I read the new book Enterprise Social Media Strategy last weekend and came away from it feeling like I had just attended a useful two-day social media conference.
You know the feeling, right? Your head is swimming with ideas from lots of great people who are smarter or braver or just further down the road than you are, and you can't wait to share everything you've learned with your co-workers.
The downside of attending a conference, however, is that your notes from multiple days of sessions are usually incoherent, disorganized and not practical for immediate action.
But that's the beauty of the book. It's as if the authors, David B. Thomas and Mike Barlow, attended the conference with you, wrote down everything you wanted to share with your boss and even provided practical "What You Can Do Right Now" tips at the end of every session (er, chapter).
Long-time readers of this blog will recognize some of the names in the book, including David B. Thomas. As the former author of this blog, Dave told a few of the stories in the book here first, but most of the content is brand new.
My favorite section is "The New Model for PR" in Chapter 11, because it talks about one of my favorite topics, content marketing. Here, Dave compares and contrasts the old model - where you spent weeks pitching stories, lining up interviews, coaching sources and waiting with bated breath for the story to come out - and the new model - where you write the story yourself!
Of course, we still need the old model sometimes, but the new model is becoming more and more useful every day.
The quotes and anecdotes in this section of the book come from Lee Aase, manager of syndication and social media at the Mayo Clinic, who was actually a favorite presenter of mine from a Ragan social media conference a few years ago. Lee can tell you many great stories about his use of video, blogs and podcasts to tell the stories of Mayo patients, doctors and researchers.
In fact, every section in the book is filled with insights and examples from people who do present at conferences and from every day employees like you and me who are using social media successfully in their own organizations.
Buy a few copies for your team and share one with your boss. Tell your boss that you've just saved the company the expense of sending your whole team to a conference!
