Plenty of people think they are experts on social media, but we all still have a lot to learn. Though the best way for a CMO to get better at social media is to use it more frequently to listen to customers and partners, sometimes reading a few good books on the topic can help one better master the subject. Here I review a few of my favorites, none of which loses steam after the first couple of chapters the way many business books do. In fact, these books are filled with plenty of great advice, examples of companies that have done well with using social media, and solid information that you can use to build your own social media marketing strategies.
>> Twitterville: How Businesses Can Thrive in the New Global Neighborhoods, by Shel Israel, 2009, Penguin Group ($24)
If you are still wondering what to do with Twitter, then start with Shel Israel's "Twitterville." While written two years ago (ancient in the Twitterverse, as it is called), it chronicles the early attempts by Comcast, Dell, and the arrest of James Buck in Egypt in April 2008 all to show you how far the social microblogging site has come. Israel writes well and his first book, "Naked Conversations," is somewhat of a go-to book in the field. In this book he shows how over the course of a single weekend a group of stay-at-home moms organized to protest Johnson & Johnson's Motrin commercials while the corporate PR folks stayed out of the picture. By Monday morning there were hundreds of text and video posts about the ads. As soon as J&J got involved and apologized, the crowds were mollified. But, still, the image of being insensitive is a black mark on J&J. Twitterville has lots more examples of both these early successes and failures.
Israel is hard at work on his next book, in which he will take additional interviews from early social media pioneers. He clearly is someone from whom we can all learn.
>> Histories of Social Media, by Jonathan Salem Baskin, 2010, SNCR.org Press ($23)
If you get a chance to see and hear Jonathan Baskin in person, then by all means do so: He is a wonderful speaker with some rather zany and creative ideas that will stimulate your thinking. His "Histories of Social Media"is a very unique effort: Where else can you find a book on social media that covers the French Revolution, the rules of dueling (bloggers), Elks and other fraternal organizations (the first Facebookers), Milton Berle's early TV variety shows (media sponsorship), and the early age of exploration? In each case, Baskin draws analogies with today's social media technologies, showing how they have engaged audiences, captured groups of like-minded individuals, and created opportunities for communication and conversation. Sadly, the book is not very well-written, but it is worth buying nonetheless to examine some of the many ideas Baskin puts forth. He asks more questions that he answers about how to best use social media in the modern context, but by bringing them up he makes you probe your own assumptions about the use of the technology and understand better the historical context.
>> Social Marketing to the Business Customer, by Paul Gillin and Eric Schwartzman, 2011, Wiley and Sons ($28)
After you have read the first two books, you are ready to move onto what Gillin and Schwartzman have done in their book. This is focused completely on marketing to business customers, and it is filled with tips, tools, tactics, and other very practical suggestions. It is a great complement to the first two books and gets down to brass tacks in each chapter. Want to understand how organic search plays into social media? Be able to track Twitter mentions of your company and products? Choose the right place to launch a new product? Understand the difference between Joomla and Wordpress for setting up your blog? Craft your company's social media corporate policy? Then this is the book for you.
