Top Shelf Reading Picks:

Most of what I read about social media is geared to audiences that either need to be converted or need to convert others, and who potentially have budgets in the tens of thousands to spend on social media. However, Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith is the first social media book that I found helpful for newbies as well as active users, no matter what size the budget.

I’m going to gloss over all the “here are more reasons why you can no longer ignore social media,” and focus on items that are more tactical or a unique way of looking at social media.

One has to appreciate a social media book that opens with a totally non-techie intro. In this case, the authors use a story about an undercover FBI agent infiltrating the mob to paint a compelling picture about how it takes time and patience to build a reputation as a trust agent. I thought this was a great point because I could just see non-social-media-savvy managers mandating their marketing departments to start being “trust agents.” Much like a marketing department can’t make a viral video because it’s the public that decides what goes viral, it’s also the public that decides who is a “trust agent.”

So, what is a trust agent?
The definition of a trust agent: “digital natives using the web to be genuine and to humanize their business.” Need more than that? Here’s another definition from the book:

Trust agents build networks almost reflexively by being helpful, by promoting the good work that others do, by sharing even their best stuff without hesitation, and by finding ways to deliver even more value on top of all that without asking for anything in return. Instead of sucking up to the big guys . . . trust agents reach out to the up-and-comers.

The 6 Characteristics of Trust Agents:

1. Make your own game (i.e., stand out by being different).
2. One of us (you are not above your market; you are part of your market).
3. The Archimedes effect (it’s all about the leverage).
4. Agent Zero (start your networks before you do actual business).
5. Human artist (learning the soft skills).
6. Build an army (you can’t do it alone).

What’s so great about writing stuff on the internet?
“Writing everything online, where it’s eternally visible to everyone, forever, has value.” I totally agree with this for two reasons:

• Just the other day, someone stumbled (http://www.stumbleupon.com) upon an old blog post of mine and put it in the feminism category. It’s led to a steady stream of traffic to our DWC Women’s Dish blog.
• Brogan and Smith also point out that if someone asks a question, you could answer it by e-mail OR you could post your answer on the blog and help not just that one person but many others who may be Googling the same issue. I’ve found that you also help yourself when you do this because it saves you from responding to the same question over and over again–you can just direct people to your blog.

Jumping gates and playing games
I liked the section on gatejumpers, but if I were to totally gush over everything, then who would take me seriously? One minor flaw of the book, which isn’t necessarily a flaw–as it could possibly be an entirely separate book–is that sometimes the authors will drop names of gamechangers such as Perez Hilton, but not talk about the actual steps they took to become gamechangers.

There is a good example of how Timothy Ferriss used the term “lifestyle design” to jump his gate. He used this term instead of work/life balance and time management. Note to self: Come up with a new term for “women’s business group that helps do-it-yourselfers do it themselves.” I’m open to suggestions!

To be a gatejumper, “figure out who the gatekeepers are, then decide which rules you can break to make yourself a gatejumper.”

I also liked the section on viewing the world as a game because games have concrete goals and simple ways to measure what’s working and what’s not. The focus is on beating the system, not other people. “Once you have the system figured out, ask yourself which rules can be ignored, changed, modified.” I thought this is a great section for all women to read, because too often we are still playing the “good girl” role and not taking enough calculated risks. Social media is about putting yourself out there . . . and women are such great communicators, we should be all over this new medium.

Social Media and Trust
Social media is about selling the same thing as everyone else–only differently.

Social media can be about tinkering–it’s a great way to test new things without too much expense.

But make sure your connectors still work. This brief section resonated hugely with me. If you are going to be a gatejumper and start doing things differently, you have to still be able to plug back into a market where everyone may still be doing things the traditional way. This was a bit of my problem with the Downtown Women’s Club. We moved online a bit prematurely for our core audience. This meant we spent a year marketing something that our core audience (thirty- and fortysomething businesswomen) didn’t know or care about. We finally figured this out and have continued to market along a dual track. Ironically, more recently, our focus on our digital offerings and virtual teleclasses has brought us a whole new audience–boomer women. While there were many organizations geared to senior women who wanted to network in person, there weren’t many that focused on teaching them social media and other online networking skills.

I noted that this section was followed by one about the importance of moving first! LOL– it’s all about moving early but staying connected to the status quo.

“Despite all the changes on the web, the basis of trust is still the same; it’s the signals that have changed. Having credibility is a major factor, but credibility is established through what other people think.” One of the best tidbits was the one on pages 83 and 84, which talks about signals of trust on the web: from design to longevity to what you have on your “About” page (I had identical thoughts about “why the about page is the most important page of your website”).

The Business Value of Friends
Brogan and Smith hit on something that those of us who use social media get and non-users don’t. “These ‘friends’ we’re discussing aren’t the ‘move your couch’ friends. They’re people you know online, and you value their opinion and respect the relationship.”

• Becoming friends means that we’ve accepted your network connection. It means we’re at least curious about who you are.
• Consider “friends” to mean that you can pay attention to what we’re doing and try to find a conversational entry point.
• Marketing to a new friend will almost always result in unfriending–and possibly an angry blog post.
• It’s simple: This is like saying hi at a party to someone you don’t exactly know. It’s a good start, but what you stay next is probably more important.
• Reveal little things, naturally, without making them a focal point, and people will develop a more complete view of you as a person and respect you more for it.

I also thought the example of GM’s two social media marketing examples was noteworthy: asking people to make videos for them to use in their marketing backfired (environmentalists were all over it with negative videos); but asking people to share their passions about their GM cars was successful.

It’s Not Too Late to Start
Six games you could have made and still can:

1. Write a content marketing blog about a passion of yours.
2. Build a small, powerful network.
3. Become the name brand of a specialty.
4. Master leverage and use it for good.
5. Sell by generating human trust.
6. Make an army to power your change.

I actually thought the ending hid the most illuminating statement:

All this humanizing is normal; in fact, the only reason we think that it’s crazy is because most of us were born in the brief period where mass media was the only game in town. But, remember, that’s only been the case for a few decades; for the rest of the time, people have communicated mostly with other people in small groups.

I agree with this statement wholeheartedly, especially as I see a rise in network marketing (in a good way) and small businesses.

Top shelf bottom line: Trust Agents is a must read for both the social media novice AND the more experienced user, no matter what size the business or level of social media expertise. It’s also an easy and fun book because of the conversational voice and the pop culture references.

P.S. I’m headed to the Inbound Marketing Summit on Oct. 7 and 8 in Foxborough, Mass. (although only for Oct. 7). If you’re going, please try to find me and say hi! If you haven’t signed up yet, what are you waiting for? Visit: http://city.inboundmarketingsummit.com/boston/.

A couple of years ago, my co-author Lindsey Pollak and I were struggling with how to write an engaging “how to online network” book. Then we pondered:  What would Jane Austen do if she were a blogger?  The result:  The Savvy Gal’s Guide to Online Networking (or What Would Jane Austen Do?).

This is why when I heard about the book Ophelia Joined the Group Maidens Who Don’t Float: Classic Lit Signs on to Facebook by Sarah Schmelling, I just had to get my hands on it.  Classic Lit + Social Media = Witty Fun!

Schmelling takes classic literature characters and transports them into the modern world by imaging what they would do if handed a computer and access to Facebook.  She creates profiles, pages, news feeds, and has them interact with each other.

For the non-Facebook friendly, the title is a play off the fact that people who join Facebook usually join groups of like-minded folks. Poor Ophelia of Hamlet fame would have been relegated to joining the group of “Maidens who Don’t Float,” not to be confused with the group “Men Who Float But Are Still Not Impervious to Bullets” which can count Jay Gatsby among its members.

Some of the sections worked better than others (meaning LOL funny).  What I found the most clever were generally:

• Those sections involving literature that I knew really well (Pride & Prejudice, Great Expectations, Jane Eyre, Anna Karenina, Gatsby, Lolita, Little Women); and
• Those that lent themselves to the genre (i.e. Romeo and Juliet, due to the fact that they are teenagers; Lord of the Flies re: having a reunion; Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald unfriending each other; and Mark Twain and Oscar Wilde trading quips).

If you love literature and are familiar with Facebook, this is a great way to revisit the classics in a whole new light and have a few laughs along the way! Who can resist a chapter titled:  “Elizabeth threw a sheep at Mr. Darcy: The Love and Other Difficulties Network.”   I couldn’t.

Top Shelf Bottom Line: Recommended for the Facebook enthusiasts.  It’s a fun way to revisit familiar characters.

I was thrilled to learn that Top Shelf Reading Picks has been selected as one of the 50 Top blogs for business education by The Biz-learner.   Thanks for the honor!

When Keith Ferrazzi’s book Never Eat Alone came out in 2005, I read it and chose not to review it.  To me, it was nothing more than a lot of name-dropping by someone (a major extrovert) who wanted to run his life as a nonstop BNI meeting.  Not that there is anything wrong with that.  But for 99 percent of the rest of the world, even if we wanted to, we couldn’t follow his recommendations due to introverted personalities, family obligations, and the fact that many of us startup entrepreneurs needed to focus on the day-to-day operations and sleep more than three or four hours per night.

However, I have a very different take on Ferrazzi’s new book, Who’s Got Your Back: The Breakthrough Program to Build Deep, Trusting Relationships That Create Success –and Won’t Let You Fail.  This is the book I wish he had written back then.  The difference between the two?  In the first book, Ferrazzi taught people “how to mingle,” not “how to network.”  In his new book, amid many mea culpas for the first book (an honorable approach that completely changed my view of Mr. Ferrazzi), he focuses on building relationships rather than building a Rolodex.

Some of my favorite sections from the book include the following:

He notes that the secret to getting into the “club” (e.g., any group of top executives who all do business with one another) is “[caring] about other people’s success rather than just your own.  It was a skill that business schools and too many people overlooked.”

I liked the model he used for this book of Jean Nidetch, the founder of Weight Watchers, building support systems to accomplish goals. “Exceptional achievement in work and life is a peer-to-peer collaborative process.”

Much of the beginning is very personal and talks about how, to the outside world, Ferrazzi seemed to be living the high life always surrounded by adoring fans and colleagues, yet he felt isolated and alone, and his company wasn’t making the progress it should have been making.

At their essence, my problems weren’t just business problems. For so many of the daily and strategic issues that a company faces, I relied on the world-class network I had put together, using the insights and guidelines I described in Never Eat Alone.  I could turn to any number of clients, lawyers, bankers, vendors, or board members in my network for specific advice.  But the help they could give me was relegated to a call here or a coffee there – dribs and drabs.  I didn’t have anyone in my life whom I could turn to at any time for a completely candid, no-holds-barred discussion of what was really going on in my life and my business.

My favorite line in the whole book was shortly thereafter where Peter Guber tells him that he needs to be more “elegant,” and then explains that he wasn’t talking about Ferrazzi’s appearance but  rather “elegance of purpose and activity.”

“. . . elegance is the art of exerting the minimum amount of effort for the maximum effect, the maximum amount of power and achievement in our life.  . . . [Keith] you’re one of the smartest people I know, but you’re working so frenetically.”

Not only could I personally relate to that, this was reminiscent of one of my all-time favorite CoCo Chanel quotes:  “Elegance is refusal.”

Other good points:

The difference between mentors and lifelines. Mentors are based on master/apprentice situations, and lifelines are peer-to-peer.  This is why this is NOT a book about mentors.  On a side note:  I’m wondering if mentoring is going to be less of a buzz word as the command-and-control business structure collapses and Generation Y overtakes boomers in the workplace.

But in the meantime, Ferrazzi gives us the four mind-sets to building lifeline relationships:

1. Generosity
2. Vulnerability
3. Candor
4. Accountability

He then breaks them down throughout the rest of the book.  I particularly liked the section on creating intimate relationships.  Of course people will say, “but it’s business, I can’t get intimate.” But Ferrazzi is not talking about dipping your pen in the company ink, he’s talking about making yourself memorable to others.   Making yourself memorable is the key to turning mingling into networking, and Ferrazzi gives us tips on how to do it.

The eight steps to instant intimacy:

1. Create an authentic environment around you.
2. Suspend your prejudices.
3. Project the positive.
4. Share your passions.
5. Talk about your goals and dreams.
6. Revisit your past.
7. What’s keeping you up at night?
8. Future fears.

Another key to creating intimate relationships is being candid.  He also includes some great tips for doing this:

1. Find people you respect.
2. Create the opportunity.
3. Make it clear any feedback you get is a gift.
4. Acknowledge your faults.
5. Tell the other person what you plan to do with the advice.
6. Don’t tell them what you want to hear.
7. Ask specific questions.
8. Take it or leave it–but deliver on safety.
9. Pay them back.

The rest of the book is chock-full of advice on how to create your own lifeline relationships from accountability buddies to building a dream team.  I confess, I faded a bit in the second half, but that was because he was telling me stuff I already knew.  I built my own dream team five years ago in almost the exact manner he lays out.  But for those of you who haven’t, that may be the most useful part of the book.

Top Shelf Bottom Line: If you found that mass-market networking does not work for you, then this is a great book to learn how to build the relationships that matter in a manner that is probably much more comfortable.  Ferrazzi is his engaging self and the stories of his successes are much better-balanced in this book because they are offset by his honesty about his failures and shortcomings.

I’ve been focused on social media for a while, so I’m always surprised at people who are holdouts. Yet they’re out there.  If you happen to be one of those people who still need convincing, read this article about the coming Age-Wave.  Really, it’s not just us fanatics anymore; the demographics are singing the same tune.

The nice thing about social media and online marketing is that they are something everyone can learn.  So what’s a marketer to do to get up to speed?  I found that Scott Fox’s e-Riches 2.0: Next Generation Marketing Strategies for Making Millions Online was a very thorough overview.  Don’t let the name scare you into thinking it’s one of those internet scams.  I found it was useful for performing a complete marketing audit.  I was able to evaluate inefficiencies and plan for the next six months.

Some items of interest:

His Nine Commandments for E-Riches Marketing Success include:

1. Don’t worry about technology–focus on your marketing goals instead.
2. Heed the interactive imperative.
3. Build customer relationships. Don’t just chase sales.
4. Listen Up. The “participation nation” requires it.
5. Your profit potential depends on being more personal.
6. Grow beyond your website to a multi-channel online “product presence.”
7. Graduate from destination marketing to distributed engagement.
8. Nurture your brand’s reputation cloud.
9. Publish or perish.

Now if you didn’t understand all of those, or don’t have them incorporated into your 2009/2010 marketing plan, you might want to pick this book up.

Even if you do have a social media component to your marketing plan, I found that Fox had me reconsidering whether some of the services and tools I was using were the most efficient/cost-effective.

And my favorite line in the book is found under Fox’s “Magic Blog Formula.”

If you have something to say that will grow your business, then start a blog.  Otherwise shut up.

Top Shelf Bottom Line: e-Riches covers: e-mail, social marketing, blogs, online PR and promotion tools, podcasting and PPC advertising.  If you don’t have most of these incorporated into your plan, it’s worth picking up.

Word of caution, it may be a bit overwhelming for the non-techie newbie but still helpful to learn the terminology and to earmark the stuff you need to learn more about.

Another good book, which might be easier for total newbies, is: eBoot Camp by Corey Perlman.  Click here for my review.