Product Description

If the idea of starting a social media marketing campaign overwhelms you, the author of Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day will introduce you to the basics, demonstrate how to manage details and describe how you can track results.  Case studies, step–by–step guides, checklists, quizzes and hands–on tutorials will help you execute a social media marketing campaign in just one hour a day.  In addition, learn how to integrate social media metrics with traditional media measurements and how to leverage blogs, RSS feeds, podcasts, and user–generated content sharing sites like YouTube.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #23158 in Books
• Published on: 2008-10-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

From the Back Cover
Develop an Integrated, Successful Social Media Strategy

A Step–by–Step Guide

Put the buzz about your business to work for you. This comprehensive, perfectly paced guide will teach you how to make social media an active part of your marketing plan so that you can turn customer conversations about your brand, product, service, and company into a sustainable competitive advantage. Learn how you can tap the Social Web and amplify your current marketing efforts by listening and participating in conversations that drive measurable results.

• Develop and effectively pitch a successful social media campaign inside your company

• Learn how to become a genuine Social Web participant

• Build a map of your key conversation–generators as you evaluate every point of contact between you and your customers

• Get to the sweet spot of social media marketing—the consideration phase of the purchase funnel

• Leverage all the tools available—blogs, RSS feeds, podcasts, video and photo sharing, and more

• Use social media measurement tools, including the Net Promoter score, and apply metrics from platforms such as Bazaarvoice, BlogPulse, and Cymfony

• Learn best practices for launching your social media program and measuring the results

You′ll also find:

• A comprehensive look from the savvy marketer′s perspective at social sites and services—MySpace, Facebook®, LinkedIn®, and Twitter, along with YouTube, Seesmic, Eventful, and FriendFeed

• Straightforward tools for building social media into your current marketing program

• Real–world case studies that illustrate successes to learn from and mistakes to avoid

About the Author
Dave Evans is an expert in social media marketing whose passion is tapping the power of the Social Web and applying it to business. Beginning in 1994, when he founded marketing consultancy Digital Voodoo, and continuing through his career in advertising, Dave has developed interactive communication programs for Microsoft, Hewlett–Packard, Southwest Airlines, AARP, the U.S. Air Force, AT&T, Wal–Mart, Dial, the PGA Tour, Chili′s, Meredith Publishing, and many more. Dave is a ClickZ columnist and a frequent conference speaker, and has served on the advisory board for ad:tech as well as the Measurement and Metrics Council for the Word of Mouth Marketing Association.

Customer Reviews

Interesting but still a specialised area
As the author points out, this is a new and immature area of marketing. Such a book is therefore always likely to feel a bit evangelical, but it also pads out its theories and arguments, and unlike another book in the series, Search Engine Optimization: An Hour a Day, it is a subject that doesn't lend itself well to the "hour a day" approach.

The book is going to be most useful for US companies that have big brand names and famous products, rather than the many small companies who really don't get many or any mentions on social media channels. While the authors tries to be inclusive to these types of company, the truth is that for many companies - especially niche, boutique and consultancy-type firms away from the US - this kind of stuff is still not really on the radar.

It is admirable that the book attempts to link standard marketing practice (multiple touch points spring to mind) with social media marketing. It is also good that it makes the point that it is impossible for corporations to control social media: For instance, I used to work in marketing at a company that despite being told again and again that what was happening to them was due to their customers finding each other online, and that the gaping gap between their marketing promise and the reality of their operations was coming back to bite them, simply couldn't get it, to their major cost.

The problem is that the directors of such companies - the people who ultimately need to understand this stuff - will I feel still be left cold by the arguments here. Don't over-market and under-deliver is the main one - hardly a revelation. Perhaps the author realised this, as the hour-a-day premise here is moving towards a presentation to such people, the idea being that someone in marketing buys the book and "presents" a plan to the board. But having tried it myself once, I wouldn't like to be that person having read this.

This book is useful, and in places very interesting, but it's just not the complete, well argued release I was expecting. Good, but not essential.

Savvy guide to social media marketing
The "Social Web" - the weave of "Social Media" Internet sites - is the dominant environment favored by many young consumers, the place where they connect with one another. Contemporary marketing requires having a robust presence on the social Web, but its array of media choices can be confounding. The sites' obscure names - Ning, Ping, Pluck, Plurk, Bebo, Orkut, Plaxo, Minggl - reveal little, and they seem distinctly unwelcoming to overt marketing and advertising. That means your company must handle its online promotion according to the social Web's accepted customs and protocols. Plus, your program must have panache to engage network members. To promote effectively via the social Web, you need a knowledgeable guidebook. getAbstract recommends this hands-on manual by social media marketing whiz Dave Evans. He expertly deciphers the social Web, and explains how to plan and implement a social media marketing campaign with a practical one-hour-a-day schedule. He even details what social Web marketers must not do. That's a handy thing to know in the online jungle, where this insightful book can help you penetrate the social media marketing maze.

Incredibly straightforward guide to creating and measuring social media campaigns
I couldn't disagree more with Mr Morse's assessment. I think this book is invaluable if you are genuinely looking to get the best marketing results using social media. I purchased the Social Media Bible and was so disappointed with the basic information there that I returned it to Amazon, something I've never done before(which btw was very easy -- thank you, Amazon).

Social Media Marketing on the other hand takes you step by step through the process of creating a marketing strategy using social media as a tool, rather than the other way around which so many people get wrong. The worksheets and planning exercises were excellent and reinforce the idea that unless you target your market effectively and understand how to measure it both before and after your campaigns, then social media is lost on you. It's hard work (like any earnest marketing exercise), but this format gives you all the tools and motivation you need to accomplish it.

Social Media Marketing is easy to understand, comprehensive and offers a tremendous list of further resources. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it, whether you're a small business or large corporation.