Books on the Social Media Revolution
31. Dec, 2009 
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I’m sometimes asked to recommend a book on social media and social networking and thought I’d post a few ideas here; these are all books that I’ve read in the last 2 months!
Trust Agents – Chris Brogan, Julien Smith
This is in some ways similar to Penny’s book in that the focus is clearly on creating trust. Because trust is key to building online reputations, the authors define those who understand the value of, and set out to create, trust as “trust agents.” It’s a mixture of the theoretical and the practical and is well worth a read, if only because it is written by authors with over 10 years of online media experience
Crush it – Gary Vaynerchuk
I am a huge fan of Gary V., of what he has done for the wine industry and for his business and of the way he uses video blogging. I have to confess that for me, what makes him so good at video blogging, his speed of delivery, his enthusiasm, his ‘flow’, doesn’t come over so well in the book.
That said, the checklist in appendix a is worth the price of the book alone, for those who are new to the topic or who what to make sure that they have covered everything.
Whilst I have listed the books in no particular order, this is my favourite of the four when it comes to the ‘how to’. It’s a great book written in a relaxed style that covers everything you would want to know about social media, and more! Mitch emphasises that he is not a technical person, he is just one of us.
It takes on an ambitious task, to unify the concepts of Personal Branding, Digital Marketing and Entrepreneurship, and achieves it in a clear, fun and provocative manner. Full of case studies to illustrate the points he makes, this book offers a complete set of tools, tactics and insights to empower individuals to reach a global audience and consumer base with a few clicks of the mouse, and almost all of them for free.
Recommendations
So, my recommendations? I enjoyed all four and think people will benefit from reading any or all of them.And recommending books is always difficult as it’s so much a matter of personal preference and each of these books has much to offer.
However, if I had to make a recommendation, it would be to buy Mitch Joel’s book and if you want to add a semi-autobiographical account from a woman who’s been there, read Penny’s too. The get on the internet and watch Gary V’s videocasts and hop over to Chris Brogan’s blog (one of my favourite blogs) for a full set!
