Social Media Marketing

Social media is most dif­fer­ent from tra­di­tional media in that it lacks the option to force an inter­rup­tion.
Your mes­sage has to be invited in.

This point from Chapter 8 of Dave Evans book sums where social media is com­ing from. We dis­reg­ard it at our peril. The world now cur­rently runs on a vari­ety of net­works both busi­ness and per­sonal — and some­times the dis­tinc­tion between the two can be dif­fi­cult to ascer­tain. However this up-surge of social net­work­ing for both busi­ness and per­sonal use has meant a total rethink on how we communicate.

“Dave Evans is a lead­ing expert in social mar­ket­ing whose pas­sion is tap­ping the power of con­nec­ted social net­works through word of mouth and consumer-driven media.” – press release

In this com­pre­hens­ive book (usable as a text-book) Evans cov­ers all aspects of the social media phe­nom­ena. While Social Media Marketing is prin­cip­ally aimed at the busi­ness com­munity if you con­sider your school to be a busi­ness and the pupils and wider com­munity to be their cli­ents then I think you will see how this book could be of use, both as a source of inform­a­tion to keep you cur­rent with today’s think­ing, and also as a source of the tools you could be using to com­mu­nic­ate with your clients.

The book is divided into months and weeks and gives the abil­ity to con­ceive, plan and con­duct a cam­paign by work­ing through the steps intro­duced. There are also work­sheets for assist­ance. Evans help­fully tells the reader in the intro­duc­tion (pg xx) how they can best used the book accord­ing to their level of social media (and mar­ket­ing) understanding.

Part 1 lays the found­a­tion for social mar­ket­ing with a quick sur­vey of the cur­rent land­scape.
Part 11 helps read­ers pre­pare their own social media mar­ket­ing strategy.
Part 111 shows how to lever­age the tools and tech­niques that are avail­able today, examin­ing everything from blogs and RSS feed to pod­casts and video, to social net­works and user-generated-content shar­ing sites like YouTube.

Now before you tell me you are not need­ing to mar­ket any­thing and so it is not for you… then con­sider… your school needs pro­mo­tion, events the school uses as fund-raisers need pro­mot­ing, and when you decide to change jobs you also need pro­mo­tion… enough said?

I enjoy com­mu­nic­a­tion and mar­ket­ing but that said I can see why this could be an excel­lent book for schools and indi­vidu­als to have, for a myriad of reas­ons. I was impressed enough that I now fol­low Dave Evans on Twitter.