand through social media, something that you will soon realize not to be an option but a must.

In the increasingly complex world of social media, how do you begin to successfully engage in social media marketing for your business? Dan Zarrella has responded to that question with "The Social Media Marketing Book." It's a quick read. But the small book is packed with useful information for those itching to jump into the social media marketing fray.

The book's organization is quite user-friendly and begins with a brief introduction to social media. The bulk of the book then focuses on presenting a concise history, definition, and description of the various types of social media: blogging, Twitter/microblogging, social networking, media sharing, social news and bookmarking, ratings and reviews, forums, and virtual worlds. I found each section both helpful and interesting, especially appreciating the author's conciseness.

The final two chapters--one on strategy, another on measurement--are some of the most important. As I went through the strategy chapter, I was highlighting different bits of advice and enjoyed his discussion of "call to action" (CTA) in which you, the marketer, try to engage visitors on your website. The measurement chapter stresses the importance of goals and describes several tools you can use to measure return on investment and engagement as a result of your social media marketing efforts.

Overall, I found Zarrella's guide a helpful resource on understanding and applying social media for business. Note that the book is an introductory guide, so don't expect to find profound social media strategies if you're already an experienced social media marketer. Nevertheless, I appreciated the nuggets of wisdom throughout this survey of social media marketing.

If you just got out of jail and don't even know what web 2.0 is, this book might be helpful. The first nine of eleven chapters are a general overview of the various social media sites and how they are used. The 225-page book measures about 7 in wide by 5 in tall and every even-numbered page is a graphic leaving the small 112 odd-numbered pages for text in rather large font. I lost track of how many times the author mentioned the company he works for and how they do this and they do that. This is something that should be offered on the author's employer's website as a free white paper download in exchange for providing your email address. Better yet, this could be boiled-down to a 20 page Powerpoint slideshow posted to SlideShare. Not worth the time to read.

Original review written by Sebastiano Cobianco, JUG Lugano, www.juglugano.ch

If you think marketing is an unproven practice to lure prospects, then web marketing is all that in a new domain - the internet - where many marketing professionals still are unfamiliar with. And social marketing poses these challenges at scale!
Therefore, marketing pros willing to achieve results on the web must dominate the field, or face overwhelming failure. Imagine someone's misstep in marketing to Facebook users...firefighters may not be enough :)
The book by Dan Zarrella is an introduction to the various type of tools available to marketing pros promoting their products on the web, how to measure campaign results. It very much addresses the need of those not very familiar with the most common sites and communities.
The book is introductory, so experienced and long-time twitterers or facebookers will not do much with this book. Otherwise, the book will bring you up to speed with the buzz around social networking and related marketing approaches.

"Your customers and your competition are already involved in social media. Why aren't you?" ~ pg. 8

If you are interested in Blogs (WordPress), Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr, Digg, Yelp and Second Life (a virtual world) then this book may appeal to you. The book doesn't focus on marketing but rather introduces these sites and gets you up to date on the terminology of the Web. I thought there was some useful advice about interacting at forums. I also liked what Dan Zarella had to say about blogs: "content trumps comments." He also mentions that a blog will be more effective if it sticks to a single topic.

"When responding to a review, keep a cool head. If a poster gets you upset, don't respond right away; step away from the computer for a while to calm down." ~ pg. 137

Throughout the book there are interesting facts like a short history of Twitter. There is also a short section on how to get "retweets" that might be helpful to anyone using Twitter. What I liked about this book was that on almost every left-hand page there is a screen shot so you can instantly see what Dan is talking about. No need to go online while you are reading! I thought that was very helpful since I was new to most of the sites discussed.

What I think you will enjoy is that the author introduces you to many sites you may want to start using to spread the message about your product or service. He does however advise that you avoid hard selling techniques. There is a brief chapter on "Strategy, Tactics, and Practice." This chapter helps you figure out who is talking about you online. This is especially useful if you run a business.

If you are new to social media then this book will be helpful. If you are looking for specific information on the sites listed above then I'd recommend you buy some of the Dummies books for each site. They have great books for Twitter, Facebook and WordPress to mention a few. Those are the sites I'm currently interested in and will be reviewing those books soon.

~The Rebecca Review

Zarrella has written a tour guide for those who know little about social media. The book is short-bound (sideways) to provide proportional screen shots of the services and web sites he talks about; screen shots on the even pages, text (content?) on the odd pages. I can easily imagine a 20 minute presentation covering most of the "takeaway tips" in this book. The actual content might equal 80 pages of text. Still, I can't discount the few real ideas in the book. I guess [...] an idea isn't really a bad deal.
What does make me nervous is that the author will catch this review using one or more of the tools mentioned in his book. So to make sure: Dan, Dan Zarrella, Hubspot, [...], author self promotion, employer pleasing, employee promotion, clueless manager gift, and web celebrity endorsement. Oh, and don't forget "technorati."
Search "Dan Derrick" here on Amazon.

I have enjoyed the writing of Dan Zarrella for some time online, so I was pleased to see he put together a book (and I was offered to review it). His insight and commentary are always clean and to the point for any level of person in social media to learn from.

I was surprised to see the compact look and feel of the social media marketing book when it arrived. It was also outside the normal form from O'Reilly books normal look and feel. It was longer and wider than the usual arrival. Strangely, it was fitting for Dan. At a mere 225 pages of actual content, you would guess that there would not be enough tips and tricks that you could learn from. A huge mistake. Each of the 11 chapters runs through the same format as much as possible:

Introduction
History
Takeaway Tips

The rest of the sections depend on the topic itself for that chapter. He walks through each major area of social networking, from blogging, media, microblogging, bookmarking, news and more. Each one was in such a readable format I actually spent an evening devouring the entire book. Screenshots of sites and examples are laid out appropriately for each major section.

ROI and metrics are the Holy Grail of what social media experts try to sell you. Dan leaves this towards the end and hits you over the head with it. Are you converting visitors? Are you tracking what catches their eye when following links or visiting? How do you read all of these metric sites? He ends the section with goal setting and software to choose from.

While nothing in the book itself was profound, it was a refresher for the seasoned veteran and a nugget finder for the entry to mid-level person.

It's really amazing how much good information is packed inside this little book! It gives the reader an excellent overview of the big picture of social media marketing, and while it clearly wasn't intended to be an exhaustive "how-to" guide on implementing all of the social media marketing approaches it describes, I'm sure that anyone (even an experience social media marketer) could learn something that he didn't know before reading this book. If you're new to social media marketing, this is a "must read." If you have some experience with the topic, you should read to make sure you're not missing anything.

This book is written so that a novice can easily understand the concept of social marketing.