One of the lessons that we learn from this entire experience is that social media success means hard work – it takes time, dedication, and commitment to make sure that you are effectively using and implementing the tools necessary for your business or client. This was just one of the many great insights I learned when I attended the Social Slam event this past week in Knoxville.
In addition to learning some great things and trends about social media, one of the perks of all of the fabulous goodies that we received from the Social Slam conference was Jay Baer’s new book “The NOW Revolution.” I was very excited and was looking forward to reading it. I have finished reviewing the book, and would like to share my thoughts on it. I think that both Jay and Amber did a very nice job in presenting clear, concise, and insightful commentary on how to strategically use social media for businesses in this ever changing digital environment. The format of the book is also inviting and flows nicely – I appreciated the headings throughout the book and the take-away points – direct and to the point with the main key messages about each point in the chapters.
There were a couple of sections of the book that I thought were absolutely right on and fabulous. I really liked Shift 5 (Response-ability) and Shift 6 (Build a Fire Extinguisher). The first chapter I mentioned discussed the importance of the humanization highway – which gave a nice overview of this process while highlighting some key components that businesses and professionals need to be aware of (ex. listening, responding, participating, and storytelling). This section was thorough yet presented in a way that was very direct and to the point – which I thought was very good. Loved the mini case study as well focusing on Taylor Guitars in connection with the United Airlines Guitar crisis. 🙂
Shift 6 focused on crisis communications (a favorite area of mine!) and I thought that this chapter was very good as well. I liked the connection that was made in the book about the differences in terms of crises that happen in reality and those that occur within the digital or virtual worlds. This is something that is definitely being discussed in the profession as well as in academia – both in research and in practice. I liked the corporate examples in this chapter – looking at how Domino’s , Best Buy, and BP all responded and communicated during a crisis with social media tools was very interesting.
Some other resources that would be also good to look in this area would be the CDC and how they handled the H1N1 crisis – they just came out with a great toolkit highlighting their best practices and how they handled that crisis. It was one example of an organization that 1) handled their communication practices across multiple social media platforms 2) was able to successfully communicate uncertainty – which is something that is a challenge to do for crisis communication professionals and 3) was innovative in not only communicating with social media, but with mobile technology (with mobile applications, SMS, and mobile websites). I would have been interested to see some examples of current crisis communication and social media policies for some of these brands – I know that the US Army, US Air Force, and CDC have policies and guidebooks on this for their organizations, but it would have been great to see some of these additional resources (or links) in the book. 🙂
Overall, this is a fabulous book – highly recommend this for anyone working, researching, or teaching social media – it is indeed a great resource! 🙂 This would be a great book to include as a resource for social media and PR classes. On another note, I actually got to see Jay Baer at the Social Slam event in Knoxville this past week, and I have to say that he does encompass a social media influencer in my opinion. My colleagues and I wrote a research paper on personality characteristics of some of the main social media influencers out there in PR, and I have to say that Jay Baer does fit into this category. He provides great insights, willing to share his expertise and knowledge to the community, and is very engaging on social media. He responded to my tweet on Twitter about reading his book, and he said that I would be particularly interested in Shift 6 – and I was! Thanks again Jay and keep up the great work!
Hope you all are having a great day!
Best Wishes,
Karen
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