No Bull Shit Social Media


No Bull Shit Social Media
 by Jason Falls and Eric Deckers

I thought this book offered a great overview on the importance of integrating social media into a business’s marketing tactics.   Jason Falls and Eric Deckers present a strong introduction to social media beginning by debunking the typical rationales that people use to avoid adopting the tool, while also addressing the standpoint of the social media purists.   It addresses the fears of using social media and counter offers with the benefits.   No Bull Shit Social Media expresses a new way of measuring success.  

 

The beginning of the book provided a comprehensive explanation of why it is important to utilize social media as well as the benefits.   A few kernels of advice include being social rather than on social and holding a multilogue conversation with a brand’s audience.   Falls and Decker bolster their position with several numeric facts that exhibit the importance of integrating social media into the strategy.  I most enjoyed the parts of the book that explained the consumer psychology behind social media and the strength of peer recommendation and trust.   However, I was hoping to discover more conclusions on the consumer thought-process or audience reacts to ways in which a company uses social media.

 

At some points throughout the book, I felt the writing was a bit repetitive.   It was reminiscent of the introduction marketing book.   While I suppose that was the point however with the lens of social media, I was hoping to learn more about the how.   Not how to use it – because I feel like social media developments are evolving too quickly for people to provide accurate advice on a how process – but how the psychological process of audience changes in the digital marketing sphere (ideas of trusting a brand, instating loyalty, or spreading good word of mouth).  While I may have picked up this book hoping for a deeper dig into specific information, I thought Falls and Deckers did a marvelous job of provided an overview of social media marketing and its importance for businesses to adopt it as a tool.  


Link: To be provided upon e-mail notification. 

Review of Branding Yourself: How to Use Social Media to Invent or Reinvent Yourself

Book: Branding Yourself: How to Use Social Media to Invent or Reinvent Yourself

Authors: Erik Deckers and Kyle Lacy

The key word in Deckers's and Lacy's title is "Reinvent" -- the book, as a whole, is geared toward those who have found themselves in a situation where they must hunker down and give into this "Internet" craze that all the kids are talking about.  For those familiar with Facebook, Twitter, and blogs, Branding Yourself: How to Use Social Media to Invent or Reinvent Yourself might seem a bit redundant, but for those who are clueless of how to promote their businesses (and self) in cyberspace, Deckers and Lacy are a goldmine. The book is written clearly, consisely, and uses terms easily understood by any reader.  There are no extensive personal theories, just guidelines on how to approach different mediums (primarily Facebook and Twitter) and what to illicit from customers.

As the authors of Twitter Marketing For Dummies, the writer duo uses a simple step-by-step format in explaining how to create an "authentic" online presence, whether you're trying to draw customers to a business, an author, or just yourself.  Throughout the book, Deckers and Lacy use humour and Twitter lingo to "@" one another, throwing some knock-knock jokes about new media into the mix to keep the tone lively and casual.  By incorporating screen shots and plenty of real-world examples, any grandparent could have a clear idea of the functions of Twitter, the social rules of networking, the many kinds of blog posts, and really, anything they might want to accomplish in regards to marketing a business through social media.

As a young reader who frequents the internet, I didn't find Branding Yourself to be all that personally helpful. However, if I hadn't already known the social implications and technological functions of the most popular online social hubs, this would be my go-to book.  There are daily Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Blogging activity sheets, outlining one's weekly online tasks in order to effectively establish his or her (or a business's) online identity.  I plan on passing Deckers's and Lacy's book along to my somewhat social media-clueless mom, who is renovating and reopening a theater, to see if my assumptions are correct -- that Branding Yourself: How to Use Social Media to Invent or Reinvent Yourself is the perfect way for a business to get its footing in an otherwise unknown world of social media. 

Jen L.

Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives

While the book I read wasn't directly about social marketing, it is a common trade book that I have seen individuals reading in many of my internships. I was interested in Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives, at first, because it had an eye-catching cover. As I got to hear more about it though, and how Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler took a new approach in writing the book, I knew I had to read it. I enjoyed this book because it looked at our social networks as a whole: What sort of effects do they have on our lives? More importantly, what sort of effects to they have on our health?

The book goes through various studies showing that, essentially, our networking is vital to our health and well being. A healthy network of friends, who interact and share have benefits on our health comparable to quitting smoking. In other words, our friendships add years to our lives. On the flip side, less expansive networks can cause obesity. What I also liked about this book was that it looked into less explored, latent effects of of our social networks. For instance, obesity can be contagious. If one friend is obese, the chances that each of their friends increases greatly. Even more surprising, these risks extend to friends' friends, and even those friends' friends. Connected also does a good job of qualifying these relationships.

I think this book is popular for social media marketing specialists because it is, in many ways, reassuring. It promises that by keeping people connected and in the know, we are somehow doing them a favor. Moreover, Christakis and Fowler make the point emphatically and repeatedly that to not be connected isn't just social suicide, it's actually killing you. Any marketer must think, "Wow, I'm doing this for the people's health." Furthermore, marketers can use a lot of this information to figure out more effective means of communication. Instead of making people feel inadequate or like they need a product, word of mouth marketing, which essentially is the trickle down of information through friend groups, is going to make people more likely to purchase whatever product or idea is being sold. We see the effects of this attitude already today, as marketers pursue bloggers to influence taste patters, or send out models for guerilla marketing to influence trends. 

However, one huge criticism I have with this book is that, although the reader can extend conclusions drawn in the book to the digital space, the authors didn explore it more explicitly. The book not only could have benefitted from such data, but it also would have adressed what I believe to be a more relevant issue today. How do our social networks and our well being change when our relationships become increasingly mediated? If socialization can indeed save us, as the authors posit, does online socialization even count? Is a Facebook poke the same as eye contact?

I reccommend this book, as it is interesting beyond the social media marketing perspective. Connected provides an interesting take on our human interaction, and may give you a new way to think about even the slightest social interaction. 

 

Ceci Diaz

Blog Post #5: Book Review

Book Title: "Viral Loop: From Facebook to Twitter, How Today's Smartest Businesses Grow Themselves"
Author: Adam Penenberg
Online link: http://www.amazon.com/Viral-Loop-Facebook-Businesses-Themselves/dp/1401323499


Adam Penenberg's "Viral Loop: From Facebook to Twitter, How Today's Smartest Businesses Grow Themselves" outlines the history of Web 2.0 companies like MySpace, YouTube, eBay, Twitter, Flickr, and Facebook and how the ingenious incorporation of a "viral expansion loop"  led them to their success. The concept behind the "viral expansion loop" marketing strategy is utilization of the Web's inherent viral qualities to power the marketing and sale of a company's product.

Since the Web is a networking space that connects a host of Internet users in their "biological need to socialize", Penenberg argues that companies must be aware that viral success does not depend merely on the product(s) design and quality; rather, success depends, and can be powered by,  how well online users can make use of their product(s). In this notion of a positive feedback loop, viral looping is thus a product of a website's online users as they enthusiastically disseminate ideas, info, opinions, web links, photos and videos across the web space.  The more people in a given network space, the more content is produced on it; the more powerful the lure for those sitting on the sidelines, and the more value the company has. Networks in their "virality" will thus exhibit a multiplier effect --the larger the viral network, the faster it grows(61). While companies may be the creators of a specific webpage and online product, the true creators of the what the product's content and how it will be receipted comes from the audience.

Penenberg's acknowledgement and emphasis on the power of the online user is very similar to dana boyd's standpoints in her readings. In a 2009 Virtual Symposia panel, boyd stated that "Technology is a wonderful tool but it is not a panacea. It cannot solve all societal ills just by its mere existence. To have relevance and power, it must be leveraged by people to meet needs. This requires all of us to push past what we hope might happen and focus on introducing technology in a context that makes sense." Technology for both Penenberg and boyd is thus a more fluid and flexible structure, rather than a monolithic ideal. There is no single rule or method in which an online product can or should be launched, nor is there a single way in which online marketing must occur. The basis of a product's launching however does rely on its users. Facebook only works because friends are on it to share information with. EBay only works because there a person who wants to sell a product has buyers to sell to and vice versa. The same concept applies to all other sites in which a companies' notoriety and profit only works if there are people working it.

At the heart of social networking technologies, both boyd and Penenberg touch on the "ego" factor --how Facebook, YouTube, and other online-profile sites grants individuals a type of celebrity fame. Whether it be through the publishing of a wall comment, photo, video or pop quiz result (ex. "what inner nationality are you?" or "what kind of children's book are you?"), such feeds of ourselves into an open web space simultaneously drives the life force the viral web takes up on its own --as our feeds are picked up and spread by the people we know and don't know. 

Overall, this book is worth reading. The narrative structure Penenberg takes on definitely makes this an easy and entertaining read that makes abstract concepts like the "viral loop" more concrete. The dramatic details within a historical story can be a little overbearing at times as it takes pages and pages to get to a single point, but I like the fact that he supports his viral loop strategy thoroughly by using past and present contexts, and even highlights the dark side of viral looping such as online spammers and the dissemination of false information. Viral looping however, is not a new business model. Whereas we once relied on word of mouth or even "housewife" parties to spread a new product in a small town, viral looping today is simply more interactional, intentional, and flexible in medium, space, and time.

--Charli Lee.

The Filter Bubble

Woops, here is the link for the book: http://www.amazon.com/Filter-Bubble-What-Internet-Hiding/dp/1594203008

~Sophie

On Tue, Nov 22, 2011 at 8:20 AM, Sophie Geaney <sophiejg@gmail.com> wrote:

            In the realm of marketing in social media I chose “The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding from You” by Eli Pariser, a fascinating internet activist. I was lucky enough to pick this book up a few months ago at a bookstore in Brooklyn where Pariser was signing copies and discussing the impetus behind the book. We all know how difficult it can be to dive into leisure reading when we have so much work on top of it, so I was pretty excited when I realized I had a reason to read the book I have been so curious about that focuses on the possibly detrimental affects of search personalization in our information obsessed society.

            Reviewing an extremely critical book with views that I strongly agree with is harder than I thought it would be. Overall, I agree with almost all of Pariser’s notions. He is deeply worried about what will happen if our Internet worlds continue to get filtered and filtered until our computers know exactly what we want to ask them before we even get the chance to. First of all, The Filter Bubble is a concept, coined by Pariser, used to explain what the new generation of the Internet really is doing to us. He says that the “internet filter looks at the things you seem to like- the actual things you’ve done, or the things people like you like- and tries to extrapolate.” This used to just be a worry because of Google, but now more than a handful of sites and companies are adopting this type of optimization, especially for marketing. It optimizes everything, business wise. Advertisements are as streamlined as they could possibly be and the user is never getting pulled in the wrong direction towards something they are uninterested in. It’s a win-win situation, right? Pariser points out the flaws with this model that has become so embedded within our technological framework.

            This book is for everybody that is curious about where things could go if we are not careful as well as media critics wondering what’s next. In Nancy Baym’s book “Personal Connections in the Digital Age” she critically defines technological determinism. I think that Pariser opinions are closely aligned with the theory of technological determinism. We hope that the public sphere is stronger than what will happen at the next Apple conference. We hope that the public will affect the technology, not the other way around. But with search personalization as a legitimate thing we are now dealing with, I am more fearful of what will happen to society if our own individual filter bubbles get smaller and more confined (Pariser as well).

            Pariser is good at taking the other side as well, understanding that this is a sticky situation because having optimized results fitting our interests really does help, a lot of the time, and he says that, “to some extent, we’ve always consumed media that appealed to our interests and avocations and ignored much of the rest” but the difference now, is that, there are three new dynamics:

1)    You are the only person in your filter bubble.

2)    Your filter bubble is invisible: it’s hard to believe that results showing up on your Google or yahoo page are biased or subjective since you are not told this is what is going on.

3)    You don’t choose to enter the bubble. Unlike television, where you know, most of the time, what type of view you are getting, the Internet is seemingly democratic and open, leading you to believe that what you stumble upon, is really just stumbling.

And Pariser says, it is not just stumbling!! This is the point he makes again and again that resonates with me. We believe that the internet is full of free information waiting for us to soak it up, what we don’t know is how much information and media we are missing just because of our past search history. What if there was a day where you binged on Justin Bieber videos? You may start seeing more celebrity-focused news and advertisements rather than what’s currently going on in Libya or Egypt. Your computer is a machine, and it uses algorithms to unconsciously box you in to your own likes and interests. Every time you “like” something on Facebook that goes into a log of everything you liked before, narrowing your feed to things, hopefully, more likable than not.

            An argument that Pariser makes about marketers who target this new filter bubble generation is one that is a little iffy for me still. Pariser uses the trend postmaterialism to explain the point in our history where we are no longer struggling for a better existence for our children because we are those children that were struggled for. Moreover, because of this, while “earlier generations emphasize financial achievement and order, postmaterialists value self-expression and ‘being yourself’. I mean, remember when Time magazine’s person of the year was “YOU?” It speaks to what is happening now. If we don’t want to read about politics and issues important to our democracy and global affairs, we don’t really have to, ever. Just don’t search it for a month and never again will you have to. Because of this obsession with ourselves, brand marketers are adopting a method called brand fragmentation. This is the understanding that not all people want the same things out of the same product. He says “personalization is both a cause and an effect of the brand fragmentation process. The filter bubble wouldn’t be so appealing if it didn’t play to our postmaterial desire to maximize self- expression” (161). After reading the book, I too, am worried. We need to start thinking a little bit more about what is happening to our public sphere and why argument and debate is much less encouraged due to the Internet’s ability to make you feel like you are the only person existing among your interests on your web history, and that’s all that matters. 



~Sophie G.


The Filter Bubble

            In the realm of marketing in social media I chose “The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding from You” by Eli Pariser, a fascinating internet activist. I was lucky enough to pick this book up a few months ago at a bookstore in Brooklyn where Pariser was signing copies and discussing the impetus behind the book. We all know how difficult it can be to dive into leisure reading when we have so much work on top of it, so I was pretty excited when I realized I had a reason to read the book I have been so curious about that focuses on the possibly detrimental affects of search personalization in our information obsessed society.

            Reviewing an extremely critical book with views that I strongly agree with is harder than I thought it would be. Overall, I agree with almost all of Pariser’s notions. He is deeply worried about what will happen if our Internet worlds continue to get filtered and filtered until our computers know exactly what we want to ask them before we even get the chance to. First of all, The Filter Bubble is a concept, coined by Pariser, used to explain what the new generation of the Internet really is doing to us. He says that the “internet filter looks at the things you seem to like- the actual things you’ve done, or the things people like you like- and tries to extrapolate.” This used to just be a worry because of Google, but now more than a handful of sites and companies are adopting this type of optimization, especially for marketing. It optimizes everything, business wise. Advertisements are as streamlined as they could possibly be and the user is never getting pulled in the wrong direction towards something they are uninterested in. It’s a win-win situation, right? Pariser points out the flaws with this model that has become so embedded within our technological framework.

            This book is for everybody that is curious about where things could go if we are not careful as well as media critics wondering what’s next. In Nancy Baym’s book “Personal Connections in the Digital Age” she critically defines technological determinism. I think that Pariser opinions are closely aligned with the theory of technological determinism. We hope that the public sphere is stronger than what will happen at the next Apple conference. We hope that the public will affect the technology, not the other way around. But with search personalization as a legitimate thing we are now dealing with, I am more fearful of what will happen to society if our own individual filter bubbles get smaller and more confined (Pariser as well).

            Pariser is good at taking the other side as well, understanding that this is a sticky situation because having optimized results fitting our interests really does help, a lot of the time, and he says that, “to some extent, we’ve always consumed media that appealed to our interests and avocations and ignored much of the rest” but the difference now, is that, there are three new dynamics:

1)    You are the only person in your filter bubble.

2)    Your filter bubble is invisible: it’s hard to believe that results showing up on your Google or yahoo page are biased or subjective since you are not told this is what is going on.

3)    You don’t choose to enter the bubble. Unlike television, where you know, most of the time, what type of view you are getting, the Internet is seemingly democratic and open, leading you to believe that what you stumble upon, is really just stumbling.

And Pariser says, it is not just stumbling!! This is the point he makes again and again that resonates with me. We believe that the internet is full of free information waiting for us to soak it up, what we don’t know is how much information and media we are missing just because of our past search history. What if there was a day where you binged on Justin Bieber videos? You may start seeing more celebrity-focused news and advertisements rather than what’s currently going on in Libya or Egypt. Your computer is a machine, and it uses algorithms to unconsciously box you in to your own likes and interests. Every time you “like” something on Facebook that goes into a log of everything you liked before, narrowing your feed to things, hopefully, more likable than not.

            An argument that Pariser makes about marketers who target this new filter bubble generation is one that is a little iffy for me still. Pariser uses the trend postmaterialism to explain the point in our history where we are no longer struggling for a better existence for our children because we are those children that were struggled for. Moreover, because of this, while “earlier generations emphasize financial achievement and order, postmaterialists value self-expression and ‘being yourself’. I mean, remember when Time magazine’s person of the year was “YOU?” It speaks to what is happening now. If we don’t want to read about politics and issues important to our democracy and global affairs, we don’t really have to, ever. Just don’t search it for a month and never again will you have to. Because of this obsession with ourselves, brand marketers are adopting a method called brand fragmentation. This is the understanding that not all people want the same things out of the same product. He says “personalization is both a cause and an effect of the brand fragmentation process. The filter bubble wouldn’t be so appealing if it didn’t play to our postmaterial desire to maximize self- expression” (161). After reading the book, I too, am worried. We need to start thinking a little bit more about what is happening to our public sphere and why argument and debate is much less encouraged due to the Internet’s ability to make you feel like you are the only person existing among your interests on your web history, and that’s all that matters. 



~Sophie G.

My Review on "Likeable Social Media"

Likeable Social Media:  http://www.amazon.com/Likeable-Social-Media-Customers-Irresistible/dp/0071762...

There are many books about social media marketing that talk about how to maximize the company’s reach to customers and frequency of contact by using social media as a tool. Likeable Social Media written by Dave Kerpen is different from those books in the way that it does not simply teach you how to use social media but also talks about theoretical importance of social media in terms of business marketing, with practical techniques and real examples of social media marketing conducted by companies.

First of all, what I like about this book is that each chapter concisely explains what companies/organization should do; and it does not only show what they should work at but also tells how to actually do it. For example, chapter 6 tells you to “Respond Quickly to All Bad Comments”. Kerpen indicates how important it is to “communicate” with the customers by responding to every bad comment without ignoring it. “Respond Quickly to All Bad Comments” is indeed what you should aim at, but it is easier to say it than to actually do it. Understanding it, Kerpen gives you a tip to use Klout.com, which enables you to rank people depending on “how many friends and followers they have”, and respond to more influential users on social media. Like this example, the other chapters also teach readers what companies should aim at while understanding marketing situations on social media platforms and providing them with specific tools and techniques that might facilitate them to achieve the aim.

All of the instructions for social media marketing in the book, for example “Listen First, and Never Stop Listening”, “Be Honest and Transparent”, and “Share Stories”, can be summarized in what Kerpen emphasizes in this book, that is, “be human” in all social media activities – just “be likeable” as a person. He explains, to be a likable brand on social media you have to act like a person whom other people gather around at a cocktail party. Kerpen states that you treat customers in the way “you’d like to be treated” and you share contents that you would want to know are most important on social media. It sounds like a matter of course but companies can fail in doing so if they act on social media in the same way they do on traditional mass media. Kerpen points out companies should not “advertise” or “promote” in the way they do on traditional media; they should focus on “communicating” with consumers as one of the social media users. Companies are required to communicate differently on social media from traditional media because each of their activities on social media will be a component of their brand identities. I think his argument can be connected to what Nancy Baym says in her book, Personal Connections in the Digital Age, about users’ identities on SNS: “very small pieces of information, which were often not intended to be sources of information about the self, can become inordinately influential” (Baym 120).When a company engages in social media marketing, they have to think how each of their efforts, such as responding to bad comments or even not responding to them, can contribute to their brand identity that will be constructed via social media.

One thing that I criticize this book for is that it primary focuses on Facebook marketing. All of his instructions introduced in each chapter can be applicable to other SNSs. And Kerpen sometimes talks about Twitter and Likedin too. But it seems that the tools and the techniques, which he explains readers can use, are more applicable to Facebook than the other social media. Baym would say, different kind of social media sites “provide different cues” which help users construct their identities (108). There might be different tactics that a company should focus on depending on different social media platforms in order to create a likeable identity.

My review on Amazon:  http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A18T01698LNE4P/ref=cm_pdp_rev_mor...


Sachi

 

Book Review

The Future of Music: Manifesto for the Digital Music Revolution

By David Kusek & Gerd Leonhard

http://www.amazon.com/Future-Music-Manifesto-Digital-Revolution/dp/0876390599/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1321966302&sr=8-1


This book discusses the impact of technology and social media and how it has both changed and shaped the music industry as we know it today.  Additionally, it looks at how the restructuring of relationship between music and technologies has led to the creation of innovative and successful strategies for driving revenue in the industry.  The book doesn’t solely focus on technology alone, but rather, provides a holistic approach to the future of music.  While the book is relatively short, it provides an easy to comprehend overview of some of the changing ideologies and practices in music business.  Though the content is presented in a way that’s accessible to all audiences, the book would probably be of most interest to industry professionals, or artists looking to grasp a better understanding of the digital music revolution.  Because of this great ‘overview’, I found myself wanting more emphasis and detail on the marketing aspect of music on the web. 


The authors outlined ’10 Things That Will Guide the Future of Music’:

-Music matters more than ever.

-Artists are the brands and entertainment is the attraction.

-Publishing income is crucial for the future.

-Digital niche marketing outperforms mass marketing.

-The pricing model for music has gone out the window.

-The ‘record’ business is not the ‘music’ business.

-Artists and their managers will shape the future.

-People discover new music online and from each other.

-Audiences demand/get increased convenience and value.

-New models will embrace a more dynamic view of music.


Other interesting topics of discussion included how the digital revolution has dissolved the theory that music is a ‘product’. The book also sets to disprove that file sharing is killing the music industry, as the authors believe there is no solid proof. Additionally, thanks to social media, it doesn’t take a lot of money to launch a music career.  The main message of the book is that the future of music is about “access to music, not ownership”.  The internet has made the competition to get music out to the masses much larger and at a faster pace.  The marketing of music has thus become about ‘exposure and discovery’.  However, it’s not just a free for all… consumers still need and want tastemakers to expose them to quality artists and music.  This means that the concepts of ‘’word of mouth” and authentic “endorsement” are crucial to the success of an artist today. The music business has tapped into this by focusing on direct marketing though online fan clubs, merchandise stores, fan communities, etc.  By targeting a market niche online, artists can not only increase their audience, but retain fans as well.   The book also addresses how distribution has shifted to the digital format as well.  The fall of the CD has led to both legal (iTunes, Spotify, etc.) and illegal means of dissemination.  Similarly, online radio and television are becoming more diverse in comparison to their traditional formats.  Emphasis has been placed on giving audiences a customized listening experience to cater to their musical preferences.  Overall, I thought the book provided a good general coverage of the changes in music within the digital age. For anyone interested in the topic, I would suggest checking out the author’s blog here: http://www.futureofmusicbook.com


(I posted this on amazon, but it hasn't shown up on the website yet)


-Emma L