There are a plethora of books about social media, ranging a 30,000 foot approach (like Chris Brogan’s Trust Agents) to practical how-to guides. That’s where The Zen of Social Media Marketing, by Shama Hyder Kabani fits in. The Zen of Social Media Marketing is a step by step guide to the most popular (and most important) social networking websites for marketing.
Kabani starts off with an introduction to online marketing where she introduces basic marketing concepts such as the ACT methodology (attract, convert, transform). She briefly discusses websites and blogs, and how to optimize them for search engines (a very basic introduction to SEO).
Chapter 3 is where we first start learning about social media marketing. Kabani explains the difference between marketing and social media. Marketing is promoting a product or service to increase sales; social media is a platform where people connect and communicate. They’re both very different, and Kabani explains the differences well. She explains the benefits of social media marketing, and lays some ground rules that will keep an inexperienced marketer from making mistakes in the social media space.
The next three chapters cover Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Kabani walks you through setting up an account, filling in your profile, and using the service. Unfortunately, even with this book being the only four months old, some parts of these three chapters are already out of date. However, it’s a great introduction to the individual websites and there’s a lot of practical advice about using them effectively.
In chapter 7, Kabani covers video and YouTube. Its debatable how social video actually is, but it’s an excellent online marketing strategy and this chapter is a great introduction.
Chapter 8 discusses setting up a social media policy, including who owns the account should an employee leave, what constitutes social media, dealing with confidential information, and who is responsible for updating the social media sites. Kabani briefly touches on monitoring your brand on social media, but could have been expanded on it quite a bit. I feel this is one area where the book is lacking in content.
The book wraps up with several case studies of small businesses that have used social media marketing successfully.
Overall The Zen Of Social Media Marketing is an excellent introduction to social media marketing, and the most popular social media websites. Aside from the lack of detail regarding social media monitoring, I feel the only main drawback to this book is part of its page layout. On each page the content is surrounded by a black border that made it difficult to focus on the actual text.
If you’re looking for a how-to guide for setting up a profile on the main social media sites, and some basic information about using social media for marketing your business, and I definitely recommend you take a look at Shama’s book.
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Brandon -
Thank you so much for such a comprehensive review.
I’ll pass along your comments about the internal display to my Publisher. And the beauty of the “live” book is that I can add more to the social monitoring aspect to the online copy. Thanks again for your very useful and relevant feedback.
I appreciate your comments immensely! = )