New book gives the method behind the social media marketing madness

I consider myself one of the New Age, tree-hugging hippies mentioned in the above book, but I’m also grounded in my upbringing as the son of an electrical lineman and school teacher in small-town Ohio. I believe in the spiritual principles of giving and receiving as I incorporate social media into my personal and professional lives, but I’m also big on the strategic process — research, planning, implementation and evaluation. There’s got to be a method behind the madness!

That’s why I really liked No Bullshit Social Media: The All-Business, No-Hype Guide to Social Media Marketing by Jason Falls and Erik Deckers. Unlike the books written several years back selling people on the value of social media marketing as a concept, this writing gives specific methods and tools for getting the job done. It provides case studies — solid examples you can wrap your mind around.

Falls and Deckers dive deeply into the seven things social media marketing does for your business:

* Enhance branding and awareness
* Protect brand reputation
* Enhance public relations
* Build community
* Enhance customer service
* Facilitate research and development
* Drive leads and sales

This paragraph on the jacket gives a great summary: “Stop hiding from social media — or treating it as if it’s a playground. Start using it strategically. Identify specific, actionable goals. Apply business discipline and proven best practices. Stop fearing risks. Start mitigating them. Measure performance. Get results. You can. This book shows you how.”

OK, now time for my tree-hugger, hippie side. I found this book through a set of circumstances I couldn’t have planned.

A friend gave me a Barnes & Noble gift card for Christmas, so the family went to a bookstore for the first time in a while. (We’re Amazon people now, especially since I got a Fire.) I intended to get a book about innovation or perhaps travel — in advance of a trip planned to Oregon and Washington next summer — but this one caught my eye, as well as another on a similar topic.

I brought both to the cafe area and began to recall that Falls attended my first Cincinnati Social Media breakfast and had blogged about social media at the government social services agency where I used to work. I thought about how I like following Deckers on Twitter. I recalled that both live near Cincinnati — Falls in Louisville and Deckers in Indianapolis… So I bought their book.

Perfect timing. Right when I’m trying to figure out how to improve measurement and evaluation of social media marketing.

Guess I can hug a tree and saw away at strategic communication at the same time!