InHow to Make Money with Social Media, Jamie Turner and Dr. Reshma Shah (the authors) explain how to develop an effective Social Media Campaign and Strategy. They cover the basic concepts about social media marketing in general. They discuss why social media marketing is critical to Internet success for any business. This book covers key questions and provides information that social media marketers have questions about.
Sidarta Tanu writes some of the basic points this book covers:
1. Branding -It will do half of your work if you have a powerful brand (like Apple, Nike, Harley Davidson). People will naturally be drawn to you.
2. Social media isn't always online (what you do offline is as important - word of mouth, etc)
3. It is not just about uploading youtube video, tossing up Facebook Fan Page or completing LinkedIn Company profile. It's much more than that
4. It is about 2 way communication, a dialogue with customers across a wide variety of channels for a sustained period of time.
5. How to manage those communication lines.
6. An effective Social Media campaign
7. How to use Networking, Promoting, and Sharing platform (and other tools/widgets etc) to help you grow your revenue
8. How to integrate social media into your marketing plan and conduct a competitive assessment and your internal situation
9. How to measure the success of social media
10 Understanding the customer thought process
This book also covers additional guideline for corporations and also has a bonus appendix - 59 things in a form of a checklist on what you need to do on your way to a successful social media campaign. This book includes a lot of examples such as mini case studies that help understand the points that the writers are trying to make.
By Andrew Shaffer -
"I've read many social media books, and this is one of the only ones that cuts through the hype. It views social media through the existing advertising and marketing landscape and gives reasons why companies should--and shouldn't--use it. A great overview of a constantly evolving landscape. My ONLY quarrel is with the title. It *is* about using new and emerging media to grow your business, but "How to Make Money with Social Media" sounds like a spammers' tag line on Twitter".
By Hope Flammer-
"If you're a an entrepreneur that regularly follows Guy Kawasaki or Perry Marshall's missives on Google search and email marketing, you'll want to read this book ASAP. Turner and Shah place social media strategies and platforms in context so that you avoid those "spinach caught in your teeth" kinds of mistakes non-net-natives (like me) tend to make. They also offer plenty of practical tips for fine-tuning efforts on the major platforms, tracking online conversations and dissecting what the competition is doing. It's one of those books you'll refer to over and over again. Especially Chapter 11, How to Use Promoting Platforms to Help you Grow Your Sales and Revenues". That said, the book is peppered with valuable case studies featuring many impressive Fortune 500 companies. I would have liked more case studies featuring start-ups and smaller companies like ours -- those that have to keep a remorseless eye on the time and effort involved with all social media efforts"...
By Jill Florio-
"I was disappointed with "How to Make Money from Social Media." With such a great title, I was anticipating an excellent breakdown of the most useful social media platforms and how to use them: what to post about to create earnings, which types of social media work best for different types of businesses, full-fledged analyses of the target audience of different platforms, and so on.
I wanted something meaty and specific to give me insight towards creating income from social media. Instead, this is a basic business marketing book with a social media slant. It's hardly the "insider' scoop that was promised. I personally feel this book misrepresents itself in order to sell copies. Good marketing? For them, maybe. I know a lot about social media and there was nothing useful or new here for me.
Start a Twitter account, and a Facebook Fan Page. Set up your LinkedIn profile. Make a video for YouTube. If this is speaking Greek to you, then you might be this guide's target audience. If you are a beginner to any sort of marketing, and have not dabbled in social media to any professional extent, then you will probably find this text useful. Pages and pages go by discussing traditional marketing concepts like consumer behavior models, setting objectives, moving product and conducting internal situation analyses. Hey, if you wanted to write a marketing treatise, just say so in your promotional materials.
When social media is addressed, it's all very basic. You will be told to engage. That social marketing is a dialog, not a monologue. There are charts that compare (not in an in-depth way) the top social media platforms and their use for marketers. Useful links for gathering traffic data are provided.
A checklist towards the back of the book can help you get a new social media campaign off the ground from scratch (if you can ignore the claims that you need to purchase this book for everyone you know, including 'complete strangers' - really, now?). Some of the Action Steps at the end of each short chapter might be helpful, and I appreciated the action-oriented format presented. The book is a simple read (I whipped through it in a couple hours this afternoon) and might be greatly helpful if you are a non-web-savvy business owner."
By Rebecca Haden-
"One of my favorite passages in this book explains that LinkedIn is like a trade show, Twitter is like a cocktail party, and YouTube is like Times Square on New Year's Eve. Using metaphors that will make sense to readers who are new to the use of social media, data and insights that will be useful to veterans, and a sassy tone that keeps it all light, the authors cover an impressive array of topics relating to social media."
There's a look at social media's history and vocabulary, ideas for planning your social media campaign and getting your team on board, discussions of a variety of social media platforms, ideas for integrating social media with your overall marketing efforts, suggestions for measuring social media, reminders about ethics, and a list of 59 action steps to check off.
Each chapter begins with a page containing a focus quote, goes on to a clear discussion of the topic with specific examples, and then has bullet-pointed suggestions for steps to take. The chapters wind up with a list of key concepts and associated action steps that pull it all together. The result is a very readable, even skimmable, book.
What you don't see here is much in the way of specific instruction. For example, the section on reputation management advocates "creating a campaign that leverages the information and insight and turns it into a specific, measurable, action-oriented program to drive revenue for your brand." This probably doesn't leave most readers nodding in comprehension and jumping to the task. Assuming you have the skills, though, or are willing to hire them, this book will give you very clear ideas about how to use them for the good of your company.
And we are talking here about your company. This is not a book on how to make millions of dollars by tweeting your ads. This is for businesses (nonprofits will benefit, too) looking to support their websites, network, and develop long-term relationships with clients and customers.
Beginners, companies seeking ideas for and examples of successful social media campaigns, and marketers wanting to fine-tune their efforts will all find this book useful. It's an entertaining read, and also a good book to have on your shelf when you want to get a quick idea of the difference between Reddit and Digg, or hi5 and Plaxo.
By Joan Reeves-
This book is a good primer for someone who doesn't know social media at all. However, based on the long descriptive title of this book, I simply can't give this book a glowing review because the content just doesn't deliver what the title says.
However, having said that, there's still a lot of basic information about traditional and online marketing that may make the book valuable to beginners.
PRAISE
The book is written in a conversational style that makes it accessible to just about anyone. Much information is presented about traditional marketing concepts, contrasting them with online marketing concepts.
For someone not currently on Facebook, Twitter, et al, the book will acquaint the non-user with the basics of social media.
ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT
As I said above, I'm afraid the book just doesn't live up to its title. The text is a bit redundant. Innumerable times, we are told that social media is a dialogue. That's repeated often, like sound bites from a TV infomercial. In fact, the text rather reminds me of an infomercial in that you're repeatedly told that you'll learn how to make social media work for you, but only generalizations are discussed for the most part.
Most of the book reads like a teaser: tells you what you're going to learn, tells you about traditional marketing facts, theories, and concepts, tells you why those don't work, tells you again that you'll learn about using social media, gives some generic information about social media, then seemingly repeats the process in the next chapter. You get pulled along, looking for the solid information that the title leads you to expect. Unfortunately, you never get a payoff of specific ways to make money with social media.
IN CONCLUSION
There's no doubt that the authors know social media, but they don't effectively transfer that knowledge to this book. I think if the authors changed their slant and marketed the book to beginners that they'd get far better feedback and reviews.
For a beginner who wants to dip a toe into the pool of social media, this book would provide a good, general overview of the subject, enabling those new to social media to grasp the concepts and get started. Unfortunately, for someone who already possesses general knowledge of social media, this book will disappoint.
I notice that the authors have several other books available that deal with the same subject matter. Perhaps one of those might be more suited to someone who knows about social media and knows how it should work but is having difficulty implementing the action required.
From Dennis Amith-
When it comes to social media, many companies are starting late or still haven't made the jump into promoting their business utilizing social media sites such as Facebook or using Twitter, YouTube and various other ways to really promote their business and build upon their brand, especially for a new generation of people who spend most of their time using Facebook and Twitter and becoming less likely to use traditional forms of media to learn about a business or its products.
"How to Make Money with Social Media" by Jamie Turner and Dr. Reshma Shah is a good book for those wanting or just jumped into promoting their business on social media. Understanding the new demographic of users utilizing Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.
The book is broken down in the following PARTS (and chapters):
PART I. The Social Media Landscape
PART II. How to Set Yourself Up for Social Media Success
PART III. Social Media Platforms
PART IV. Social Media Integration
PART V. How to Measure Social Media
PART VI. ConclusionAlthough most of the book does have information that may be too common knowledge for those already utilizing social media, both Turner and Shah do a good job at presenting several examples such as Honda, Starbucks, the Detroit Zoo and how companies have successfully and even failed at the use of social media.
Enjoyed how the writers covered the various platforms, touched upon mobile media and also quantitative data.
The book is easy to read, easy to follow but for those to middle to small companies who are interested, it's important to know that social media is not short-term, nor is it going to bring quick profits. Far too many companies that I have met and some have a traditional style of thinking that Twitter and Facebook will bring them immediate profit and also some misinterpret marketing on FB, Twitter and other sites as spamming your customer or potential customer-based. The sad thing is that there are marketers who have utilized social media almost as a constant spam cycle and are not trying to use these as ways of getting close to potential customers by not utilizing social media correctly.
So, this book does is a well-written resource and yes, it does show you how to make money but those looking for immediate, increased immediate profits, don't think of it that way. I've met with one company with expectations to make a million dollars thanks to Social Media but yet weren't willing to bend over to change their business-sense to accommodate it or the people who were utilizing social media. If anything, many looked at it as more of a way to spam customers without building any relationship.
So, fortunately, both Turner and Shah's book is on the more positive end as you will find others who have their own interpretation of making money via social media. It's also important that the company or business has a website that helps accommodate social media and people who have been delegated to do the work for marketing the company, know what they are doing and not spamming potential or current customers.
Overall, a book worth recommending!
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