Could you imagine just interviewing key people via Twitter and not having any other contact with them?
That’s exactly what Toby Bloomberg did when she questioned 40 marketing leaders for her ebook, “Social Media Marketing GPS.” The entire book is written in 140 characters or less. Even the questions are 140 characters or less.
I thought this was quite creative and different. However, at times, it was hard to read and understand. I read this book on my iPad and had no trouble reading it. It was clear and crisp. However, the links offered are not clickable so at times, I either ignored them or took out my laptop to look them up on my own. I even tried on my laptop and was unable to open the links.
Ms. Bloomberg offered some interesting information. It was written more for the intermediate social media enthusiast than the newbee.
Every chapter begins with a “Tweet Intro,” where Ms. Bloomberg offers her knowledge and expertise on the subject. After that, Ms. Bloomberg goes to the interviews. She mentions the experts’ names, however, a typical reader won’t know who these people are. As a matter of fact, I didn’t know most of the people she interviewed in the ebook. That was my biggest complaint about the ebook because I wanted to know who these people where and where their expertise lied.
The end of each chapter included key concepts and then a series of questions to ask about the campaign. I thought that was clever and thought provoking, like “How will you determine where your customers are having conversations on the social web?”
Social media is about conversation and brand recognition. Ms. Bloomberg touches these areas in her 140 character tweets. She also gets into how to create real value added relationships via 140 characters or less. Through interviews and then her conclusion, Toby Bloomberg shares how strong bonds are formed online because “people want to feel that they matter and you value the relationship,” she writes.
Interestingly at the conclusion of the book, Ms. Bloomberg reviews key questions asked in each chapter and combines it into one to help the reader establish his/her own social media strategy for his/her business.
I liked the ebook and found it totally different than any other social media book I have read in that it was done in a social media format. I found that creative and interesting.
This article was first published at Blogcritics by Hilary JM Topper.
