The Social Pulpit: Barak Obama’s Social Media Toolkit, produced by Adelman PR, 2009

This white paper, 13 pages long in PDF format, is a superficial summary of Obama’s spectacularly successful use of social media in his campaign for president. If you are not familiar with the Obama’s campaign’s social media strategy, it’s a decent introduction. But Adelman offers no original insights.
.

The author is Monte Lutz, Sr. VP at Edelman, the mega-PR firm. See his LinkedIn profile.
.

Socialnomics: How Social Media Transforms the Way We Live and Do Business
By Erik Qualman
Wiley, 2009, 258 pages
$16.47 hardcover, $14.82 Kindle

The title is catchy. The subtitle is bold. The jacket flap says, “This is a massive socio-economic shift.” The first page of the Introduction proclaims, “We are in the early stages of a far-reaching revolution.”

It sounded irresistable. I read the book. I was disappointed.
.
Deep or original insights are few and far between. Here are a couple of good ones:
.
1. Qualman advises companies to patiently build relationships with customers through social media, rather than merely grabbing a customer’s name and e-mail address for its database. “Good businesses realize that it’s not all about the instant win of getting someone into a database,” he says. “Rather it is cultivating that relationship via social media. If it’s done correctly, you will have a relationship that lasts a lifetime.” Qualman does not go into much detail regarding how to correctly cultivate such relationships. It’s not a how-to book, it’s a high-concept book.
.
2. He says that marketers will need to create content (news, entertainment, and how-to information, for example) for their websites and social media sites, not just advertising messages. Actually, I first heard this insight at a Web Content Conference in summer 2008.
.
Aside from a few insights like the two cited above, the book is shallow.
.
How shallow is it?
Qualman introduces his central premise in the Introduction:

It’s all about the economy, stupid. No, it’s all about a people-driven economy, stupid.

He explains that the phrase “It’s the economy, stupid” was coined in 1992 by James Carville, Bill Clinton’s campaign manager. Qualman merely “adjusted” that phrase to create the book’s premise. After reading the book, I still don’t have the slightest idea how the “people-driven economy” differs from “the economy.”
.
This book is basically a series of superficial anecdotes and minuscule case studies. It’s full of vague ideas, platitudes and generalizations, unsupported opinions, idle speculation, specious claims, inconsistent style, imprecise language, typos, and bad punctuation.
.
In some of Qualman’s examples, I couldn’t tell whether the facts were real or hypothetical. In many of the micro-case studies, he shows how a company accomplished a certain objective through social media, but does not establish that the objectives could not have been accomplished more cost-effectively through other marketing channels.
.
He describes the case of Dancing Matt—about Matt Harding, who filmed himself dancing around the world and put his videos on YouTube. The videos were hugely popular, so Stride Gum sponsored his further travels and video production. Stride exercised restraint and placed its logo discreetly at the end of the videos (in the post roll). Qualman claims Stride earned “millions of dollars in brand equity,” but does not support that claim with any data or sources. Is it his own guesstimate, or did the company tell him it earned “millions”? No clue.
.
He claims that social media activities “connect parents to their kids like never before.” He offers no expert or study to support that statement, and he is clearly not qualified to offer that opinion. Do you believe it?
.
Regarding microblogging, he says, “What once took place only periodically around the watercooler [sic] is now happening in real time.” Huh? What can be more real-time than water cooler conversations?
.
He says consumers “historically hated” traditional marketing because it “provided end consumers with a potentially empty promise.” Social media, on the other hand, universally provides “something of value.” That’s quite the generalization. Hasn’t he seen all the self-serving, promotional blather on LinkedIn?
.
Social media as therapy
He says micro-blogging functions as a kind of log that you can look back on—at the end of a day or week or month—and review your posts and updates. “It’s extremely enlightening because it shows you how you are spending what precious time you have.” Ah, yes, it’s not only improving the way parents relate to their kids, it’s therapeutic as well.
.
As a downside of social media, he says, Generation Y and Z [are having] difficulty with face-to-face conversations.” No support for that claim. Is that his personal observation? He’s a marketer with an MBA (and All-American college basketball player), not a sociologist.
.
He says that staying connected, through social media, to the people who elected Obama president will be the “key to his success as president.” The key!
.
No more politics
He says social media “allows for a government to be more in tune with the country and to truly run as a democracy by stripping away the politics and getting to the core of what matters.” Uh huh. That would be alarming to our founding fathers, who conceived the country as a republic, not a direct democracy. A republic requires the election of representatives, hence politics. Politics (debate, compromise) is how the Constitution was created.
.
He implies that because micro-blogging is free, all a company needs is a response from one new prospective customer to make it worthwhile. He forgets that micro-blogging requires somebody’s time (which is money) and skill (training).
.
He recites marketing platitudes that have been true for decades or centuries, but treats them as though social media makes them especially true. An example: production and marketing departments need to communicate with each other. And this: “Companies that produce great products and services…will be winners in the socialnomic world.”
.
Why not just ask NBC?
Here is an example of idle speculation. Qualman uses an example involving NBC’s failure to put its 2008 Olympics coverage online in certain circumstances. “Most likely, NBC and their advertisers…were judging themselves using old metrics…” Sorry, you can’t prove a point with a “most likely.” Qualman could have contacted NBC’s marketing department and asked them why they didn’t. But that would have required real journalism.
.
Why not just ask Hasbro?
Qualman devotes almost five pages to the Scrabulous case. The Agarwalla brothers created an online game similar to Scrabble, which they called Scrabulous and which attracted 500,000 daily users at its peak. Hasbro, owner of the Scrabble brand, issued a cease-and-desist letter and pushed Scrabulous off the web. Qualman excoriates Hasbro for being heavy-handed in the case, and he quotes several other marketing professionals who likewise criticize Hasbro for being short-sighted. Yet Qualman presents not a single quote or statement from Hasbro, nor does he speculate as to why Hasbro believed legal action was necessary. Does the company regret its action? Did it learn a lesson?
.
Regarding the concept of network neutrality (although he doesn’t use that phrase), Qualman says that if Internet service providers start charging for usage (“per stream”) rather than a fixed monthly fee, that would be “malicious.”
.
He says that in the past, customers “may have bought your product based solely on the glitz and glamour of your marketing, [but that] possibility is limited now” because social media “makes the world transparent.”
.
I could go on, but you get the point.
.
Qualman is global vice president of online marketing for EF Education. He is a columnist for Search Engine Watch and SES (Search Engine Strategies) magazine. Of course he has a Socialnomics blog.
.

Below are reviews of the three best books about using the Blogger platform to build and maintain a blog. Blogger is owned by Google, which provides the blogging software, and hosts the blog files, free of charge. It is the simplest of the popular blogging platforms, so it’s suited to beginners and technophobes. It is not a full-fledged content management system, so you can’t build a traditional website with it, only a blog.
.
Before you buy one of these books, check out the short video tutorial on YouTube, and Blogger Help. After you set up a Blogger account you’ll have access to the Getting Started Guide. If you decide you need a book, choose among these three. (Click on the book images for details or to purchase.)

FOR BEGINNERS
Publishing a Blog with Blogger: Visual QuickProject Guide
By Elizabeth Castro
Peachpit Press (2nd Edition), 2009, 192 pages
$13.59 paperback

If you’re looking for a clear introduction to Blogger, in an easy-to-digest format, this is your best bet. It covers the basics very well, nothing more. Castro’s book says right there on the back cover: “If you want to get started fast but don’t want to get sidetracked by the details, then you need [this guide]. You don’t need to know every feature.”
.
The full-color illustrations are beautiful, unlike the black & white screen shots in the For Dummies guide (see below). The book is divided into 11 sections, as follows:

• Starting your blog (setting up an account, choosing a template, getting to know the dashboard, etc.)
• Writing your blog (writing, editing, formatting, and publishing posts, setting comment controls, etc.)
• Adding multi-media (uploading images, wrapping text, embedding videos, adding audio, etc.)
• Personalizing your blog (layout & design, adding gadgets, setting date display, etc.)
• Working with templates (Selecting, adjusting, editing, and using templates)
• Blogging from afar (using SMS, e-mail, and browser toolbar to post and maintain your blog)
• Telling others about yourself (creating a profile with photo, change privacy settings, etc.)
• Getting others to contribute (viewing, responding to, and moderating comments; adding authors; etc.)
• Getting the word out (syndicating, RSS feeds, attracting followers, tracking & analytics, etc.)
• Getting paid to blog (Inserting AdSense ads and affiliate programs, tracking earnings, etc.)
• Using your own domain (register a custom domain, map it to your blog)

Castro is the author of the QuickStart guide to HTML. See her blog.

FOR INTERMEDIATES
Blogger: Beyond the Basics
By Lee Jordan
Packt Publishing, 2008, 356 pages
$31.57 paperback

For current users of the Blogger platform who already have a have mastered the basics, this book will help you:

• Create customize templates and tweak your design
• Install widgets effectively
• Plug in social media (interactive) features like bookmarks and RSS
• Add e-commerce capability
• Monetize with advertising
• Optimize for search engines
• Track and analyze traffic
• Integrate the blog with websites and apps
• Add photo slide shows

These techniques do not require any specific knowledge of HTML, CSS, or XML. The companion website to this book includes free images and content.
.
The author Jordan is a enterprise-level web developer. Her work includes proposing, writing, and editing web content and user guides.

FOR DUMMIES
Google Blogger For Dummies
By Susan Gunelius
For Dummies (Wiley), 2009, 384 pages
$16.49 paperback, $14.84 Kindle

The Dummies guide to Blogger covers the basics and more advanced techniques. As it tries to cover everything, it ends up being superficial in some areas. The two books reviewed above are more clearly written and better illustrated, but together they are more than twice the price of the Dummies book.
.
I have a bias against the Dummies books about software, because of their excessive hand-holding and cheerleading. If you like that style, you’ll find this a useful guide.
.

Social media optimization (SMO) is the subject of a new article, written by Dave Freedman, that was published in the Nov/Dec 2009 issue of The Value Examiner. Here is a PDF version.
.
Journalism-level (J-level) website content includes bylined articles and white papers, blogs posts, e-newsletters, transcripts and podcasts of speeches, how-to information, and other practical resources.
.
Although the Examiner (published by NACVA) is written for financial advisers, the SMO article applies to all kinds of professional firms, advisers, and consultants.
.
Definition
SMO is a set of methods for attracting visitors to website content by promoting it through social media. SMO is a subset of social media marketing, which is promoting all kinds of products and services, not just Web content, through social media. (Dave Freedman wrote this definition for Wikipedia in November 2009.)
.

Technical development is one of the easier skills needed to launch your own customized social network. Doing it successfully—whether for fun or profit—requires organizational, leadership, and management skills as well. Not to mention a compelling concept to start with. Here are reviews of six how-to books. [Click on the book images for details or to purchase.]

The Social Network Business Plan: 18 Strategies That Will Create Great Wealth
By David Silver
Wiley, 2009, 224 pages
$16.47 hardcover, $14.82 Kindle

Silver’s new book is about building and operating a social networking website as a profitable enterprise. The surprise is that advertising is not one of the 18 revenue-generating strategies that he presents—or so he claims in the intro.
.
Around the end of 2007, advertising was supposed to be the great engine of wealth on the Internet. But the flattening of ad revenues for most commercial websites over the past year challenges the sustainability of an e-business model that depends solely on advertising revenue. In fact, Silver predicts that if MySpace and Facebook rely solely on ad revenue, they will not survive much longer.
.
What profit-seeking social network developers must exploit is the access to niche communities that marketers crave. For one thing, marketers can introduce and promote new products and services through social networks, where members will discuss, rate, review, recommend, critique or bash new products and services, as well as brands. For another thing, market researchers, brand managers, and PR pros are recognizing that the members of social networks generate a wealth of market intelligence through their posts, tweets, updates, discussions, polls, searches, and all manner of online conversations.
.
One of the revenue strategies that Silver describes is the sale to vendors of “anonymized” conversations of the community members concerning those vendors’ (and its competitors’) products, services, and brands. He even suggests ways for network managers to stimulate such conversations. Other monetization strategies include charging a membership fee, requesting donations through a “tip jar,” promoting conferences for members, and sponsorships and affiliate networks (the last two are actually forms of advertising). Most of these strategies are no different for social networks than for other kinds of websites, including blogs, portals, and online publications. If course, you can sell advertising space on social networks as on any other kind of website.
.
The book also tells how to:

• Create and operate one or more online “recommender” communities.
• Demonstrate your community’s value to marketers and prospective sponsors.
• Inspire passion and loyalty in your communities.
• Plan your exit strategy, and maximize your selling price.

Silver, a venture capitalist who invests in online community startups, gives examples of financially successful network startups, including:

• HysterSisters, a women-only community for those who have had (or may have) a hysterectomy. This site is, in fact, sustained by advertising.
• Sermo, a community for physicians to discuss real cases and other issues of concern with their colleagues. The site derives revenue from sales of “anonymized” conversations (and other forms of member access) to healthcare institutions, financial services firms, and government agencies. This business model requires proprietary technology.

“Get in on the action before it’s too late,” urges the book jacket flap. Just don’t rush in without a plan.

Ning For Dummies
By Manny Hernandez
For Dummies (Wiley), 2009, 360 pages
$16.49 paperback, $14.84 Kindle

Ning is a hosted platform for building social networks. It enables non-technical people to build a social network easily and quickly. The basic offering is free, because Ning inserts AdSense text ads in the right margin of your network pages. Ning isn’t the only free, hosted platform out there: ONEsite is another, but Ning is the most popular. Another free alternative is Drupal, the open-source, server-side CMS with social-networking modules.
.
I have read several For Dummies books about Internet technology and software, and I find them annoying because of their excessive hand-holding, cheerleading, and lack of sophistication. Of course, that’s why they call it For Dummies. But this is the only comprehensive Ning guide on the market, as far as I know. Ning itself does not seem to offer a codex like WordPress does. Most experienced web developers could easily build a Ning network without a book or manual.
.
While the basic Ning platform is free, you can add premium features for a fee. Premium features include:

• Remove AdSense ads ($50/month)
• Insert your own ads, from AdSense or any other ad network ($50/month)
• Map your own domain name to the site ($5/month)
• Increase storage & bandwidth ($10/month)

If you don’t map your own domain to the site, your network’s URL will be www.networkname.ning.com. The Dummies guide tells how to:

• Customize your network user interface, including CSS code
• Develop your “Creator” profile
• Set membership requirements, restrictions, and policies
• Tweak settings for member profiles and privacy controls
• Oversee participation; establish a forum, notes and chats
• Manage multi-media, groups, and events
• Recruit an administrative staff
• Promote and monetize the network
• Use Google Analytics; and more

Hernandez is president of the Diabetes Hands Foundation, a nonprofit which runs the social networks TuDiabetes.com and EsTuDiabetes.com on the Ning platform.

Smart Start-Ups: How Entrepreneurs and Corporations Can Profit by Starting Online Communities
By David Silver
Wiley, 2007, 272 pages
$16.47 hardcover

This isn’t just an earlier version of Silver’s newer book The Social Network Business Plan (see above). Whereas the 2009 book focuses more on monetization, this 2007 book delves into the nature of online communities, likening them to nations without borders. Using examples of successful social-networking entrepreneurs as models, he describes how to conduct research, fine-tune the concept, and launch a community for a relatively small investment but with high wealth-building potential. Although the Internet tools are low-cost or free, you do need some cash to build a business, but Silver suggests that you might be able to do so with as little as $300,000.

Managing Online Forums: Everything You Need to Know to Create and Run Successful Community Discussion Boards
By Patrick O’Keefe
AMACOM, 2008, 320 pages
$16.32 paperback, $9.99 Kindle

Silvers’ books are strong on the technical and financial aspects of managing online networks. O’Keefe’s book is a lot stronger on the human side of managing, hosting, and moderating the membership and their activities. It includes advice on:

• Developing and enforcing rules and guidelines
• Dealing with difficult users, settling disputes between members
• Stimulating interesting interaction
• Choosing moderators
• Legal constraints
• Fighting spammers

He does cover some technical aspects of running a network, including selecting the right software and platform, customization and settings, and solving technical problems.
.
O’Keefe has been developing websites professionally since 1998, and has developed and managed online communities since 2000. He founded and manages the iFroggy Network, a network of social networks.

Building Social Web Applications: Establishing Community at the Heart of Your Site
By Gavin Bell
O’Reilly Media, 2009, 434 pages
$23.09 paperback, $15.39 Kindle

This is about creating “social applications” that encourage visitors to interact with one another and form communities on all kinds of websites. It helps developers choose the tools appropriate for a particular audience, and design business models for various social web applications. To illustrate, Bell uses examples of member-driven, customer-service-driven, and contributor-driven sites.
.
Bell designs infrastructure web products at the BBC in England, and designs social websites for the Nature Publishing Group.

Designing Social Interfaces: Principles, Patterns, and Practices for Improving the User Experience
By Christian Crumlish and Erin Malone
O’Reilly Media, 2009, 516 pages
$43.97 paperback, $31.99 Kindle

This book provides more than 100 patterns, principles, and best practices, along with salient advice for many of the common challenges you’ll face when starting a social website. Crumlish is the curator of the Yahoo! Design Pattern Library, and has been designing and writing about online user experiences since 1994. Erin Malone is principal with Tangible UX. Previously she led the Platform User Experience Design team at Yahoo!
.

ProBlogger
By Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett
John Wiley & Sons, 2008, 220 pages
$15.74 paperback, $12.59 Kindle

ProBlogger is aimed at independent (rather than corporate) bloggers who want to earn money at it. The subtitle, “Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income,” creates grandiose expectations (but helps to sell the book). Click on the book image for details or to purchase.
.
Coauthor Darren Rowse has been blogging for money since 2003, and today earns a lot of it with his photography blogs and ProBlogger.net. He also founded the global blog network b5media.
.
Chris Garrett, the other coauthor, is a full-time blogger (chrisg.com), writes for other blogs as a paid contributor, and “does consulting.” He was one of the founders of Performancing.com, which sells information and services to bloggers, before it was sold to SplashPress Media.
.
The biggest flaw with ProBlogger is that it is too self-referential. The authors talk about their own experiences, and use their own blogs as examples throughout the book. That gives you a narrow view of blogging, because their own experiences, while successful, are limited in scope. What works in their niche won’t necessarily work in yours. They could have provided examples in a wide variety of industries, to appeal to diverse readers—but that would have required research.
.
They get right into the topic of blog monetization on page 5 with a good, 18-page summary of the methods used by bloggers to make money, and the key roles played by traffic statistics and SEO.
.
They devote a chapter to blogging in a niche, as a way to focus narrowly on the needs of a well-defined audience, in terms of both content and advertising. They offer common-sense tips on selecting a niche based on your own interests and expertise, and evaluating how successfully your niche can be monetized.
.
Then they have a chapter on setting up your blog, which includes selecting a platform. They describe the pros, cons, and costs of hosted platforms like Blogger and TypePad, and self-hosted blogs using WordPress.org. Then they cover choosing a domain and setting up a blog with WordPress.
.
The next chapter is on blog writing, and it’s quite instructive, with lots of valuable tips and ideas.
.
That is followed by the chapter on “Blog Income and Earning Strategies.” Here is a gripe: The authors use vague terms like “doing quite nicely,” as in: “There are many bloggers doing quite nicely through the tactics I describe in this chapter” (page 105). I wish the authors would give us a clear picture of how much money is really being earned in various areas of the blogosphere, using actual numerals preceded by dollar signs. I don’t think I could get a loan to launch a blogging venture if I told my lender that bloggers “do quite nicely.” Rowse especially has been around long enough to know some blogging “secrets,” which the book’s cover promises to reveal.
.
ProBlogger gives reasons for and against monetizing your blog from the start, but concludes by saying: “ultimately the decision…is a personal one.” (I think they meant to say it’s a business decision.)
.
In terms of monetization strategies, they cover ad networks and affiliate programs fairly thoroughly. They mention other monetization methods briefly.
.
The chapter on buying and selling blogs, and growing your blog with the intent to cash out someday, is enlightening and actually a fun read. But again, they’re short on numbers and dollars—where are the secrets?
.
The final chapters include valuable info about blog networks, and excellent advice on promoting.
.

How to Make Money with Your Blog
By Duane Forrester and Gavin Powell
McGraw Hill, 2008, 256 pages
$14.93 paperback,$9.99 Kindle

How to Make Money with Your Blog is much weaker than ProBlogger in every respect. Duane Forrester works in the fields of online marketing and search engine optimization, and he “runs” blogs that earn revenue through advertising. Gavin Powell is a technical writer.
.

The five books reviewed here cover personal and business blogging. By business blogs, I mean blogs that promote a company’s reputation, products, and services. (Two books about professional blogging, or what I call monetized blogging, are reviewed here.) Click on the book images for details,or to purchase.

How to Do Everything with Your Web 2.0 Blog
By Todd Stauffer
McGraw-Hill Osborne, 2007, 460 pages
$24.99 paperback, $14.99 Kindle

Stauffer’s book is the best of this lot, in my opinion. It is based on wide-ranging research, not just his own blogging experiences. He uses examples of blogs and bloggers from all over the blogosphere, in many different industries and professions.

Not only is Stauffer broad in his use of examples, he is comprehensive and articulate in his treatment of all the topics he covers. Those topics include strategic planning (very excellent), choosing a platform (including hosted vs. server-side options), choosing CMS software (TypePad, WordPress, Blogger, etc.), designing with templates and CSS, RSS feeds including FeedBurner (now owned by Google), using multi-media content, tagging and promoting your blog via SEO and social media optimization, collaborating with coauthors and users via wikis and forums, using traffic stats and analytics, monetizing (AdSense, affiliate programs, tip jar, PayPal donations, etc.), and more.

The only topic that Stauffer does not cover adequately is the substance of a blog, i.e., what you write about and how you write it. Granted, that is the most difficult subject to teach, but he could have at least offered some examples of (e.g., links to) some of the best substantive blog content on the web.

Clear Blogging
By Bob Walsh
Apress, Berkely, 2007
Paperback, 350 pages, $24.99

Walsh does a pretty good job of introducing readers to the wide world of blogging. Its primary audience is amateur and corporate bloggers, although it does have one chapter (out of 15 chapters) on monetization. Clear Blogging features many superficial case studies and some interesting Q&A interviews with blogosphere superstars. It is generally verbose and sloppily put together.

Walsh comes off as a blog evangelist, with grandiose pronouncements like: “Blogging is about power, and shifting it from them to you.” The subtitle on the cover is: “How People Blogging are Changing the World and How You Can Join Them.” Walsh is primarily a software developer, and has a company called Safari Software. He has been blogging on the side since 2005. But his Clear Blogging blog is defunct, despite the book’s promise to keep readers updated there.

The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging
Authors not identified
Simon & Schuster, NY, 2008
Paperback, 228 pages, $15.00

The Huffington Post guide is cute, superficial, and fluffy. You’ll like it if you are interested in the celebrities who blog for HuffPost, and if you can tolerate the strong political bias of the editors. There are very few actual blogging tips for sophisticated bloggers. It is rock-bottom elementary and dumbed down.

The thing is, HuffPost isn’t really a blog. It’s an aggregation of news (much of which consists merely of links to outside news sources) and blog posts by contributors (little of which is exclusive to HuffPost).

The multitude of sidebars in this book offer no how-to value whatsoever; they’re really name-dropping devices. If you are a HuffPost fan, you will enjoy the history of the publication and the profiles of the founders.

Blogging For Dummies
By Susannah Gardner and Shane Birley
For Dummies (2nd Edition), 2008, 384 pages
$14.29 paperback

Everybody’s blogging. According to the authors, that’s a good reason why you should blog too, “especially if you have a business to build or a cause to promote.”

The Dummies guide to blogging covers a broad range of topics, but even at 384 pages it seems superficial. The section on creating great content, arguably the most important job of all, is especially puny. In most respects, this book is inferior to Stauffer’s How to Do Everything with Your Web 2.0 Blog (above). the only topics it covers more comprehensively are podcasting and videoblogging.

Publish and Prosper: Blogging for Your Business
By D.L. Byron and Steve Broback
New Riders Press, 2006, 200 pages
$23.07 paperback, $9.99 Kindle

Written specifically for corporate bloggers, this practical book (the ancient one in the lot, at three years old) is about using blogs to interact with customers and clients. It provides case studies of companies as large as Boeing and General Motors and as small as Clip-’n-seal. It covers the various kinds of business blogs, how to sell blogging strategy to management and IT, effective blog design, content, interactivity, pitfalls to avoid, and more.

Over 50 million people in 200 countries have profiles on LinkedIn, the Internet’s top business-oriented networking site. Members can set up a profile, manage connections, conduct research, build a reputation, hunt for jobs, recruit talent, generate sales leads, find experts, participate in group discussions, and more. Here are the three best books, out of nine that we reviewed, on LinkedIn basics & strategy.

Before you buy one, visit LinkedIn’s Learning Center, and read the New User Starter Guide. From there, navigate back to the Learning Center and look up the specific info you need. (Click on the book images above for details or to purchase.)

How to REALLY use LinkedIn
By Jan Vermeiren
BookSurge (self-published), 2009, 200 pages
$19.95 paperback

After a short, step-by-step plan for getting up and running on LinkedIn, this book presents advanced strategies for finding new customers, a job, employees, and professionals to help you get your job done better and faster. Vermeiren is the founder of Networking Coach, which consults with Fortune 500 companies and small businesses. He is also the author of Let’s Connect! (2007), a guide to online networking. See the author’s LinkedIn profile.

LinkedIn For Dummies
By Joel Elad
For Dummies, 2008, 360 pages
$16.49 paperback

This comprehensive book goes beyond the fundamentals, with good advice on marketing your services, finding a job, recruiting employees, attracting investors, promoting your business, etc. See the author’s LinkedIn profile.

I’m on LinkedIn—Now What???
By Jason Alba
Happy About, 2009 (2nd Edition), 148 pages
$17.95 paperback, $14.95 Kindle

Alba helps you understand how LinkedIn might fit into your networking and career goals, concisely explains how to develop an effective online social networking strategy, and recommends best practices (e.g., personal branding, etiquette, working with LinkedIn Groups) for getting the most out of your membership. See the author’s LinkedIn profile.