As someone who runs two businesses, one by day and one by night, time management is essential for me to survive and thrive in my life. Having suffered from unofficially diagnosed ADD for years, I am easily distracted. Therefore, I take great pride in having trained myself to keep a disciplined schedule. The busier I am the better chance I have at keeping myself on task and productive and far less distracted by shiny objects.
My point is not allowing to have much FREE time, I prefer audio books or slim, fast read business books. Jeffrey Gitomer’s Social Boom fit perfectly into that category. Although I’ve had the book about two weeks, I finally forced myself to stop moving the book back and forth between my office & bedroom to simply sit up in bed last night, while Toshiko snored on to read it through. By my copy pictured here, clearly there was/is plenty of noteworthy call to action pages–green for getter done and yellow for further investigation.
Social Boom, How to Master Business Social Media, is a welcome edition to my small number of references on social media. (See previous book reviews) The book, written both by Jeffry and a few business colleagues with more expertise in the tech tools, is very well organized, focusing on emotionally and logically explaining why business owners should simply get involved with social media. It rationalizes that all sales professionals need to utilize the tools to reduce cold calls and increase client conversion. The the text provides practical, tested benchmarks of how to best utilize the major branded social media tools. The Gitomer style of cutting through the BS to provide simple step strategies of how to use FaceBook, Linked In, Twitter & YouTube would be invaluable to someone new to social media or someone not feeling they are getting the most from the user experience.
Something very cool about the book is the inbound marketing strategy illustrated via chapter end “Git Bit(s)”, notes that direct the reader to interact and visit Gitomer’s website for more information on a topic. Gitomer’s no-nonsense writing flair encompasses my favorite section, which raises the question, “Is Social Media Right for Every Business?” actually penned Mitch Joel. As a total Muppets and Star Wars child with the latter action figures in my garage to prove it, his analogy about Yoda on p. 47, which precedes completely quotable content on p. 48 was worth the price of the book. Also, as someone who publicly has a “love -hate relationship with FaceBook”, that section helped me find some tolerable way to endure helping clients with thousands of friends to use the tech toy more effectively. In truth, much more engrossed by the Linked in section, I am completely stoked about implementing those suggestions PDQ. It definitely help me understand how to better utilize this tool.
For folks who have been to my office, they know I own full collections of classic titles by those I endear as the “business forefathers”, such as Ken Blanchard and Dr. John Maxwell. However, I’m extremely glad to put Mr. Gitomer’s book front and center facing out on those display shelves and will promote it in my local business forum in two days. Therefore, I highly recommend its “fast implementation” content and the roughly $26 investment in a single library resource.
The merit of the book is that after reading it is not only its ease of application, but even the most anti-technology, staunchest anti-social media person would have difficulty denying the business logic of getting involved with social media. And let’s face it living in Indiana, we need someone bigger and badder boys than my local biz forum to light some matches under some anti-technology business butts.
