OPEN

Myself and the team at Spannerworks have  given the What is social media? eBook a bit of an update, it’s second or third so far, I think, and it has a natty new cover as well…

If you read it, please let me know what you think. Remember, though, it’s intended as a complete beginner’s guide, so it is necessarily brief. 

Beyond what it was originally intended to be, though, this little eBook means a lot to me and I think it has achieved more than the sum of its parts, as it were…

• A reference point for my social media adventure: Written initially just over a year ago, so much has changed in the meantime, in terms of the ways we’re using social media, the general levels of awareness, the challenges we’re working on in the team at Spannerworks. Personally, it serves as a reminder of how fast things are moving and how far we’ve come.
• A case study for being useful to your networks: It was intended as a useful document, plain and simple. So we kept it short, trying to de-jargon and give lots of links and references. We published it, naturally, with a creative commons licence. And the rewards have been great, from goodwill from clients and contacts who’ve used it for briefing colleagues to graduates applying for jobs because they read our book on a course. Someone even came up to me at a new media conference and said they’d attached it to their business plan as an appendix.
• Google likes it too: Because it earned attention in its networks, What is social media? ranks number one in Google for its own name and number three for the phrase “social media”. Which is nice.

Yes, on balance, I would highly recommend the idea of writing a book, even a little one like this. It’s very simple on the one hand, but a real slog at the same time, even with more help than was available with the first edition.

I’ve been threatening to write another for a while, distilling some of the the themes about marketing and networks that I’ve been talking about at conferences and the like over the past 18 month, but have been foiled by general schedule insanity. 

Publishing this new edition of what feels like an old friend makes me doubly determined to find the time to write again soon.

: : Bonus link: When you are in a niche market or not very famous, giving away things like eBooks is a very good idea. For some thinking about how this changes for well known authors, take a look at a post called “Free is more complicated than you think” by Chris Anderson on the Long Tail blog.