Friends with Benefits: A Social Media Marketing Handbook Review

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(More customer reviews)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...Read more›

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The rules of marketing have changed. Savvy marketing professionals know that they must engage with individuals directly on the Web, and smart businesses know that customers can become friends—with benefits. Friends With Benefits shows you how to get into the online marketing game. A guide filled with tips, tricks, and real-world case studies, Friends With Benefits shows how you can increase your company's online visibility and Web traffic and win over online influencers.

Friends With Benefits explains how to:

Connect with potential customers and join their conversations
Tweak your website to support your social media marketing campaigns
Promote your products or brand and manage the toughest negative online feedback
Track marketing campaigns, monitor discussions, and measure success

With viral videos racking up millions of views and Twitter mavens influencing thousands of their friends, social media marketing is an essential new tool for every marketer's toolbox. The expert authors of Friend With Benefits guide you through the social media landscape, where authenticity and connections are more important than the size of your marketing budget, and real results can be just a few clicks away.

Click here for more information about Friends with Benefits: A Social Media Marketing Handbook