This book showed up at my door before the holidays both unexpected and un-requested so needless to say it was a bit of surprise when I open up the package and out slide a book.
The full title is Friend With Benefits – A Social Media Marketing Handbook and is authored by Darren Barefoot and Julie Szabo.
Now anyone who knows me – or has read anything I have written you will probably chuckle at the imagery of me cringing at the reading of the title. However I love reading and learning so I figured what the hell let’s give it a bit of a read to see how it develops.
What I will say right of the bat is that it is indeed a handbook of how to work with social media from within a business – both large and small. It’s format is friendly and easy going with easy to understand explanations of all the different terms you will hear and traps that will take you off at the knees as you brave this new world.
This isn’t a book for anyone who has spent any time – meaning more than a year – involved with social media. It is however the perfect book for that person in a company who has suddenly found themselves tasked with getting the company caught up to speed with this social media thing because the boss found out you where on Facebook.
Here’s an idea.
As handy as this book might be it isn’t one that I would probably have gotten for myself and my bookcase but that doesn’t stop it from being a really handy book for some-one. So here’s the deal if you – or some-one you know – have found themselves in that position and you don’t have the faintest clue of where to start tell me the story in the comments.
The best most sad sack story will win the book. It is still in excellent condition sans any liner notes that I usually make. The contest will run until January 31, 2010 and I’ll announce the winner in the first week of February (oh and I’ll pay for the postage to send it to the winner).
I remember a time, and it wasn’t that long ago either, when people would snicker under their breath if you said your had self-published a book and then had the nerve to call yourself an author.
