A Book for Professionals on Social Media

 I'm (gladly) in the final weeks of completing the manuscript for "Social Media Strategies for Professionals and their Firms: The Guide to Establishing Credibility & Accelerating Relationships." This is exhausting exhilarating because of the amount of sheer THINKING I've been forced able to do. 

I will be posting various bits and pieces from the book over the next couple months (it will be released in September, 2010) and inviting comments and critique while the book is still in the edit phase (or anytime, actually).

It's written primarily for legal, accounting and other financial advisory professionals. But other B2B professionals including consultants will, hopefully, also gain from it.

In order to serve as both a quick-start reference and a detailed strategic marketing planning resource, the book is organized into four key sections:

1. WHAT - provides the foundational information professionals need: definitions, rules of engagement, policy considerations, managing the unavoidable intersection of business and personal, an overview of "today's" most relevant tools, and a comparison of the tools.
2. WHY - answers questions about the purpose and value to professionals in using social media including: keys behind goal setting, establishing parameters for ROI, evolution of on-line reputation development and humanizing your marketing, and essentials for positioning yourself to be found by the "right" people.
3. HOW - discusses approaches to individual and firm-level social media strategies and delves into how-tos for the establishing yourself with tools that fall into the two big buckets of social media: networking and content-sharing.
4. TIPS - delivers just what you'd think: best practices, etiquette, cross-promoting, and even how to retire gracefully from your social media initiatives if you find they don't suit you.

I would LOVE and WELCOME your thoughts and suggestions about the structure and whether you think there is something important that I should include and may not have mentioned. 

Oh, and while I've been working on this, I've created a little timeline of the emergence of social media technologies (and behaviors) relative to the availability and evolution of the Internet. 

Seeing it like this was both impressive and (a little) scary for me as it relates to what we humans are capable of in such a small period of time. Wondering if you will have a similar reaction?

I can't help but think of a tweet I saw yesterday from Rebecca Ryan: "People will organize themselves; technology just helps them. -Ben Self, Blue State Digital"

Social Media Timeline

View more presentations from Michelle Golden.

If you use this graphic elsewhere, I just ask that please do so with attribution and a link or trackback here or to slideshare. Also, if you see any errors, please do let me know. Most of the dates came from Wikipedia.

Comments

[Brian O'Connell]

Social Media is a tricky adjustment. My clients are accountants, and when they talk about socail marketing they ask a lot about ROI. It's really hard to talk about the ROI of having a twitter account or a facebook page. Of course... it's also hard to determine the ROI of your office phone.

Social media is a great tool for marketing. It allows you to keep in touch with your clients, monitor your competitors, and hear what people are saying about you. Tools like Ping.fm make it fairly simple to use. Can I tell you what kind of ROI to expect... no. Not really. Do I consider it a valid addition to your marketing strategy? YES!