Seems like there are a lot of great folks writing social media books right now. Last week I learned that Amber Naslund and Jay Baer are writing a book aimed at small and medium-sized business, organizations and non-profits. I just heard on the Six Pixels of Separation podcast this morning that Scott Stratten (a.k.a. Unmarketing) is writing one as well. I'm sure there are dozens more.

::UPDATE:: And my good friend Justin Levy has just published Facebook Marketing.

Never one to miss out on a good bandwagon, I thought I’d go ahead and announce that I’m writing a book, with Mike Barlow. The book (like Amber and Jay’s and Scott’s) will be published by Wiley, and promoted as part of the SAS Wiley business series.

The working title is The Executive's Guide to Enterprise Social Media Strategy. As Mike wrote in the proposal to Wiley, it will be a high level guide for developing the practical business frameworks and policies necessary for implementing and managing successful corporate social media strategies.

Key topics include the basic value proposition of social media, metrics, costs, ROI, executive buy-in, critical skills, staffing, training, technology infrastructure, risk management, competitive business benefits and long-term implications of “getting it wrong.”

I’m extremely happy to be working with Mike, who knows his way around a book and brought me in to a project that had already been greenlighted. What more could a new author hope for? Mike describes himself as a “veteran journalist and seasoned marketer.” He’s also a lot of fun to work with. Our conversations go off on amazing tangents.

Mike and I are sharing the writing tasks, and we’re on a tight deadline. I hesitate to say the deadline out loud or write it here, because I’m slightly in denial. Let’s just say my nights and weekends are pretty well spoken for over the next month.

I’ve already got a great lineup of social media thinkers and doers who have agreed to participate and tell their stories. I’m excited to see this come to fruition. I’m convinced the book will prove to be a valuable resource for people figuring out how to make social media work inside companies.

Essentially, it will be the book I was looking for when I started this job a year and a half ago.

If you have a great story about how your company has integrated social media into your operations and you’d like to share it, email me at dave [at]dbthomas [dot]com.

Stay tuned for more. Once we’ve actually written the thing, we’ll think about creating a blog for it.

photo by Jasoon