We are excited to introduce our Social Media Club February Book of the Month, The Social Media Strategist by Christopher Barger.
Christopher Barger, the award-winning former social media director at General Motors and IBM’s former ‘blogger-in-chief,’ describes all the challenges particular to getting a comprehensive social media program off the ground in a large firm. The Social Media Strategist teaches you how to:
- Manage internal office politics, from your legal team to the policy makers to the human resource department
- Present new ideas to lawyers and executives in a compelling, convincing way
- Teach your employees the guidelines and protocols they’ll need to represent your company
- Turn your organization into a true media outlet, publishing content that is generated by in-house employees and is truly engaging to an outside audience
In today’s fast-paced professional climate, large companies are learning that launching a website and taking a wait-and-see approach to engaging customers is not enough. Competition is fierce, and those who master the social media space are the ones who come out on top. There is greater urgency than ever before to establish a vibrant social media program—and it all starts with a key strategist who can best organize and leverage all of the organization’s resources to cut through the bureaucracy and get real-time results.
This is where The Social Media Strategist comes in. Before tackling specific social media programs, you first have to get your own organization—and everyone in it—on board with making social media a business strategy priority.
“Telling a company from the outside what it should do is one thing,” writes Barger. “Actually making it happen from the inside is quite another.” Here, he takes the bold step of starting where all successful endeavors begin: by planning well, by putting all the moving parts in the right place, by constructing a solid foundation. via Amazon
Thanks to a few of our SMC Professional members and chapter leaders, we’re able to share some their reviews of The Social Media Strategist,
With inspiration from Barger’s book, and the influence of the Profound Liz Lemon, might I add Deal Breaker #13: If your social media evangelist is not willing to learn from the masters of the industry that have gone before them……deal breaker! Read This Book.
via Dave Wade, SMC Small Business Member
In his book Chris Barger takes us right onto the field. Not only that but he also manages to map out and describe a process that can and should be replicated in big business for maximum efficiency using Social Media, globally, across industry. We get to see it practically from the inside out. via Dave Griffith, President of SMC Rockford
This book really is for people who work in communications or marketing in a large organisation and that want to improve the organisation’s social media presence. Or if you are a PR firm that works for these organisations and still don’t get it. via Erno Hannink, President of SMC Amsterdam
Erno also created a in-depth video summary of who this book is aimed for and why it’s valuable,
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3uVp4J5vow&w=560&h=315]
In an effort to continue discussion and connect our Social Media Club community with our featured Book Club authors, we are hosting a complimentary webinar on Tuesday, February 28th, 2011 at 2pm EST with author Christopher Barger.
The Social Media Book Club features social media’s most innovative thought leaders, who have written books that can help our global community learn, improve and share.
We have selected several titles we will be introducing to you at the beginning of each month and ask several of our Professional members and chapter leaders to help review the monthly titles.
Thanks to our partnership with publishers like McGraw-Hill and Wiley, Social Media Club officially launched a monthly book club in March
2011, and has already featured titles such as, Wikibrands, Content Rules, Curation Nation, Get Seen, Social Media Anaytics and Maximizing, with complimentary webinars made available to our SMC members.
As a Social Media Club Professional Membership benefit, we are inviting Professional members to be part of our Social Media Book Club. If you are a Professional Member and interested in receiving, reviewing and sharing your feedback on upcoming titles with the rest of the SMC community, please email Jessica [Jessica at socialmediaclub dot org] for details.
To join the Social Media Book of the Month Club and prepare for our upcoming webinar, pick up your copy of The Social Media Strategist: Build a Successful Program from the Inside Out
*Disclosure, this is an affiliate link and Social Media Club will most likely earn $0.02 if you order this book. Think of it as a way to help fund our media literacy programs!
Be sure to follow the Social Media Book Club hashtag on Twitter to share your main takeaways or follow the conversation, #smcbooks.