Authors: Guy Kawasaki and Peg Fitzpatrick
Publisher: Portfolio
Reviewer: Ian Smith, UK head of marketing, Harris Interactive
As a marketer that frequently ‘dabbles’ in social media, I often find myself post-rationalising (pun intended) on why certain tweets, status updates and pins out-perform others in terms of share-ability, engagement and follower generation. I was hopeful this book would arm me with some practical tips that could enhance my social media activities – I wasn’t disappointed.
Within the book, Guy Kawasaki, former chief evangelist of Apple, and Peg Fitzpatrick, a digital media strategist for Kreussler, layout the tactical gems of their combined wisdom and social expertise.
It’s rammed with over 120 practical tips covering everything from how to ‘optimise your social media profile’ and ‘feeding the content monster’ through to ‘how to integrate social media and blogging’ and ‘how to get more followers’.
Yet, as great as this book is at delivering on the ‘hows’, I was surprised that there was so little on the ‘whys’. As a marketer I need to show that the resources I’m ploughing into social media are delivering, not just in terms of engagement but hard-nosed financial returns. Strategies to help support this consideration would have been a useful addition to the book.
Another annoying aspect to the hardcopy version was that it includes hyperlinks which in the online version link to really useful resources. Here, they are useless and, because they don’t include URLs, they’re not always easy to track down when you do get online. My advice – buy the electronic version.
Useful tips, irreverent humour, and a well-crafted layout make this an informative, enjoyable and quick read.