A well read businessman is one educated for success. Social media is constantly evolving, opening new doors for entrepreneurs and changing the scope of the online business market place. If you are new to doing business through social media, or even if you have a good deal of experience in the field, you must stay on top of your game to keep up with the competition. A collection of powerful, knowledge enriching books on marketing strategies and performance analysis a great way to stay sharp and develop new strategies to succeed. Following are some books that should be considered essential reading for social media entrepreneurs.
The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools, and Strategies for Business Success
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This big guide to all things social media provides aspiring social entrepreneurs with effective strategies and tips for success. The book teaches you how to engage your customers through many popular mediums and offer collaboration and increased communication between your company and its clients. With hundreds of social media applications now in use, it can be difficult to develop unique strategies that make the most of each one. With The Social Media Bible however, each application is covered, and tips for incorporating them all into one business strategy are explained in detail. Furthermore, the book also teaches you how to implement social media within your company to improve internal operations. If you are looking for a single book that covers everything from micro-strategies to big picture game plans using, every valuable social media portal on the web, this is the reference for you.
Engage: The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate, and Measure Success in the New Web
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Engage is an enriching guide for new entrepreneurs who aim to promote their businesses through social platforms and engage their customers in their brand. This book goes beyond merely teaching you tips and tricks to market your business on Facebook or Twitter, and explains the broader significance behind marketing with these important new media tools. If you want a firm understanding of not only what to do with social media, but also why you’re doing it, and how its improving your company’s success, you need to pick up a copy of Engage. As Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks and Chairman of HDNet said, “It’s no longer an era of business as usual. Executives and entrepreneurs must embrace new media in order to not only compete for the future, but for mind share, market share, and, ultimately, relevance. This book helps you engage. Without it, you’re competing for second place.”
Socialnomics: How Social Media Transforms the Way We Live and Do Business
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This refreshing book provides a research-based analysis of how social media is transforming the way people behave online, and how their behavior has had a veritable impact on marketing and business. Socialnomics explores how social media has allowed successful marketers to cut out middle men and ditch ineffectual marketing channels in favor of more effective, trackable methods. By reading this book, you will learn how the social media wave began, its current state, and where the research suggests it will be going in the not-so-distant future. If you hope to gain a firm and conceptual understanding of how social media can expand your market presence, this book should be considered essential reading.
The Digital Handshake: Seven Proven Strategies to Grow Your Business Using Social Media
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Unlike some social marketing texts, The Digital Handshake is written more for owners of small businesses than large organizations. This book’s power comes in explaining how old marketing strategies and mindsets are starting to become ineffectual, costing companies more money than they bring back. The solution to this problem, according to the author, is to spend far less, and receive a much greater response using social media marketing. The book walks readers through setting up a comprehensive marketing stratagem that integrates traditional advertising methods with new social media strategies to achieve big-time success in todays changing business landscape.
Web Analytics 2.0: The Art of Online Accountability and Science of Customer Centricity
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Okay, so by now you’ve learned all about how to set up marketing campaigns through social networking and new media channels, but far more important than the initial establishment of those campaigns is the ongoing tracking and analysis of their performance. Web Analytics 2.0 teaches new Internet marketers how to successfully analyze their marketing to ensure that their efforts are actually generating sales and turning profit. Its all well and good to have a popular blog or twitter account, but if you’re pouring money into a marketing channel that is not generating profit, you are not effectively marketing. Pick up a copy of Web Analytics 2.0 and learn the art of analysis, because unless you’re tracking your social marketing performance, you’ll never know if your strategies are successful.
The Whuffie Factor
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This book, written by Tara Hunt, founder of the marketing firm Citizen Agency, explains how social web traffic (also called whuffie,) is more valuable to online web communities than money or almost any other resource. Hunt discusses the big name social portals as well as the various close-knit and lesser-known social mediums and explains how web traffic flows between them all to create valuable marketing opportunities. The book argues that without whuffie, your messages are seen as spammy advertisements, whereas with it they are seen as credible and worthwhile. A powerful book written for those who wish to understand how social communities work, and what makes them so lucrative.
Six Pixels of Separation
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Six Pixels of Separation argues that almost everyone is now connected in some way to almost everyone else. The old rule of thumb that we are all connected by only separated by 6 degrees of separation has been taken to the Internet, and now we are down to only six pixels. Understanding that all of your customers and potential buyers are connected to everyone else allows you to reach a virtually limitless audience with your marketing message if you are skilled at using social media to your advantage. The author combines useful information and skills for not only the social mediums themselves, but also for personal branding and being an entrepreneur in the new and ever changing business world.
Meatball Sundae: Is Your Marketing Out Of Sync?
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As social media gained popularity, smart marketers sensed an oncoming top to bottom change in strategy, and the smart ones have reconstructed their entire efforts in order to succeed in the new business world. Old philosophies of business and marketing are no longer effective. Gone are the days where the a company could grow just by selling as many people average products with no interaction. No longer should you take the approach of just blasting the same cookie cutter message out to as many people as possible. Marketers today must rethink their entire game plan rather than just adding new ideas on top of outdated strategies. Unless you can successfully do this, you will be as out of sync as “adding whipped cream on top of a meatball.”
Groundswell
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Groundswell is powerful book containing practical strategies needed to win big in the social media world. Not only does the book offer proven tactics, it also provides the reader with case studies of companies who have followed the advice the book gives and the outcomes they witnessed. This allows you to see the value in what Groundswell teaches and lets you gauge the sort of impact such marketing moves are likely to have on your bottom line. Additionally, for those who are tired of reading about of a bunch of isolated and disconnected business uses of social media, Groundswell also provides the reader with a complete roadmap for success. This roadmap will walk you through how get started and when it is appropriate to implement the various tactics discussed.
Trust Agents
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Trust Agents explores how trust plays a huge role in consumer behavior. From initial impressions to long-term repeat business, trust in an agency or person can have a huge impact on buying preferences and the decision to either switch to a new brand or stick with yours. One of the biggest advantages of social media, the book argues, is that it helps businesses build trust with their customers and retain their loyalty for the life. Packed with great case studies and analysis of actual consumer behavior, Trust Agents can teach you how to construct a new kind of marketing strategy centered around making the trust factor work for you.
