Blogussion
Lots of useful articles on all matters related to succeeding online, whatever that means for you. .

Boomerang
First of all, I love the design of the site. So many blogs (although not many on this list)  look the same: straight out of the box wordpress sites. Not so with this which covers a wide range of topics.

Britopian
Michael Brito is an advocate of using social media for customer advocacy as well as social business and is currently writing a book on his experiences called “Smart Business, Social Business: A Playbook for Social Media in Your Organization.” The book promises to be a little different as it focuses on how organisations are (or should be) evolving into social businesses and the blockages to the changes required. I’m looking forward to the book!

Chris Brogan
Author of one of the best books on Social Media, “Trust Agents”, Chris Brogan has been involved in online communities for a long time. It shows in his writing, full of no-nonsense articles.

Final Piece
Devoted to helping businesses to understand how they can use social media to help their business to grow.

Greg Verdino
This blog looks at trends in media and marketing, as these industries grapple with the changes being brought on by disruptive technologies, new business imperatives and the rise of the empowered consumer.

Idea Launch
Idea launch offers a wide range of content marketing services and solutions. They claim that their offerings are unmatched in the industry and the perfect match for any company, any size. Whether this true or not, their blog is well worth reading.

Instigator (Ben Yoskovitz)
He writes at the top of his site “My thoughts & lessons learned on startups, entrepreneurship, marketing and other stuff”. His thoughts and lessons are spot on, in my (not so) humble opinion.

Lis Sowerbutts
If you are at all interested in passive income, Lis is worth reading. She often reviews software and services and is not afraid to say what she thinks.

Louis Gray
Full of insight and not afraid to say it how it is, Louis Gray’s site is one of my favourites. He’s usually among the first writers to cover a breaking story, emerging technology or trend. His writing gives the impression that he’s been around the industry a long time, though his photo seems to show a younger man. Whatever, he’s a must read.

Mashable
Well, it would be rude to leave them out, wouldn’t it!

Mitch Joel
Author of one of my favourite Social Media books, Six Pixels of Separation, Mitch Joel is an insightful writer and, judging by his site, has a great taste in design. If you haven’t read Six Pixels, I urge you to do so.

Penny Power
The better looking half of the couple that own ecademy, Penny writes with compassion and feeling. She concentrates on the people aspect of social media, and is the author of  the book “Know me, like me, follow me.”

Problogger.net
Tips and techniques on how to improve your blogging. Wonderful site, full of resources.

Seth Godin
Love him or loathe him, Seth Godin is always worth reading. Even if you don’t like his message, take the time to examine how he writes: a simple, straightforward style with little fluff. He proves that you don’t have to baffle people with long words or complex sentences.

SEO Moz
If SEO interests you, seomoz provides a daily blog on all SEO issues plus tips tips, tricks and techniques.

Scott Monty
The personal blog of the head of social media for Ford. Scott shares his personal views on social media. Very practical, even if he does wear a turquoise bow tie!

socialmedia.biz
I’ve only just come across this one so can’t comment too much  but I love what I’ve read so far! And don’t miss the sharing center; lots of free pdfs to download.

Social media examiner
It claims to be “Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle” and does a good job of it. Oh, and another site with a distinctive design. Clearly written articles abound, what more do you need?

Steve Rubel
“There are signs that the companies that regularly innovate in social media seem to be more memorable”. That alone should endear him to the social media world!

The Buzz Bin
Musings and analysis on marketing, buzz and communications.

Thomas Power
The other half of the ecademy ownership, Thomas writes a lot about the applications and platforms that make up the wild world of social media.

UnMarketing
Scott Stratten is very good at pointing out some of the absurdities in social media. A refreshing change of angle.

I‘ve enjoyed assembling this list and hope that at least some names will be new to you!

As a starting point, I took the blogs of 8 of the top Social Media Bloggers and looked at their percentage use of “I”, “We”, “You” and “They”. In each case, I collected at least 5,000 words, which for most equates to between 6 and 8 articles.I know it’s not a very large sample of writers or words, but I wanted to see if any patterns emerged. And they did!

Louis Gray blogs more about developments in SM and emerging technologies, so I had thought that perhaps he would have used “me” more often, as he is often giving his opinion. But he still managed to use “you” more often than “I” and “We” combined

Chris Brogan uses the first person singular a lot in the sample tested but there’s a good reason for it – among the posts that I sampled were several explaining how he uses mind mapping, how he doesn’t use LinkedIn as he feels he should etc.. I’m going to go back and examine his more general articles to see the pattern there.

As can be seen from the table, all of the others use “you” almost twice as often as they use “I”, the exceptions being Seth Godin who uses “you” 3.5 times as often as he uses the word “I” and Karen Skidmore who uses it a whopping 8 times as much!. This is entirely consistent with SM articles being about engaging with other people and drawing them in. With the exception of self -disclosure articles of the type Chris Brogan has been writing recently, most of us would soon get bored with, and probably stop reading, writers who used “I” twice as much as they use “you”.

There’s a lot more I’m going to be analyzing, such as percentage of past, present and future orientated words, the percentage of nouns vs verbs etc

The conclusion? These people are some of the top in their field – anyone wanting to be up there with them needs to be looking at their writing style. The small words matter. You will find another article here that examines the subject in more detail, and announces a new service for writers.

The iPhone, the Palm Pre, the latest HTC, the Nexus One are all, to a greater or lesser extent, powerful micro pcs. And people are racing to adopt, and then vociferously defend, their chosen device. But at what cost? Firstly, you are pretty much buying into a platform for life. For example, spend a few hundred (or more) pounds on Google apps and even if you fancy a change of phone 3 or 4 years later, you are unlikely to want to wave goodbye to all of that money and start again on a new platform. Is it really a great idea to tie yourself into one manufacturer like that?

The race seems to be on to include features on these smart phones that were cutting edge on PCs of only a few years ago:  the ability to multi-task; Google Maps (or something similar); fast processors; lean, stable and fast operating systems etc.. My question is: Do we really need all of this on a mobile phone? I’ve read all of the arguments about mobile communications being so important, and I agree, but don’t netbooks and small format laptops fulfill that function?

I can understand the benefits of push technology and being able to access your emails on a smart phone but once it comes to browsing websites and looking at images, the small screen on a smartphone is really limiting. Add in the problems for anyone who is long-sighted and it can be a recipe for frustration!

I am seriosuly considering going back to a phone that’s a phone, that is based on high quality sound and using my 13″ laptop for mobile computing – I almost always have it with me so why duplicate the technology? It will  avoid all of the synching across 3 machines that I hear people complaining about. It may also prove to be the most efficient way of managing my on-line social networks.

Go on, convince me I’m wrong!

I’m sometimes asked to recommend a book on social media and social networking and thought I’d post a few ideas from some of the social media experts here; these are all books that I’ve read in the last 12 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 social media 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 social media experience
	Know Me, Like Me, Follow Me – Penny Power Know Me, Like Me, Follow Me is different from the other three social media books. She uses her experience as a co-founder of ecademy (I often describe this as my ‘base’ on the internet)  and the trials and tribulations it went through to make important points about her belief that social media offers a better way for business people to meet, connect and help one another solve problems and expand their businesses. It is written in a warm, very personal style and is a great read. If you want a book that goes into details about how to make use of the many social media tools out there, Mitch Joel’s book would make a great companion read to Penny’s book.
	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, the new kid on the social media block. 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 social media or who what to make sure that they have covered everything.
	Six Pixels of Separation – Mitch Joel Whilst I have listed the books in no particular order, this is my favourite of the four when it comes to social media’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 social media 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.

Social Media Books – Recommendations

So, my recommendations? I enjoyed all four and think anyone wanting to find oute  about more about social media 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.

All of the books are written in easy to read styles offering examples of best practice for everyone to emulate.

Mitch Joel – Full of Social Media Tools, Tactics and Insights

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. Then 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!

However, to repreat what I wrote above, any and all of these books make a great read for the social media afficianado, as are the authors’ blogs each of which features in my list of favourites.