Continuing my review of this ebook, “Getting to First Base: A Social Media Marketing Playbook” by Darren Barefoot and Julie Szabo…
This book does a great job of introducing you to many of the ways that you can use the new social media aspects of the web. This includes blogs (writing your own and participating in those of others), social networking sites (Facebook, MySpace, etcetera), microblogs (such as Twitter, Pownce, and Jaiku), wikis (and Wikipedia in particular), virtual worlds (such as Second Life), and more. Much of the focus is on blogs (about half the book) and I think rightly so because blogs are still the most prominent form of social media out there and have the most options for anyone involved in marketing (or just communicating).
There is a section on risks or things that could go wrong and they address what I think is the biggest issue: It Doesn’t Get Off the Ground. So many of us have tried to make an impression on the web and have supposedly done everything right and have done the blog, Facebook profile, photos, videos, etcetera; only to find that nothing happens. We even contact other bloggers, join various groups, and have tons of friends on our Facebook account and nothing much happens. This section of the book addresses that and gives some useful suggestions.
My overall impression is that this book is a great start. I highly recommend it because so many of us simply do not have a good grasp of what has been going on with online social networking and how to get started using it. I immediately saw a need for a second book, one that gives you even more specific tools and ideas. For example, what are the all the different kinds of posts you can try on your blog (contests, top 10 lists, and so on), what sorts of things do you put on there, what additional plugins and features can you add… the list becomes very long. [I am currently putting together a toolbox of all the various online marketing tools you can use and this will become part of my upcoming paid membership site. Just the section on blogs alone is expansive.] I look forward to the next book from these two!
(Question for Darren and Julie: do you have an affiliate program set up for selling this book? Have you looked into ClickBank?)
Chris O’Byrne
www.OnlineArtsMarketing.com
4 comments ↓
Thanks for part two! Indeed, there’s plenty of detail we left out in terms of the nuts and bolts of a lot of this stuff. To be honest, I’m not sure I wanted to write that book. I used to be a technical writer and wrote software documentation, and I’ve kind of had enough of writing step-by-step procedures. There’s a bit of that stuff in the book, but it’s I’m reluctant to get too process-oriented.
One little note–I think the URL at the start of this post is broken. It’s coming up as “http:///” for me.
Thanks, Darren. I agree that writing step-by-step procedures can be a royal pain. I’m not sure I want to write anything that detailed, either, although I might be willing to write it as part of a paid course. I think initially I will write something that gives artists more ideas of what to blog about. For example, here is a rough outline of some ideas:
* Share part of your personal life. Allow your reader to make a personal connection with you.
* Participate in other blogs (choose 5 to start with). These should be blogs that are likely to be read by the members of your target markets.
* Contests
o name that painting (or any art work)
o discuss the meaning of a piece of work
o encourage cross-posting by making it a requirement of entering the contest
o give something away
* Top 10 lists (or top 5 or top 7 or whatever)
* Be a resource of information
* Be entertaining
* Participate in the blogs of people who read and participate in your blog.
* Make a blog roll of all of your readers and commenters
* Be controversial. Don’t be afraid to give your opinion. Controversy attracts readers. Just don’t be vulgar or mean.
* Post a weekly “My Favorite Blog Posts”
* Share something secret
(I fixed that link! Hopefully.)
Hi Chris,
This does sound very interesting!! I clearly need to go another round of choosing what to do!
~ Diane Clancy
http://www.dianeclancy.com/blog
Diane,
There are SO MANY things to choose from! Even just all of the social networking that can be done is a lot, not to mention all of the other online marketing methods and then all of the offline marketing!
Sounds like we need to start a podcast just to help people sort through it all!
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