I’ve been familiar with Brian Solis as many have, for several years. We’ve done a few video interviews with Brian and he’s contributed to popular posts here like this one on social media marketing and this one on content curation.
I have to admit that based on his early writing, I thought Brian was overly confident about the opportunities with social media. When I finally met him in person at a Media Relations conference we were both speaking at, I gained a much better understanding and appreciation for the talents and insight behind the evangelism for what has become the most significant change to the web since the introduction of search engines.
As a successful author, speaker and owner of Future Works, Brian has many opportunities to face tough questions from clients, peers and conference attendees. In the realm of social media, it’s not unreasonable to have a lot of questions about the who, what, why, where, when and how.
How to start? How to create a strategy? How to find customers and influentials? How to create engaging social destinations? How to promote without offending? How to measure? How to report? Those are just some of the critical questions answered in Brian’s newest book, Engage! The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate and Measure Success in the New Web.
I promised Brian to talk about Engage! here months ago, which was a no-brainer since we already did a review of “Putting the Public Back in Public Relations“. While I thought about a variety of perspectives to take on sharing my opinions of this book, nothing stood out until now. In the course of answering many social media questions on a daily basis, I’ve often referred Engage! to people as a resource. Therefore it makes perfect sense to share some of the top questions this book answers for marketers. Essentially, this is a list of 10 reasons why you should check the book out.
1. Where does social media fit in marketing and communications?
2. What social tools and technologies are available? What are their differences and how do they work for marketers?
3. How do you manage multi-channel social media participation? What tools are there for listening, publishing, promotion and measurement?
4. Search results can be optimized, how do you optimize social media?
5. How do you develop social networks and distribution channels?
6. What are social champions and how do we find, engage and develop influentials?
7. How do you develop a social media strategy?
8. What are the logistical and process considerations for planning, implementing and managing social web participation for companies?
9. How do we foster and manage social customer relationships?
10. How can we develop social media teams in an organization and create a model for social participation within our organization?
There you have it. Ten key social media questions that the new Brian Solis book, Engage! answers for communications professionals, business owners, marketers and social netziens all over the web. If you have different or more questions than those listed above, by all means visit Amazon and get the book. If you need a person to walk you through the answers, then you can always talk to us at TopRank Marketing :).
If you’re in Minneapolis tonight, be sure to come and see Brian present at Solera from 6-8pm. For the millions of marketers that will not be in Minneapolis this evening, fear not.
