Joel Postman’s SocialCorp: Social Media Goes Corporate may be lightweight in terms of pages (it’s under 200 pages), but the contents pack lots of good content for companies trying to get on the Social Media wave.

As the title suggests, the book is targeted to corporations who would like to put a Web 2.0 spin to corporate communications. The tone of the book is not technical- as a matter of fact, there is no code anywhere in the book. This makes it accessible to managers and executives that know something about the internet and marketing. One theme the book touches on is “Going for it,” that is, allaying some of the fears most corporations about social media (e.g. lack of control, unauthorized information, chaos, etc.).

There are easy to read case studies of how companies implemented social media to their advantage. From corporate blogging, Twitter, and social media ethics, Joel Postman showcases the wide array of online tools in a practical and concise manner. Also, the book touches on the fudgiest part of social media: measurement.

If you’re looking for a play-by-play guide for implementing Social Media-powered corporate communications, this book may disappoint. Postman gives a pointers approach to showing the way to the promised land of SocialCorp and chooses his words carefully to to avoid confusion. But if you ask me, SocialCorp: Social Media Goes Corporate is a great starting point to begin the Social Media journey for companies.

Joel Postman argues persuasively that the new “basic business skills” now requires a basic understanding of social media and the ability to use social networks correctly, alongside presentation skills and the ability to create and understand an Excel spreadsheet.

SocialCorp provides several starting places for organizations that want to create social media initiatives specifically for each audience and to engage them on their terms, in a way that is relevant to them. A progressive, forward-thinking company adopts social media ‘in a way that accomplishes strategic business and communications objectives without compromising the company’s primary obligations as a corporation,’ he says.

For example, Dell, Zappos, IBM, and Procter & Gamble are among companies using social media to reshape their relationships with their audiences. Dell’s IdeaStorm functions as a full-blown customer engagement program and a catalyst for change in the company’s products and services.

Organizations can monitor conversations using social media to learn, day-by-day, how their brand is performing, where the company is strong, and where there’s work to do. The organization can join in the conversation and influence the brand for the better.

Social media strategy isn’t that complex, Postman says, but it does require a synthesis of traditional thinking, creativity, understanding of new tools and etiquette, and the willingness to take some chances.

I know that I should do more social media marketing for my own business. I do some, but I don’t really do all that I could.

The reason is that I have a distaste for spammy marketing. You know, “get 4 gazillion Facebook followers!” and all that sort of thing. The sleazy Internet marketers have really turned me off.

On the other hand, I am reminded of a young women who does Tweets for a few local businesses here. She announces restaurant specials, provides links of interest for the people who follow her husbands computer repair business, and just does amusing reminders every now and then. I follow her tweets because I want to know about the things she posts. It’s not annoying – she’s doing it the right way, and that’s exactly the sort of thing that this book suggests.

There’s nothing spammy here, nothing that makes me uncomfortable (and I’m more than a little squeamish on this subject). Anyone with a business, whether it’s Big Business or just you working out of your living room, can benefit from the advice in this book. No sleaze, just practical advice about how to market well using social media.

This would be a great introduction for anyone who can’t imagine why Twitter, Facebook et al. could be good for business, but it will also be useful for fine tuning the efforts of those who are already using the Web to enhance their marketing.

When I started my social media mar­ket­ing firm three years ago I had an advan­tage. By autumn, 2006, I had passed through New Media Strate­gies as Tech­nol­ogy Strate­gist and Edelman’s elite Pub­lic Affairs Online Advo­cacy team. Even so, my busi­ness part­ner, Mark Har­ri­son, and I made a lot of mis­takes, walked through mine fields, and even­tu­ally started tak­ing more hills than we lost. I started Abra­ham Har­ri­son almost exactly three years ago and I would have really appre­ci­ated Friends with Ben­e­fits: A Social Media Mar­ket­ing Hand­book by Dar­ren Bare­foot and Julie Szabo. Actu­ally, I am kind of bummed that I didn’t write this book myself because I cer­tainly could have and should have — but I didn’t. (Via Mar­ket­ing Con­ver­sa­tion)

Friends with Ben­e­fits spoke to me because I have “lonely nerd” deep inside of me and this book goes all the way back into the yes­ter­years of 80s com­put­ing when I, too, was surf­ing the proto-Inter­net via a 1200-baud modem. Like the book asserts in chap­ter one, we lonely nerds weren’t lonely, “the early BBSs were actu­ally very social” and so were we. Fast-forward from the early 80s — when I was doing dial-up and geek­ing out in Hon­olulu Bul­letin Board Sys­tems — twenty years and “social media” is invented. No, re-invented.

Dar­ren Bare­foot and Julie Szabo get it and they lay it all out into this book and basi­cally wrote the book on start­ing and build­ing Abra­ham Har­ri­son — or a firm or agency like it — from scratch. And not just start­ing an agency but inte­grat­ing social media mar­ket­ing into your adver­tis­ing or PR agency or even adding smart social media capac­ity into your big, medium or even small busi­ness. I am impressed.

Accord­ing to the book, “social media mar­ket­ing is using social media chan­nels to pro­mote your com­pany and its prod­ucts. This type of mar­ket­ing should be a sub­set of your online mar­ket­ing activ­i­ties, com­ple­ment­ing tra­di­tional web-based pro­mo­tional strate­gies like email newslet­ters and online adver­tis­ing cam­paigns. Social media mar­ket­ing qual­i­fies as a form of viral or word-of-mouth mar­ket­ing.” The goal of Friends with Ben­e­fits is to take social media, social media mar­ket­ing, viral mar­ket­ing, and word-of-mouth mar­ket­ing and answer “so what” and “what now?”

What I like about this book is that it is not a book on Twit­ter or Face­book. It answers what and why with a how that is com­pre­hen­sive and includes geekier-but-essential top­ics such as RSS, cor­po­rate blog­ging, and even social media news releases. The real value of the book kicks in in chap­ter 3, “Flag­ging a Ride: Find­ing the Right Blog­gers and Com­mu­ni­ties” when the book goes into the explicit details sur­round­ing blog­ger dis­cov­ery, blog­ger prospect­ing, how to choose the right blog and blog­ger based on their type (per­sonal, top­i­cal, or cor­po­rate) and pop­u­lar­ity (size mat­ters), includ­ing how best to judge blog­gers and blogs using var­i­ous ana­lyt­ics and met­rics tools like [...], Alexa Rank­ing, Google PR, and Tech­no­rati Rank. And from more instinc­tual reviews such as check­ing out Google Trends, men­tions on Google, the num­ber of RSS sub­scribers on Feed­burner, men­tions on blogrolls, pop­u­lar­ity on Twitter/Facebook/FriendFeed, fre­quency of post­ing, vol­ume of com­ments, pro­fes­sion­al­ism, etc.

Chap­ter 4 addresses Neti­quette, some­thing that a lot of books give very lit­tle lip ser­vice to — a small sac­ri­fice to Inter­net pro­to­col. Friends with Ben­e­fits offers quite a solid list of lessons in net­ti­quette: Lis­ten first, take baby steps, make friends, lay your cards on the table, blog­gers aren’t jour­nal­ists, your rep­u­ta­tion pre­cedes you, don’t be a social media spam­mer, and don’t fib — prob­a­bly the most seri­ous list I have found, and one that I have learned needs to be taken dead-seriously. I tried to sug­gest my favorites, but they’re all impor­tant to con­sider, although mak­ing friends — spend­ing time together out­side the office, if you will — is prob­a­bly one of the most impor­tant because when you reach out to any­one for help, espe­cially when it is earned media (mean­ing you’re not pay­ing these blog­gers — or any­one — to write about you or your client), they’re going to ask, “who the hell are you?” and “do I know you?” If you’re nobody they know, peo­ple are more likely to not make deci­sions that are com­pas­sion­ate or human, they’re more likely to just assume that you’re not much bet­ter than a bot — don’t let them.

Chap­ter 5 deals with the social media pitch. Make it com­pelling, rel­e­vant, timely, exclu­sive, per­sonal, brief, com­pre­hen­sive, con­ver­sa­tional, linked, access, and offers an incen­tive (or gift, in our par­lance). This is exactly the list I would have writ­ten — this is the list my team would have writ­ten, too. There are also warn­ing about blo­gola (pay­ola) and other unto­ward things not to do, includ­ing best prac­tices in follow-up. In fact, the value-add of this list is amaz­ing and with a lit­tle help you could very well use Friends with Ben­e­fits as a play-book for your bur­geon­ing (or suf­fer­ing) social media prac­tice — and the only rea­son I am proud instead of threat­ened is that my com­pany actu­ally offers all the doing of the work for our clients and not just social media con­sult­ing. That said, this book is going to put a hell of a lot of social media experts (SME) out to pas­ture when their bosses read this book and learn that their direc­tor of social media doesn’t know what he’s doing. I rec­om­mend this book to all the SMEs out there — read this before your boss does.

Chap­ter 6 is titled “Mea­sur­ing Suc­cess: How to Mon­i­tor the Web.” This chap­ter answers quite a few ques­tions about defin­ing suc­cess and return on invest­ment (ROI), the holy grails of social media mar­ket­ing and the rea­son why too many com­pa­nies who need SMM are hes­i­tant to take the next step, boldly. What’s smart about this chap­ter is that Bare­foot and Szabo tell it like it is: you need to ask your client and your­self how you define suc­cess. Are you inter­ested in brand-building? Grow­ing traf­fic? Con­ver­sion to sales? Social media men­tions? Increased buzz? How are you going to do this? Mon­i­tor­ing? Lis­ten­ing? The issue of man­ag­ing expec­ta­tions is also raised. Unlike ban­ner ads, that turn on or off like a tap, social media mar­ket­ing can be a slow-burn. Being “real­is­tic” and “hum­ble” are rec­om­mended. Then, after dis­cussing what suc­cess could be, Friends with Ben­e­fits dis­cusses web mon­i­tor­ing and how to keep track of your suc­cesses and fail­ures and then how to follow-up. Fol­low­ing up is key. Mov­ing the rela­tion­ship for­ward it key, too. Blog­gers — indeed every­one — hates being used and there are too many exam­ples of a win, a suc­cess, and a post not being followed-up with a neigh­borly thank you in the form of a pri­vate email or a pub­lic com­ment. Remem­ber how your momma told you to be polite and to write a thank you note? Well, come on! Make momma proud.

Chap­ter 7 addresses risk. And there are risks, such as the cam­paign not get­ting off the ground, blog­ger back­lash, the crowd talks back, you get rejected, your ini­tia­tive dies on the vine, you put all your eggs in social media and your other chan­nels shrivel, not being proac­tive (or stay­ing in front of it), you will be mea­sures, some­one gets cold feet in the orga­ni­za­tion and the cam­paign is killed, or even get too much suc­cess too soon and you col­lapse — #fail — under its weight. Good advice at the end: pro­ceed with cau­tion, not cow­ardice.” In my expe­ri­ence, cam­paigns fail from lack of com­mit­ment — from fear and cow­ardice. Before you get out there to engage, you had bet­ter be will­ing to com­mit: be brave.

Chap­ter 8 deals with dam­age con­trol and cri­sis man­age­ment and is short and sweet, deal­ing with how to deal with crises with a use­ful cri­sis man­age­ment primer. There’s too much stuff in there that I can’t be pitch here but they do rec­om­mend that it is essen­tial to keep head of the cri­sis: cre­ate a cri­sis response doc­u­ment, cre­ate a response blog and social media plat­form (and rep­u­ta­tion) right now instead of after the cri­sis occurs (though it is never too late) and be will­ing to engage and not hide down at the bot­tom of the spi­der hole.

I am going to go through the rest of the book faster because I really believe that the most impor­tant book comes in the first 8 chap­ters. Chap­ter 9 reminds us that MySpace is still amaz­ingly rel­e­vant with about 125 mil­lion users world­wide and needs to be respected and the mem­bers can and should be engaged if appro­pri­ate. Same thing with Chap­ter 10 on the sub­ject of Face­book, offer­ing case stud­ies, includ­ing a case study my firm took part in: Sharp’s [...] cam­paign on Face­book done for Lowe NY. Chap­ter 11 deals with [...] and other video-sharing sites. And Chap­ter 12 briefly addresses microblog­ging and Twit­ter. Each of these chap­ters are brief primers, deal­ing a lit­tle bit with appli­ca­tions, with wid­gets, with cul­ture and pro­to­col, and a lit­tle about marketing.

To me, chap­ters 8-12 are throw-aways. If you’re look­ing for a book on Twit­ter mar­ket­ing, there are bet­ter more com­pre­hen­sive guides. To avoid chap­ters 8-12 would have been too much of an omis­sion and social net­works sys­tems are too sexy right now to leave out; how­ever this book is invalu­able and there’s noth­ing like it out there in terms of a real­is­tic por­trayal of what works and what doesn’t. This books teaches you to mea­sure twice and cut once and to trains the reader up on the cul­ture, the expec­ta­tions, and pro­to­col of the social…

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When I heard this book was in production, I was excited. Anyone who writes documentation for a living has likely been asking the questions it addresses, and has wondered what roles will be available to technical writers as Web 2.0 becomes more pervasive and community-generated documents become widely available.

The author does a great job of getting readers up to speed on the technologies that are shaping the documentation industry. This initial material may be review for some, but you can always skip past it if you don’t see any Web 2.0 tools that are unfamiliar. Next, the author demonstrates her experience and knowledge by asking exactly the questions writers need to consider when stepping into community-generated documentation. What roles can the writer play in such communities? How can a writer get involved in a community and provide authority without threatening the openness and non-corporate feel? How can writers assess whether their community efforts are having a positive impact?

Gentle provides insightful answers and detailed suggestions based on her experiences with FLOSS Manuals, corporate blogging, and other Web 2.0 endeavors. The tips she provides in the latter sections of the book are golden, and I plan on re-reading them a few times and sharing the ideas with others in my field.

As the barriers between writers and consumers fall and transparency becomes increasingly vital to the success of products, this book provides the guidance writers need to be successful. I consider it an investment in my career, and will highly recommend it to others.

Anne is a technical writer who has done a considerable amount of work with FLOSS Manuals in documenting the OLPC laptop, and is obviously well-versed in both open-source documentation and social media. The book is designed to give technical writers and other information developers an overview of the tools and techniques available now for documenting products and communicating with end-users through social media and other non-traditional methods.

As a technical writer and community manager, I am exactly the target market for this book, so it is no wonder that I think it is an excellent resource that is long overdue. What surprised me was the depth with which she covered her subjects, the extensive yet highly selective quality of references in the book, and the sheer number of strategies that I hadn’t yet encountered even as a professional in this area.

The most important point Anne makes in the book is that documentation as we know it is changing dramatically. Practically all of the basic tenets of technical documentation are in question. Users depend far more often on advice from random strangers via mailing lists, community forums, and search engines than they do on the technical documentation that comes with the product. I have seen this to be true even for highly technical concepts and tools. This is not news to anyone who has ever used Google to find the answer to a technical question rather than looking in the docs, but it was fascinating to see that phenomenon addressed in such a way that my opinions of it were actually changed. Like many technical writers, I have a lingering fear that I will someday be obsolete and that my job of communicating technical issues to users of technology will be taken over by amateurs in ad-hoc communities. Anne gently reminds us that it is the quantity of information that is skyrocketing, not the quality, and that our jobs as technical communicators are more important than ever in making that information “findable”, even if that means abandoning what we traditionally think of as documentation. What I took away from this aspect of the book was the overwhelming necessity to make human connections, even in technical documentation, an idea that resonates strongly with my own role as a community builder. Chapter 3 spells it out best as “Defining a Writer’s Role with the Social Web”.

The book catalogs the available tools and strategies from several different viewpoints based on documentation strategy—in other words, use cases—rather than simply providing an annotated list. Anne specifically points to references and in-the-trenches stories that underscore her points in a very effective way. The subject that brought me the most “aha!” moments was that of wikis. I use wikis on a daily basis, but there were certain aspects of them that I had overlooked. There were so many interesting references in all sections that I felt compelled to stop reading the book and follow them, which is not a criticism of the writing but rather of the sheer amount of information out there. The consistent, confident, professional tone kept me riveted to the book, but I am now going back over every page and following links.

I highly recommend this book to both technical communicators and those involved in social media and community. My copy is going straight to my boss’ desk.