Top 25 Free eBooks on Social Media

eBooks are an essential part of internet marketing from a standpoint of providing solid information on a given subject matter. eBooks are normally sold throughout the internet marketing world along with free versions that are meant as an additional value to the visitor or potential customer. At this point I also offer 3 ‘free ebooks' on Social Media to those that subscribe via email to Social Media Core.

It is no secret that most of these free ebooks are written by an author who typically gives the ebook on a non-commercial license in order to share the information and at the same time possible draw traffic back to their website or upsell to another ebook or product.

Most people will search on Google or through time gather a collection of free ebooks. I like to use the social media strategy in having the free ebooks come to me. That is why I use a website calledScribd.com to check on new free ebooks on a given subject matter. In this case Social Media. Lately many have been uploaded to be shared. Of these, I have compiled a list of the current Top 25 free ebooks on Social Media. The order is random as quite honestly I have not read all of them. The 26th free ebook to the reader who reads all of them and gives me their opinion on the actual top order. Note: I have compiled a list of ‘true ebooks' that are in PDF and Word Doc format.

1. Belonging Networks Corporate Social Networking
2. Social Web Basics
3. The 2009-2014 World Outlook for Advertising for Social Media Web Sites
4. Social Media and Customer Service
5. Center For Social Media - Youth As E-Citizens
6. How Blogs and Social Media are Changing Public Relations
7. Social media and the banking industry
8. Social Media: 40 Places to Find Web 2.0 for Your Web Site
9. Social Media Marketing Strategies Guide
10. Nielsen - Pharma & Social Media
11. The Need for Speed - Using Social Media to Speed Innovation
12. What is Social Media?
13. ComplexDiscovery - User Generated Content, Social Media, and Advertising
14. Social Media Guide Release
15. Social Media & Marketing - Online Networking & Advertising February 2008
16. ebook: The Art and Science of Social Media and Community Relations
17. What is Social Media? - Book 2
18. Social Media Maps
19. Social Media Manifesto by Brian Solis
20. New Media Case Studies 2008
21. The Impact of Social Media on Innovation - Josh Bernoff
22. The Secret Underground Guide to Social Media for Organisations
23. Customer Service: The Art of Listening and Engagement Through Social Media
24. The Social Web Analytics eBook 2008
25. The Essential Guide to Social Media

About Social Media Core Social Media Core was started as a blog to cover social media from 4 main focal points. The "Stars" of Social Media, Strategy, Technology, and Measurement. From within these 4 main focal points comments and opinions are encouraged on each blog post to better understand the past, current, and future state of Social Media and the impact from a consumer and enterprise level.

How to Launch Facebook Offers in Minutes

One of the most powerful features you can use to promote your business is Facebook Offers. That's the good news. The even better news is that it takes just minutes to create an offer.  Here we will go step by step from idea to redemption. I will make some simple assumptions as skip a few steps such as "Log into your Facebook account."

Step by Step

1.  On your page, at the top of your timeline on the left hand side you will see an image listing:  Status, Photo/Video, Offer, Event +

 

 

2.  Click Offer, Event +

3.  A dialog box will open.  Click Offer.  (This area also has other tools such as Event, Milestone, Question aka Polls).

4.  A new dialog box will open and here's where we start to get down to business.

Make the Offer 

Upload an Image - the image should be clean and uncluttered.  A simple close up of the item is all that's needed.

Write a Headline - keep it simple and strong.  This is the call to action and what will get people in your door.

Limit the Number of Offers People Can Claim - two thoughts here; create a large number.  This leads people to believe you need a large amount to meet demand or use a small number to create scarcity and urgency.  You decide.

Set an Expiration Date for your offer - simple enough

Add your Terms and Conditions - 1 per person, 1 per day, 1 per table, cannot be combined with other offers.  Whatever is appropriate for your situation.

Example Offer 

4a.  Here is one I made for a clients.  It contains a simple image, a strong headline.  I like to start my headline with FREE when I can.  I also like my headlines to be as simple as possible for clarity.  I listed the number of free items, when the offer expires and the term.

At this stage if everything looks OK click the preview button.

Post the Offer


Your offer is now ready to post.  Click the Post button.

The offer gets posted to your timeline for your fans to see.

Fans Redeem the Offer

When your fans click on "Get Offer" and redeem your fantastic offer they will receive a message and an email.  They then have the option to print the email or take their smart phone into your venue and show the staff the redemption message.

Where to Promote

 

Where should you promote your offer?

 

Facebook

Email Newsletter

At the venue; that being the store, restaurant wherever the business operates.

 

Promotion Ideas and Creating Likes

Check In Flyer Example

In an earlier post, Facebook Brand Building, we learned that combination text and image posts get more attention and traction.  So coincidence that the Facebook template to create an offer is a combination text and image?  Nope.

Taking that one step further, create some POP, flyer's, ads, whatever you want to call it for your store front windows, restaurant tables, bathroom walls, wherever you can put up a compelling reason for customers to visit your Facebook page.

Value of a Like 

It may sound strange to offer a special once the customer is in the store but just because they are in the store doesn't necessarily mean they Like you on Facebook.  On the flyer add a message to "Like Us on Facebook" and you may get a new fan.  We detail that the value of a fan is $137 in the post "Value of a Fan".  If you haven't seen that post you might take a look.  Check back shortly.  I am working on a new article that details exactly how to turn fan building opportunities into growth for your business.

3 Warning Signs That Your Social Media Efforts Will Fail

Businesses shouldn't rush into social media.

Because having no social media presence at all is better than having a bad one.

Just because something is popular or trendy doesn't mean you need to do it.

Pinterest for your business is probably a waste of time. It all depends on your unique situation.

Here are 3 questions you need to answer before jumping in to social media.

Image courtesy of deanmeyersnet

1. How does this support your business?

Most people start social media because they hear about it on TV, read about it in the news and hear from others that "it's a great way to market your business".

But most don't understand why they're doing it, or what to expect from it.

They can't define what success will look like before they begin.

That's a big problem. You don't need to know the ROI. But you do need to understand how it's going to either (1) increase revenue, (2) decrease costs, or (3) increase customer support.

So figure out your social media goals before jumping in head-first. Then when you understand it, you'll appreciate it more and invest more time and effort.

2. Are your expectations realistic?

Being successful in social media is extremely difficult.

It's a 24/7 job, constantly evolving, So you need to have realistic expectations.

Not only in terms of success (see #1 above). But also what it's going to take to succeed.

Because it may be inexpensive, but it takes a ton of effort and time. So if you don't have the energy, or can't hire people to take control, then don't even start.

For example, you can't hire blog writers for $10 per article and expect it to drive business and build an audience.

And you can't launch a new website, and expect SEO traffic to flood your website the next day.

Inbound marketing tactics like social media and content marketing can drastically improve yourmarketing ROI.

But they're difficult, time consuming, and long-term tactics. You need to be willing to work for the long-term payoff if you want social media to build your business.

3. Why should your target customers care?

Finally, why should your customers read your blog posts, "Like" your Facebook page, or interact with you online?

The key to social media is engagement. Because without it, people won't stick around any buy something.

And people don't interact with you because you're awesome. They do it because it benefits them.

Maybe it makes them laugh, cry, or shocks them into taking action.

Either way, it's not about you. To succeed in social media, you need to be laser-focused on your audience and their needs, wants and desires.

For example, just because you're in a "boring industry" doesn't mean people won't read your blog posts or follow you on Twitter. You just need to focus on what your product or services does for them, and come up with blog content ideas around that.

Because if you want people to interact, then you need to get them to care. This isn't easy. You need to engage them, watch what they respond to, and be ready to experiment.

And if you're not ready to embrace that, then you're probably better off not wasting your time at all.

Recent Google Changes Digital Agencies Should Know

Google © by Daniel Morris

As Google continues to reign supreme in the world of search engines, it is in the best interests of any company to keep up to date with what Google has to offer and how it works. The algorithms used are constantly being improved and updated, and whilst this is aimed at ease of use for the consumer, any savvy business will keep track and use the search engine properties to best promote themselves.

‘Freshness Update’

The most talked about change that has been made recently has been dubbed ‘the freshness factor’. Google have altered the way search results are prioritised, giving greater visibility to sites that have been updated recently. This means that digital agencies should now be encouraging their clients to regularly add new content to their sites, as this will improve the chances of ranking highly in a search. Although this change has caused a certain amount of controversy amongst web users so far, with many believing that just because something is new doesn’t mean it is more relevant, for the time being it is how it works. It is therefore beneficial to every company to add new content to their websites as often as possible, to increase their chances of heading up a search page.

Content Visibility

Google have also decided to pull more snippets from page content as opposed to from titles or header text. This means companies really need to think hard about every piece of text they display on their websites. Although this will not affect the visibility of the search in the way that titles do, it does mean that people could be reading any small part of any piece of content before they even click to open the website. Therefore more care must be taken by some to ensure that their content isn’t centralised around a catchy header, but is consistently informative and entertaining.

Algo changes

The cross-language information retrieval has also been improved recently. Google have implemented algorithms to recognise the language a query is written in, and return results in that language. For example, even if someone is logged onto an English server, if they write their query in German they will receive relevant results form both English and German pages, so multi-national companies need to be aware of consistency issues.

SEO

Choosing a professional SEO company to assist in designing your website is becoming a necessity. Choose one with years of experience, as well as knowledge of all the latest updates, to ensure your company is top of the list every time.

The Acqui-Hire: Rethinking the Trust We Place in Start-Ups

When Facebook purchased Instagram earlier this week, the resounding sentiment was one of anxiety. Avid Instagram users immediately announced they were deleting their accounts while others pleaded for Facebook not to change or “kill” the application. By now, this type of anxious, confused response to a start-up’s acquisition has become familiar; the acquisition announcement now marks the tipping point in a digital cycle we’ve all come to know quite well

1. Hear about a useful new application or service, try it out and love it
2. Start using the service more frequently, recommend it to friends and grow to depend on it
3. Wake up one morning to a glowing announcement on the app’s site that “We’ve been acquired by Facebook/ Twitter/ Google/ Microsoft/ Apple/ Amazon…!” and shortly thereafter…
4. Mourn the app’s closing while frantically searching for a similar one to replace it (and never finding one quite as good)
5. (Repeat)

It’s pointless to question why the acquired company allows itself to be purchased. Most of them know that the fruit of their blood, sweat, and tears will be reduced to an acquisition notice frozen in time; yet when that Godfather-offer is placed at their feet one can only imagine how difficult it must be to refuse. Other than those with obvious answers, the cycle raises some other important questions: Why purchase a profitable, marketable service just to shut it down? Who holds the responsibility towards existing users who are left behind after a shut down? And finally, how does this acquisition pattern affect the relationship between start-ups and potential users?

Companies such as Facebook, Twitter, Google etc. are transparent in their motivations for acquiring successful startups and then killing their products. As Mark Zuckerberg explained during a speaking engagement at Y Combinator’s Startup School in 2010, “We [Facebook] have not once bought a company for the company. We buy companies to get excellent people….” The talent acquisition Zuckerberg explains has come to be known as the “acqui-hire” and is increasingly commonplace since 2010.

Most recently (in December), Facebook acqui-hired Gowalla, a Foursquare-like social network, and speculation abounded as to what would happen to the service itself. Only a few weeks ago a heartfelt goodbye replaced Gowalla’s homepage, signaling what most people already knew would occur.

Simply put, acquirers are often just not interested in the acquired company’s product. To the acquirer the product is just proof of the acquired employees’ worth as new, high-rank hires. Yet what about the dedicated users who are left behind after an acqui-hire shut down? Less discussed is the trail of user anger, frustration and anxiety which an acqui-hire leaves in its trail.

In January, Summify, a start-up which “…creates a beautiful daily summary of the most relevant news from your social networks…” joyfully announced that they had been acquired by Twitter and posted a short FAQ explaining: “We will be disabling new account registrations immediately and we will also be removing some features. We will keep the email summaries for a few more weeks, but at some point we will shut down the current Summify product...”

Of the 308 responses to the announcement many were congratulatory, yet many others were of a different tone and echoed the following sentiments:

Brad Brooks (@ninthart) #

While I’m really happy for you guys, I’m really upset that you seem to be shutting down the whole Summify experience. I’ve come to depend on the iPhone app, and I’m in shock that it’s going away. Is there no way that Twitter will allow you to keep the app going?

January 19, 2012

                               

Max #

There’s got to be a way to keep the service up and running. This is so disappointing and is a real ugly move for your users who rely on Summify and would have come along as you grew and monetized it. So disappointing.

January 19, 2012

Philip Ryan Johnson #

Wow. One could only wish us all to be so happy, but it is clear Summify’s announcement does little more than throw its committed users under the bus. What a shame to have grown such an engaging, dedicated, and trusting community of users—a daunting ordeal envied by all startups—only to backhand everyone in the process. And unfortunately, the growing disappointment and anger easily rubs off onto Twitter for being viewed as the key player initiating the acquisition. Sad.

January 19, 2012

So many of the responses to the announcement reflected the above sentiments that the company felt compelled to issue an update to the announcement stating:

“Thanks for your notes of congratulations. We’re thrilled to be joining Twitter. Some of you have expressed concerns about the product being shut down. We appreciate your support and enthusiasm….”

Needless to say the update gives little solution or comfort to those disappointed users who feel used and abandoned. Unfortunately, the acqui-hire product shut down doesn’t end there. About two weeks ago Posterous, announced that it had been acquired by Twitter and in their announcement included the following statement:

“Posterous Spaces will remain up and running without disruption. We’ll give users ample notice if we make any changes to the service. For users who would like to back up their content or move to another service, we’ll share clear instructions for doing so in the coming weeks."

The announcement set off familiar alarms for many users and amassed 850 comments. Along with the usual congratulatory replies were an unavoidable number of confused, frustrated and anxious responses:

Mark David Zahn responded:

Don't like the sound of this at all. Twitter ruined Tweetdeck. Better not happen to Posterous. I just spent a ton of time moving everything I had from Tumblr.

Ian Cummings responded:

This may sound odd because it's a free platform but I feel slightly betrayed by all this…

Mauricio responded:

Annnd that's a wrap for Posterous.

This is your "ample time notice" guys. Get cracking on "exporting your content"...

Joe Ross responded:

I hope this isn't another one of Twitter's acquire and kill/ignore or dis-innovate maneuvers. See: TweetDeck

Douglas Craver responded:

I hope you guys can turn around what has been the Twitter track record of ruining the technology it acquires. Posterous is a much more innovative platform for expression and I pray I don't have to waste a week moving my numerous SPACES to another platform in the future. If Twitter is wise it will provide deeper integration and use Posterous to grow an actual community of engaged users vs. a community of narcissistic users.

Note: Comments were disabled for Gowalla’s acquisition announcement.

Many of the Posterous responses equated the takeover to Twitter’s purchase of TweetDeck. Although TweetDeck continues to exist, it was stripped of many of the features which made it so popular with users (i.e removal of Deck.ly which enabled a user to tweet things longer than 140 characters).

You might be saying to yourself “It’s business, it’s not personal and this is how things work in the world of the start-up.” That may be true, but the acqui-hire phenomenon has deeper reaching effects that need to be considered.

Every time a successful start-up is purchased by a larger company and its product is thrown aside or stripped down it chips away at the basic trust that a user places in a new start-up as well as in the larger company. If a user comes to think of start-ups as experimental, temporary services who will sell themselves, their product and their user base to the highest bidder (as many start-ups are exemplifying), less and less people will be willing to make the necessary leap of faith alongside a new start-up; and the trust between the user and the acquiring company also gets damaged. This general sentiment of distrust is beginning to seep deeper into the general consciousness as was pointedly summed up by a hurt and disappointed Summify user:

Andy #

It’s impossible to trust apps like this. I’ve been through the experience before, here today and gone tomorrow. They think nothing of pulling the rug out from underneath you. Like I said, there’s no incentive to start using any of these   apps anymore.

January 19, 2012

Despite the air of disappointment and frustration there are rare instances when an acqui-hire shut down doesn’t succeed in crushing the acquired company’s product. In July of 2011 Twitter acquired the company BackType, and with it the service BackTweets which for $100/ month allowed users to search for URLs in a tweet history. As expected, BackTweets was shut-down shortly after the acquisition. However, this month the BackTweets.com domain was purchased after it unexpectedly went to auction and the service was revived, FOR FREE!

Needless to say, the responses were a refreshing change from the previous responses BackTweets was receiving:

Allie Townsend  

Hey, there's a new http://t.co/ElIBOMfq!

Black Daliah  

#Twitter bought it just 2 take it down. Some1 brought it back to life! http://t.co/S64Kcg7V

For old BackTweets users the revival must certainly be a breath of fresh air- I just can't help wondering how Twitter feels.

Bang for Your Buck? The Cost of Social Media Marketing

I’ve been travelling a lot lately working with a wide variety of companies from Olympic sponsors to global beer companies. I’m asked the same questions time and again – what does it cost to do Facebook marketing right? How much are other companies spending on social media marketing? What are the right measurements?

The first thing to realize is there are two ways to execute social media marketing:

1. Stand-alone as a distinct separate silo within the company or marketing department
2. Integrated as part of a holistic marketing strategy

The first method – stand-alone Facebook or Twitter marketing – is good for companies with limited resources, who want to drive a small group of customers to take action.

Investing in a small stand alone social program can be $1,500-5,000 a month. 

The biggest bang for the buck is from Facebook and Twitter updates which drive traffic to a value-add blog. Knowing your audience and the different buyers you have, then doing a blog to them once or twice a week is the most effective way to leverage Facebook or Twitter. You can put a teaser – with a high quality photo on your Facebook site, and Tweet about the blog.

Using Facebook and Twitter to amplify a blog is a long-term strategy that can take 6-12 months to work, but once you have the machine working it is very valuable marketing. You build loyal followers and create an advantage not easily taken away.

To jumpstart a stand-alone program Facebook ads driving traffic to your brand page, and Google Ads driving people directly to the blog are the quickest way to get some return in a week or two on your investment.  For $30-100 a day you can use Facebook, Twitter or Google Ads to amplify your message. Be sure to set dedicated URL’s to analyze traffic using something like Google Analytics. And make sure you try three or four ads to see the response rate to different wording.

If you are a Fortune 1000 company and have dedicated web and online staff  then Facebook and Social Media marketing should be thoughtfully integrated into event marketing,  product launches and customer service.

For an incremental $100,000 a year you can start to get a much higher ROI from your events and sponsorships. If you allocate $5-10 million to social marketing and have dedicated staff for the social media function you should follow five best practices:

1. Integrate social media with product launch, events, and customer service. Read more aboutusing social media to drive revenue in one of my recent blogs.
2. Respond within minutes or hours (not days) to any comments on social media about customer service, product capability, sales locations etc. You need to track your company or product name to do this
3. Tell a continual story through social media – there should be a trend and voice to your efforts. This includes showing pictures from your events to giving Facebook fans sneak-peak videos and doing crowd sourcing .
4. Measure and Analyze everything. If you can’t measure it you can’t manage it. Getting great amplification from events through social media  experiences should be compared with direct response from  Google Ads and money spent on SEO.
5. Stay educated – Facebook has it’s EdgeRank, Google has it’s SEO algorithm, Twitter has multi-grouping and all these things change. This will change your strategy on a regular basis. Read a lot about it and attend seminars or find peer groups to get best practice.

Some companies we work with are spending $10million plus on social media. They are getting phenomenal returns in part because many f their competitors have not figured it out yet. Be the first ones in your industry to really leverage it and figure it out and you will reap the rewards.

If you want to find out more about using social media for your events download our eBook on Social Media Marketing at Events.