This is a book review of Friends With Benefits: A Social Media Marketing Handbook by Darren Barefoot and Julie Szabo.
How I got the book:
Electronic review copy sent to me on behalf of the authors. Note: the book is slated for publication in November 2009, so it isn’t available for purchase yet.
Background:
Darren Barefoot and Julie Szabo have run social media marketing campaigns for national retailers. Darren also blogs at DarrenBarefoot.com and is generally well known in the social media space, particularly in Canada. More details here.
What you read is what you get: as the title implies, this is a handbook full of advice and tips about social media marketing. It goes through the basics.
The strengths:
This book gives a good overview of the social media space and how you as a marketer can use it to tell the world about your organization. It’s very clear, easy to read, and non-threatening. For example, they have a great section that describes RSS to non-technical folks. The Netiquette section is also a very good overview (you can get a copy of it for free here).
The areas for improvement
While this is a very good overview, this might not be the book for marketing professionals looking for more advanced tips and techniques.
Other points of interest:
They used the name “Regina Phalange” in this book – no, I’m not making that up.
Verdict (8 out of 10): (definitely worth checking out; a useful resource for marketers, especially for social media beginners)
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Thanks for checking out the book and writing this review!
I'm pleased that you noticed 'Regina Phelange'–there are a couple of other odd little easter eggs in the book, including the name of an obscure hockey player.
But I didn't see Tim Horton's name in the book…
Oh, it's way more obscure than that. Heh.
[...] books about social media and web presence. At this point in my reading, I’d couple it with Friends With Benefits, which goes in more depth on some of these [...]
Glad I found this review, keep up the good work.
Ash Books´s last blog ..Sapphire, by Katie Price