Steve over at Polar Limited is doing a networked social media book giveaway.
Steve has convinced these seven authors Mitch Joel, Tamar Weinberg, Chris Brogan + Julien Smith, Gary Vaynerchuk, Avinash Kaushik, John Jantsch, Beth Kanter and me to offer up free copies of their books.
You can win a this set of books, signed and personalized by the authors that will teach you how to be human through your computer, generate tons of social capital, and be a social media virtuoso – plus have some great books to curl up with during the holidays.
Here’s how you win:
- Leave a comment below telling me your social media plans for 2010, and why you think these 7 books will help you achieve what you want to accomplish. Best comment in within the next week wins the set.
- Visit one of the following blogs who have the same set of books to give away. If you really want to increase your chances of winning, you’ll probably want to visit each of them and leave a comment there as well. Here’s where to go:
www.kaushik.net/avinash: this is the amazing blog of Web 2.0 Analytics author Avinash Kaushik. He’s simply the smartest guy in the world when it comes to analytics and what it means for your business.
www.ducttapemarketing.com/blog: this is the blog of John Jantsch, THE expert on small business marketing. He’s also writes probably the most practical, hands-on marketing blog on the planet. It’s a must-read.
http://beth.typepad.com/: Beth is one of my heroes and actually appears in the very first chapter of The Whuffie Factor because someone that does such good work should open up any book.
Bonus: like Beth, I really love Shel Israel’s book, Twitterville. I’m happy to pitch in and help her get it added to the list, too!
November 16th, 2009 at 5:59 pm
Great opportunity and amazing exercise in sharing SM plans for 2010. It’s exciting to see social media challenge people to connect in 2010. I work for a health care system in Wisconsin. Our plans for 2010 are to integrate social media into all of our communications plans and reinvent the way we provide health care information, service and resources to our patients. We will educate and identify champions in an organization with 29,000 caregivers and use social media to engage directly with patients. We will strategically integrate social media into our communications to provide the best patient experience possible. We’ve got big plans and feel that 2010 will be the tipping point.
It’s an exciting time and it’s amazing to be part of a great revolution in conversation.
November 17th, 2009 at 3:28 am
Well… if I had a social media plan I’d love to share it. The plan so far is easy to state: “Get a social media plan for 2010″! I can’t help feel left behind, and I really need some resources to point me in the right direction. My company uses Twitter already and has picked up a few leads, but working out how to stand out in the noise is challenging.
These 7 books will give us a great grounding and one of those “Now I get it!” moments, and help us move from being a 19th century business (with added technology) into the 21st century
November 17th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
My agency is the area’s anti-poverty agency, providing advocacy, community organizing, pro bono legal assistance, housing assistance, fuel assistance, weatherization, child care, Head Start, free financial education and tax preparation, even special “matched” savings accounts so people can develop assets, signing them up for health care and food stamps, and a walk-in computer center for access to and training in the technology.
Working with low-income and very low-income clients, as well as consulting to small non-profits who have similar clients, I need social media tools to help us all be more effective in reaching our clients, funders, and other stakeholders.
My own work has benefitted tremendously from social media tools and I am educating these organizations about social media now, even as I learn more about them myself. That process is slow. Each organization is understaffed and funds are tight. No one has the title of Marketing or Media or Communications anything. Very few are technically adept. Many stakeholders are in the same boat.
For some, social media is that “new thing” everyone talks about. The same is true for many clients, so educating the organization is also about helping them understand that clients will use social media without needing to know all that we have to learn about it.
Clients just want a way to communicate with us and each other in a way that helps them get what they need and/or want. We need to reach them with multiple channels of access and Web 2.0 & social media gives us more options.
My own agency is moving from a traditional website to a Joomla! website, based on my research and urging. I’ve set up a Joomla! website for one of the other agencies. We are starting a blog for patrons at the computer center to communicate with us, each other, and to invite others in.
I’ve gotten some of the community networks I’m with to use online collaboration so we can work effectively between monthly meetings. I use Google Docs and am training volunteers in their use so they can help me with my projects. In the computer center we’re mentoring to our volunteers so they can mentor to clients.
Winning these books would not just help me, but as we learn, they’ll learn. They also can teach us, as will our clients. Developing a lending library, starting with these books, can help us with that process.
November 18th, 2009 at 6:48 am
My social media plan for 2010 is start educating local businesses and people on how to interact through social media. So far I’ve been doing research on how to implement social media in business not only as a marketing and costumer service channel, but as a tool that can be used through the organization in HR, Stakeholder communication, etc.
So far I’ve been working on a social media plan for mining companies that are having a huge image crisis due to the idea that they pollute. Many do, but critics tend to put all in the same basket. Needless to say this Execs at mining companies don’t yet believe in Social Media and say they will pay me if the plan works. My father being one of those I accepted the challenge.
As far as I’m trying to educate other people on how to use social media I feel I still got much to learn because knowledge appears everyday.
And personally my social media plan for 2010 is to continue to meet and engage in conversations with as many awesome people I can find or find me. Because since I use it i feel it has changed my life and added lot’s of value to me that I hope I’ve added to other people.
November 18th, 2009 at 7:03 am
We are one of the most progressive Chiropractic clinics in the St. Cloud Minnesota area BUT, our marketing efforts need to be completely “adjusted”. We are great at treating our patients, but our marketing plan is what really needs our professional attention!
As the new Community Relations Director, I believe a truly effective social marketing plan could help us launch our practice’s image up to the level that truly reflects our high level of professionalism and compassionate care.
Problem is……I have NO IDEA HOW TO GET STARTED!!!!! This library would help ME be able to tap into these expert guides to implement social marketing within our practice without having to hire outside consultants to do it for me.
Fantastic promotion — thank you so much for offering it!
November 18th, 2009 at 7:49 am
Tara, great meeting you in San Diego. I am a book evangelist, and I recommend most of these books to everyone I meet, who is even slightly interested in the new media and the culture that has developed around.
For 2010, it will be more of an immersion into VRM for me.
November 18th, 2009 at 9:25 am
Hi Tara
. So of course my plan for 2010 is to do more of it! Obviously I know what my social media goals are, brand awareness and ultimately conversions. I’m looking forward to branching out into video as well as real life meetups and social events to reinforce the dynamics of the relationships I am building online. I also plan on monitoring and responding to social commentary made about our business as well to build and grow relationships in that manner too.
I already have Your book and Trust agents- both are fantastic! I’m still at the “turn the bull horn around” stage of Social Media which is honestly very time consuming and distracting- I’m meeting too many cool people that I love to tweet and chat with
Best,
Kristen
November 18th, 2009 at 8:27 pm
My social media plan is to read seven books on social media, plus probably try to charm the authors until they give in and share all the secrets they couldn’t put in the books in order to keep their consultancies / speaking engagements going. Then I’ll use the aggregate advice to plan & launch my social media plan to take over the world.
November 19th, 2009 at 6:31 am
Thank you everyone for participating! I’ve picked my winner and submitted it … stay tuned!
November 20th, 2009 at 11:40 am
I know you may have already picked a winner, but here’s to hoping you are still reading the comments…I didn’t see that this contes was happening until today.
Heres my theoretical plan:
For my company page impressions are king because more page impressions mean more underwriting and grant revenue. Ultimately we want to drive people to look at our website and keep coming back for more because if they consume more of our content and loyal to our site, we know we are serving our audience well.
To that end, I would value metrics that show interaction with our content (linking, retweets and comments) higher than other metrics available (Fans, followers and subscribers). Fans and followers are passive; the act of linking and spreading the word is active and gives a sense that our content is resonating with our audience. Since we have several fan pages, twitter accounts and blogs for different content categories, I would create rank reports for each social media platform based on the content categories performance in the key “active” metric associated with the platform (linking for facebook, retweets for twitter and comments for blogs). A content category may rank well in its comments, but poorly in its linking. If a content category ranks well in all metric categories than we can infer that it is serving our audience well. If we’ve put a lot of effort into one content category and it ranks low compared to our other content, then we should re-evaluate our efforts because we are either need to change something or realize that our audience may not put as high a value on it as we do and it is no longer worth our limited resources to produce it.
Most of my training has come from reading books, and I would love to expand my library with books on social media strategy and if my theoretical social media strategy is way off then I really need the books!
January 23rd, 2010 at 11:35 pm
I like your style