Friends with Benefits
A Social Media Marketing Handbook by Darren Barefoot and Julie Szabo is coming out this November. Just in time for my birthday.
Lucky for me, their book publisher, No Starch Press, understands geek entertainment and they sent me an advance PDF. Yahoo!
Friends with Benefits is the best book on social media marketing that I’ve read to date. Why is it so great?
Reason 1
My friends wrote it and 3/4s of the way through there’s a screenshot that includes one of my Facebook updates.
Ok, no really, there are better reasons than that.
Reason 2 Friends with Benefits is one of the few books that offers social media marketing case studies with accompanying stats. Although every company has to set their own baseline for metrics, having a reasonable idea of what to expect is critical. Much of this private info is never shared, which means it is hard for a marketer who’s new to social media to answer the boss’s question, “what do I get for this investment in social media.”
Reason 3
There are great passages and quotes.
“The connections we make with other people online are real.”
“The Internet has become a public venue where the audience responds to news reports, suggests stories to cover, and even reports on stories.”
“Marketing is a marathon, not a sprint. A successful campaign is usually the result of a hundred correct decisions and actions.”
Reason 4 Friends with Benefits answers the question, “Why would I want social media when my standard marketing practices are safe and known?”
If you’re a marketer dependent on mass media, then understanding web 2.0 as explained by Barefoot and Szabo will shoot you light years ahead of your competition.
The quick history in the first chapter helps establish the customs and culture that make up the web today; and how PR professionals can work within that framework.
Friends with Benefits is a must-read for social media marketers and those new to the field. There’s stuff for everyone, including the case studies I mentioned above, the reasonable expectations set around metrics, the how-to checklists and the great tips on the tools.
Who is Friends with Benefits for?
Anyone who wants:
More website visitors
More incoming links
More subscribers to your RSS feeds
More views of your content on video- and photo-sharing sites like YouTube and Flickr
More references to your company, products, and services on blogs, podcasts, Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, ...
More followers on Twitter
Better search engine optimization
More genuine interactions with your customers
Good job Darren and Julie! I look forward to seeing the book in stores.
Darren and Julie with Andre Charland from Nitobi at IMC Vancouver 2008
Digital Publishing: Connecting Publishers to New Media Consumers
Formats. Futures. Channels.
While most publishers are beginning the process of digitizing their back lists, digital technology has gained a toe hold in helping publishers market their front lists as well. No longer are titles digitized and pushed through select channels to have the process stop there. Content can be moved, indexed and combined with other publishers or books.
This two-day workshop, presented in conjunction with the Association of Book Publishers of BC, will consider success stories such as Japan’s $220 million in sales with Manga. We will also learn from some of the less successful initiatives.
And we will consider channels of distribution and the markets that are not being fully explored and developed, such as India where a significant majority of those attending universities speak English and whose market is primarily digital. Publishers need to have a defined digital strategy, much like their business mandates and business plans.
This workshop will provide answers and prompt questions to get the information you need to create your own digital roadmap. If you are not doing something, you may find you will soon be playing catch up. By the end of the two days you will understand the phrases and definitions and identify what kinds of formats best suit your needs. Some key points you will learn:
• Determine which formats can best deliver your content
• Determine business objectives for an initial foray into digital publishing
• Determine your requirements from third party service providers
• Understand XML
• Discuss the pros and cons of DRM
• Hear what the future of publishing may look like
This is an excellent workshop for new publishers, smaller publishers, or larger more established publishers who are past the thinking stage and want to begin to implement a digital strategy for their companies.
BookCamp Vancouver 2009 Unconference : Exploring New Ideas in Books, Publishing and the Future of Reading.
Join Us on October 16 at SFU Harbourcentre for a day-long exploration of books, book-like technologies, and the future of the publishing industry.
We want to bring together the technologists and the book publishers, marketers, writers, librarians, media, and anyone else interested in reading, writing, publishing and gadget geekery.
As I’ve said before, Amazon isn’t just a bookstore.
As numerous publishing journalists and bloggers have pointed out, Amazon has diversified itself so comprehensively over the past five years that it’s hard to say exactly what it is anymore. Amazon has a presence in almost every niche of the book industry. It runs a print-on-demand service (BookSurge) and a self-publishing service (CreateSpace). It sells e-books and an e-device to read them on (the Kindle, a new version of which, the DX, went on sale June 10). In 2008 alone, Amazon acquired Audible.com a leading audiobooks company; AbeBooks, a major online used-book retailer; and Shelfari, a Facebook-like social network for readers. In April of this year, it snapped up Lexcycle, which makes an e-reading app for the iPhone called Stanza. And now there’s Amazon Encore, which makes Amazon a print publisher too.
The Shebeen Club
Monday, April 20, 2009
6:00pm - 9:00pm
What: Old Publishers Have New Think Coming call to arms!
When: Monday, April 20th, 6pm-9
Where: The Shebeen, behind the Irish Heather, 210 Carrall Street.
$15 cash at the door includes dinner and a drink.
And yes, it’s okay to show up without RSVPing first.
Gutenberg was an early adopter. Very few people know that.
Call to action from Monique: I’m going to organize a panel in Vancouver. We’re going to create a model for publishing and marketing books. We’re going to move forward as an industry. Leaders will be identified. Roles will be assigned. If you’re not open to totally change everything you’re doing, then you are not ready for this revolution. Don’t come.
Who’s in?
Monique Trottier is the owner of Boxcar Marketing, an internet marketing company in Vancouver, BC. As the former internet marketing manager of Raincoast Books, she spearheaded major online marketing campaigns, including online promotion of Harry Potter and the creation of the first Canadian-publisher podcast and blog. Her thoughts on marketing and technology can be followed on Twitter at “somisguided” or on her blogs at http://www.boxcarmarketing.com/blog and http://www.SoMisguided.com.
Hey, Hatshepsut is my favourite Egyptian king. He was a she and she rocked! Hatshepsut is kind of pronounced like “hot chep soup”, like hot chicken soup.
This is a 3,500-year-old perfume bottle that a German research team discovered in March 2009 and there is still some ancient oil in the bottle.
Ada Lovelace Day is when we celebrate women in technology who inspire us. I am in awe that I made Kate’s list because Kate is truly inspirational to me.
My shout out, since I’ve been negative about the publishing industry, needs to go to Julie Wilson of SeenReading.com who continues to come up with phenomenal ways to capture the attention of book readers.
Bruce Sterling Session
Monday, March 16th at 05:00 PM
PRESENTERS
* Bruce Sterling - Wired.com
DESCRIPTION
His state-of-the-cybersphere analyses are always a highlight of SXSW Interactive. Don’t miss what the veteran science fiction writer and industry pundit has to say about the wired world this year.
MONIQUE’S NOTES
Let’s talk about our relationship. Yours and mine.
I’m an author. I’m a journalist.
There’s my business card.
With a phone and fax number.
Look. These artifacts are called books. I know you’re not used to seeing them.
Let me explain how they work.
I write a lot of words in a row. A whole lot of words. Not even character count. Then I go back and carefully restructure them and move them until they have a coherent storyline. Then I send them to my agent who sends them to a publisher who sends it to an editor and eventually it goes to a distributor who handled cult activities like author tours. And it goes to retailers who sell it to people and then return unsold copies.
This whole business has hit the skids.
Publishing has never been such a parless states. If you were an author in this system, you go 4-8% in a not really accurate royalty system. But that was ok because you, as an author, were likely to go screwy anyway.
As an author and journalist, I feel much more sorrow for the state of editors.
Editors/Publishers model is not working out. Now you have the cliched perfect storm of troubles.
Sterling on the book
I have them. I thought about spamming the audience with them. Or hiding them and geo-locating them ...
No this belongs to someone who is young. Under 20?
There is not a teen in the room? So much for this being a teenagers. Think. Just break times’ hourglass. Just take them away young people. I don’t expect you to read them. You txt.
How do we face this problem?
Twitter feed: media is dying
Print media spent 20 years making fun of a paperless society.
Could I put it on Kindle? Oh it’s there. Am I happy about that? No. Will anyone be reading a Kindle when one of them is my age? No. It’s like an atari.
Traditionally authors burn all their love letters on their death bed. Now we issue them under creative commons.
WIRED Italia. Look at the size of the ads in this baby.
[ ... monique distracted ... ]
What concerns me is the death of the audience. It doesn’t matter what happens to me. I’m better off than most authors I know, most journalists I know. There was a period of greater prosperity. I wonder why, why do I have a relationship to you. Why do you have a relationship to you?
My twitter group is bigger than you, more widely spread than you. They are probably a better audience than you. They can put up with more than you. They’ll RT me. I know some of you are gathering together in the back conspiring ... drifting ... you’re the people formerly known as the audience. And you’re forfeiting the benefits of the audience. Paying attention to the point of being able to discuss it.
[Bruce opens a drink. I used to have a great parties. It was my house. We were there to enjoy ourselves. Opens chips. You thought you were getting chips, but I was in control of the chips. The servers. They were in my corner.]
MT: Best laugh out loud.
Old social media (parties) were bring who you trusted.
The party audience was replace by social media influencers. Their capacities were built up. It was impossible to open up to this audience because they’d tweet their buddy list. It’s a technologically transformed situation and the loss is a social loss.
There’s a loss.
How do we restore those days? They aren’t coming back. Why do I keep up author appearances? Why do I have to keep up a level of respect? You’re not my friends. I’m not your host.
[cookie eating now]
Even if you’re broke, you will still be densely connected.
Connectivity is a symbol of poverty.
I might become boring enough that no one comes by anymore. You can lose your fame to the point that no one shows up.
I can’t throw a party and sit around and talk about vinyl and books. I feel the loss keenly. Playing lost vinyl for your friends. This has vanished.
I have little parties in those places with which I have similar relationships to this one. Lift Conference is getting bigger every year. Reboot in Denmark, great conference again. Amsterdam is on top of their game.
USA could be like Canada. We’re afraid of French, Germans. We’re liking Canadians: cute, cuddly. They’re afraid of being us.
Let me read this silly stuff to explain what’s happening:
“Melt down money-quake yuppy flu end of the world as we know it the long emergency bush’s legacy the great reset the inflection un-real estate communism 2.0 ... the long doom.”
This is what I think books will look like in the future. Austin is a bookish town. Book culture will mutate on the way down.
Austin bookstore I saw on the way into town. HP Lovecraft: greatest, most creative ... and when he wasn’t getting commercial work he basically started blogging. Here are his miscellaneous writings. A small fraction of his discourse and it’s bigger than his collective works. This non-fiction, community organization was more time than his stories.
Within his community, he was trusted. The American Amateur Press Association was his blog network. A lot of writers came out of this association. Robert Block. The Lovecraft circle who grew up from a B.
He perished.
What does the future look like?
Go to Brave New Books in Austin. Right-wing nutty.
This is a harbinger of something interesting. The tactics are more important here.
[ ... more to come ... 15 minutes of battery left ... ]
New Think for Old Publishers panel at SXSW drew a lot of frustration from the crowd of book lovers and supporters.
The official description of the session was:
This is not a discussion of whether ebooks are killing treebooks, or whether it’s possible to get cozy with an Amazon Kindle. It’s about how participatory culture and the online world interact with good olde book publishing.Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody, Deborah Schultz, and fellow panelists will share with the audience a variety of perspectives on what’s going right and what’s going wrong in publishing, assess success of recent forays into marketing digitally, digital publishing, and what books and blogs have to gain from one another. Penguin Group (USA), which houses some 40 plus imprints and publishes an extremely broad variety of physical and digital products everything from William Gibson’s first ebook in the 90’s to Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food to Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse novels (the source for HBO’s True Blood) is deeply involved in exploring ways that old and new media might better collaborate. Audience members are invited to speak up about what they think book publishers could/should be doing to better provide relevant information and content to blogs, websites, and online communities. Come tell old media what you want and how you want it.
Clay Shirky ITP
John Fagan Mktg Dir, Penguin Group (USA)
Deborah Schultz Founder/Chief Catalyst, deborahschultz.com
Peter Miller Dir of Publicity, Bloomsbury USA
Ivan Held Pres GP Putnam’s Sons, Penguin Group (USA)
They certainly told publishers what they think. The summation was “you suck at this is the biggest way possible.”
I think it’s unfair to attack the folks on that panel but as representatives of the industry they do have to go back to their houses and understand that they need to convey, not that bloggers are an unruly bunch, but that publishers need to get off their asses and get involved with social media. Enough is enough.
BookSquare says
If you’re going to hold a session called “New Think for Old Publishers”, you gotta come with some new thinking. Either that or tell the audience that it’s a research session…and the audience is supposed to bring the new thinking. Good idea, needed better execution. Nobody read the panel description to mean “we want the audience to tell us what we’re doing wrong and how we can fix it”.
...
The publishing people on stage said, essentially, tell us what we’re doing wrong and how we can fix it. You have 300 people who give up an hour of their lives to hear the cool things the traditional publishing business is doing…and you can ask them to consult on your business?
Monique’s summary
What went wrong is this:
* Publishers have not listened to the crowd for a long time.
* The crowd is restless.
* Publishers wring their hands about the web.
* The crowd offers options publishers don’t like.
* Publishers weep into their hands.
* The crowd wants to help and offers other suggestions.
* Publishers act like deer in headlights.
* The crowd plows down publishers and reinvents the industry without them.
What this panel really came down to is that the wisdom of the crowds is not being tapped. The crowd is now sick and tired of trying to help people who won’t help themselves.
Hold me to this: I’m going to organize a panel in Vancouver. We’re going to create a model for publishing and marketing books. We’re going to move forward as an industry. Leaders will be identified. Roles will be assigned. If you’re not open to totally change everything you’re doing, then you are not ready for this revolution. Don’t come.
Who’s in?
UPDATES
Peter Miller Glibness. “Do As I Say, Not As I Do: Tips from a panelist who barely survived” in Publishers Weekly. Read the article.
Michael Tamblyn of BookNet Canada on 6 Things That Revolutionize Publishing
* Jenny Benevento - Bento Artisanal Metadata
* Tom Conrad - Pandora Media Inc
* Abby Blachly - Librarything
DESCRIPTION
Web 2.0 is all about tagging, right? Many content types are not findable with user-generated metadata. More web projects are using controlled & expert created metadata to complement user tagging to enhance user experience, findability, social networking, & site popularity. We’ll show you how & why it can help you.
MONIQUE’S NOTES
Why you should/could use normalized metadata?
Users want to get shit done.
LibraryThing started because I guy wanted to share his book list and pulled the info from the US Library of Congress. That became social as more people wanted to do this. The Dewey number, bisac, etc. are fields of metadata that are pulled into the site in order to take marked records and to make it into an understandable, searchable archive.
Tagging is also present on the site so there’s a good mix of user-generated metadata along with normalized metadata. In addition, users are able to add controlled metadata for things like series titles.
I’m really excited to be at SXSW this year. I have wanted to come every year and have always had some excuse. This year, I’m here!
Today is my second day and I’ve attended two sessions so far that are worth blogging about. Here are my notes on the Boxcar Marketing site:
Everything You Know About Web Design Is Wrong
This was a quick comparison of transcendental changes in the film industry and how those same types of changes need to occur in web design.
Curating the Crowd Sourced World
Nice panel discussion from people who are currently letting the crowd do the driving (but, of course, the wheel is only controlled at any one time but one person). Perhaps the panelists are more interesting individually.
Fun Facts
There are 6500 registrants for the interactive portion. These are the participant bags.
The speakers’ name signs are last name only. This is so that the cards can be reused by all speakers with the same last name. Now that’s a cool planet-saving measure.
Friends with Benefits
