About once a month I receive a book (for free) via the Social Media Club to do a review for the Social Media Book Club. For February it is Christopher Barger’s The Social Media Strategist – Build a Successful Program from the Inside Out.

You can find Christopher Barger on his blog Socially Speaking on Twitter @cbarger and LinkedIn.

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.

For my regular reader, the independent professional, I do highlight some points from the book that you want to apply in your business.

Book review video

This is the video of my book review:

Social Media Strategist by Christopher Barger – #smcbooks review from Erno Hannink on Vimeo.

Successful Social Media Program

The main part of this book is about the 7 elements of a successful social media program.

1. the Executive Champion. The person on the executive team that does not need to know all the social media terms or be very active on it, but provides internal support for the program. He or she makes the connection between the social evangelist and the executives.
2. Who owns social media. Which department or what team is responsible for social media on behalf of the organisation. Christopher gives several pros and cons for marketing, Pr, HR or customer service. In the end someone needs to be responsible.
3. The social media evangelist – the face of the organisation in the social media. This person knows every thing about social media and still is able to explain it to you and me. Even though this person is the face of the company it is not about him or her, it is always about the organisation.
4. ROI and measurement. This point is important for independent professionals as well. You need to know what success in social media looks like. What do you measure and when are you happy. You also need to determine where you are now, your zero point. Sales is always the most important end result.
5. Legal Team – you have to work with the lawyers. You need to understand what you can and can not say in public.
6. Social Media Policy – the rules. What can people in the organization do in the social media. What can your co-workers not talk about on Twitter. As an independent professional I see no reason to write a policy (who is going to fire me? Me?), however the Usage Guide has some good tips:
   • Acknowledge mistakes – fast
   • Never remove posts or factual errors – just explain and update
   • Be respectful – always.
   • Link back to others’ people posts
7. Teaching – educate the people in your organisation. How does it all work. Why a policy, what is in it, what gets you fired.

The Social Media Strategist: Build a Successful Program from the Inside Out on Amazon (aff)

What did I think about it

It is a thorough book which takes care of the most important points about social media in large organisations. I don’t work for large organisation but I feel that you can learn a lot from it if you do.

Working with social media is different for someone like me compared to an evangelist in a large organisation. The most important points are true for both of us:

Social Media is about people not technology.

Social Media is a 2-way business tool to attract customers.

Bottom line:

Use common sense

If you are working in or for a large organisation and are working with social media it is a good book to read. It will not show you how to use Twitter or blogs, it will show you what are the important elements of a social media program.

A video from an interview that David Meerman Scott did with Christopher Barger at his GM time in 2009.

Post from: Erno Hannink feel free to use the content but give credit to the writer (CC BY/SA)

Social Media Strategist by Christopher Barger @cbarger book review [video]

LinkedIn is a great tool if you want to attract new clients. The book Maximizing LinkedIn for Sales and Social Media Marketing helps you to improve your actions on LinkedIn.

This is the second book by Neal Schaffer about LinkedIn. His first book Windmill Networking: Understanding, Leveraging & Maximizing LinkedIn (aff) is more for when you are just starting on LinkedIn. The subtitel of this book is “An Unofficial, Step-by-Step Guide to Creating & Implementing Your LinkedIn Brand”

His new book Maximizing LinkedIn for Sales and Social Media Marketing. Is for when you have a profile on LinkedIn and are already active. “An Unofficial, Practical Guide to Selling & Developing B2B Business on LinkedIn”

This book was sent to me for free in the monthly Social Media Book Club (#smcbooks)

Case Studies

Schaffer has some great case studies in each chapter of the book. Interesting examples of managers and business owners that have great results using LinkedIn actively to get new business.

Of course it was really cool to see my cousin’s husband in one of the case studies. He started a group in LinkedIn for Philips. Hans Notenboom started the Innovations in Health group that has now more that 45.000 members and is of the five largest groups health-related.

Maximizing LinkedIn a Video review

Number of contacts

Other tips that I found really interesting were some remarks on the number of contacts. I meet with people and talk about LinkedIn. Often they have about 200 contacts. Most of the time the person says that he only connects with people on LinkedIn when they have shaken hands.

To me this is weird and similar to, going to a network event and only talk with people that you already know.

Schaffer says that a good number of contacts is that you multiply your age times 10-20 contacts at the minimum.

Schaffer also says that the 2nd degree of contacts are more important than your 1st degree of contacts. The chance that you will find new business at 2nd degree contacts is higher than with the 1st degree because they already know you.

LinkedIn Groups and Answers

The book has some great tips on how to improve your profile on LinkedIn taking SEO in account. You will find tips on how to setup your business profile, add products and promote the business page on your website.

The most engaging sections on LinkedIn are groups and answers. That is where you should spend most of your time. Start your own group or join a group where you can find your target audience. Your potential clients.

Make your self visible. Do research on LinkedIn and engage with the decision makers in your industry.

I love the book and have used a number of tips improving my company profile and I have started actively again in answering questions and participating in groups and connect with people I have met earlier.

Who is it for

When your target audience is Managers, business owners, when you work in B2B, LinkedIn is the social network site you want to spend a lot of time.

The people in the case studies often spend 2-3 hours per day on LinkedIn. In return a majority of their business comes from LinkedIn.

Post from: Erno Hannink feel free to use the content but give credit to the writer (CC BY/SA)

Maximizing LinkedIn for Sales and Social Media Marketing

This book was a tip by Becky McCray (thank you @beckymccray) a while ago and it was on my Amazon wish list for a while.
The book: Built to Sell: Turn Your Business Into One You Can Sell (aff)

The tips that I mention in the video:

1. Specialize
2. No clients that are more than 15% of your revenue
3. Pitching a prices that you own, puts you in control
4. Make the business less dependent on you
5. Standardize – make products. Customers vs clients
6. Say no to clients that don not use your standardized process/product
7. Hire 2 sales people, better than 1. They will compete.
8. Hire people that are used to sell products

In the book are actually even more tips, but these are my favorites.

builttosell.com

When you start a business, it’s natural to dream of selling it one day. In fact, more than half of America’s 27 million business owners say they want to sell their business in the next 10 years

You may want to retire, travel, cash out or just sleep well at night knowing you could sell your business.

Unfortunately, just 1 out of every 100 business owners is successful in selling his or her company each year.

John also offers a free ebook – The freedom manifesto. To download the ebook you will have use your name and email address and you will also get his newsletter.

Feel free to send me your book.
When I like it I will do a book review on it. (the shipping address is here contact)

Post from: Erno Hannink feel free to use the content but give credit to the writer (CC BY/SA)

Built to Sell by John Warrillow – book review

You write every day for 8 hours, 5 days a week.
Publish 3-4 books per year.
You will have some books that will do mmmm, most of the books will do OK and some books will be bestsellers.

Nora Roberts writes daily and has an amazing number of bestsellers.

“Since she started writing stories down in notebooks 30 years ago, Nora Roberts has used discipline and talent in equal measure. Early in her career, she worked her writing in between her sons’ daily pre-school and nap schedules. When they were both in school full time, her writing schedule mirrored theirs, although she put in extra hours over the weekend. Now, after almost 200 books and countless bestsellers, she writes eight hours a day — every day.”

OK, you don’t have to do it this way. Maybe these points will make it easier:

• Write 1,000 words a day
• Write 5 days a week
• In 2 months you have a book: 40,000 words
• Take 1 month for reading and editing
• Publish 3 books per year
• Rinse and repeat

You will attract your own following.

When I finished writing my first book last year I knew that I wanted to do this again. I loved doing it.
Receiving all the tweets, comments, e-mails when the book was published, I knew I will do this every year.

So, I am working on my second book: Pick your Niche

Help

If you are an independent professional and picked your niche, I would love you to answer some questions via e-mail for me.
Your answers can help the readers of this book to pick their niche.
Let me know via the comments if you can and want to help me.

photo credit: akeg

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How to write a bestseller

This book, The Radical Leap: A Personal Lesson in Extreme Leadership (aff) by Steve Farber is a great book. It is easy to read because Steve tells a great story.

Along the way Steve meets a new friend Edg, who learns him about leadership and what LEAP is. An old friend calls Steve because she needs help with a problem at the company. Steve meets the great William G. Maritime. In the end Steve finds what he was looking for, no I will not spoil the ending for you. You will just have to read it your self…

Since the book is so easy to ready you learn almost without noticing important aspects about leadership: Love, Energy, Audacity and Proof.
Watch the video and my book review.

Steve Farber

Here is Steve in a presentation about Audacity:

At SOBCon May 2010 I listened to the story by Steve Farber, he blew me away. Want to do a short interview with him over Skype soon.

Post from: Erno Hannink feel free to use the content but give credit to the writer (CC BY/SA)

Radical LEAP – personal story on extreme leadership

About two months ago I watched a great TED video, it was a talk by Simon Sinek. Simon talked about How great leaders inspire action.

From this video I was just blown away by the idea of the golden circle. In my next presentation I included the idea and diagram.
A friend mentioned she had the book and wanted to send it to me. From the moment I received the book I started reading it and kept thinking about the impact for my business. I started thinking about why I did what I did.

This is what I wrote down:

I believe that Independent Professionals can attract clients via the internet
I believe that relationships via the internet are real.
Real relations help you to become more successful.

Where did this come from? In a course about writing articles I came with the posing that people feel that online relationships are not real. Entrepreneurs want to meet the people that they do business with. They want to meet potential customers. They connect with me online and write me a note “Let’s have a cup of coffee and see what we can do for each other.” Or they only connect with people on LinkedIn they have actually met, shaken hands with and exchanged business cards.

This is not necessary you can build real relationships via social networks like LinkedIn, Facebook and/or Twitter.

I love the book Start With Why. Simon talks a lot about Apple a lot, because they seem to have an intense connection with Why. Another example Simon uses is South West Airlines.

One thing I am not sure of from the book is the size of the business when the Why is good to use. Simon writes it is not really important for a small company. Since you, the owner of the company, make all the decisions and they are aligned with your Why, your gut. That is true but I also feel that being clear on your why in all your communication will make it easier to grasp as a customer. Put your Why on your website. Start with Why, then How then What. Maybe that can even be the order of your menu in your website.

The book does not give you a step by step how you can find your why. Finding your why is a process of discovery according to Simon.

The Golden Circle

The book is all about the Golden Circle.

The book review in video:

Start With Why by Simon Sinek – book review ErnoHannink from Erno Hannink on Vimeo.

How great leaders inspire action

This was recorded at TEDxPuget Sound September 2009.

Simon published his book “Start With Why” in 2009. There is also a website Start With Why you can order the book via Amazon Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action (aff).

A reaction on TED.com:

Belief leads to trust
Trust leads to confidence
Confidence leads to happiness
Happiness leads to love

And we all love to get some LOVE. LOVE from another person and LOVE for what we do.

Why do you do what you do. Love to here the Why for your business, for why you do it all.

This book was sent to me by Brigitte van Tuijl

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Start With Why by Simon Sinek book review

At SOBCon 2010 I will be on a great panel; Strategy – A Business Is Born and Branded. A panel moderated by Sheila Scarborough, Becky McCray with Chris Garrett, Lisa Haneburg, Sharna Brockett and me. Woot, will be so good.

For the visitors of this event I did something special. The 30 minutes version of my book Laat de klant naar jou komen (Dutch) has been translated to English so I can share it with the attendees.

You can download it for free here:
Attracting Clients – How Independent Professionals and solopreneurs can get new clients using the internet

Let me know if you like it.

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Attracting Clients

January 2009 I met Rohit Bhargava in Las Vegas at Social Media Diner. After a talk and video Rohit gave me 2 copies of his book Personality not Included since I offered him to help him to get it published in the Netherlands. Now it is available in the Netherlands Persoonlijkheid niet Inbegrepen is the title.

It is a great book to get translated because it is an important subject and will be read more and understood better in Dutch for companies from Holland.

Website:
Personality not Included
Rohit Bhargava
Rohid on Twitter
boek op Managementboek.nl

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Personality not Included published in Dutch

What is success for you. What do you want to miss to gain success in another field. When you achieve success are you really happy or were you aiming for a picture of success that is not your own.

A very interesting TED talk about success by Alain de Botton at TED in Cambridge (UK) in June 2009.

Some books by Alain de Botton are Status Anxiety and Status Anxiety.
Alain is the initiator of a project, Living Architecture. He wanted to create the opportunity that we can stay for a couple of nights in very special houses designed by a number of architects in the UK.

Post from: Erno Hannink feel free to use the content but give credit to the writer (CC BY/SA)

Think a moment about success for you as an entrepreneur

Today I have started writing my book. It all started with the idea to write a book about the subject I talk about a lot How to get clients via the internet for small business owners.

Since I need some structure I thought it would be a good idea to find first a publisher and then start writing the book. This route should give me some deadlines that I need to finalize the book at all.

The first contact with my publisher started via my friend Martijn Aslander. He invited some friends to the Lifehacking Academy. These publisher friends, that published the Dutch translation of the book ‘Upgrading Your Life‘ by Gina Trapani, were in my presentation during that day. The presentation was about online networking. An article or two from lifehacking.nl that I wrote is in this book.

During my trip to Las Vegas in January 2009 (Dutch article on it) I met some great people. Some of them wrote books that I wanted to introduce to the publisher. The book that really got my interest was that of Rohit Bhargava – Personality Not Included. I read it during the flight back and at the airports and in the train back home. By the time I was home I almost finished reading it.

It is a great book! I love the way it is build up – 2 parts. The first part is the theory and the second part is about techniques, guides and tools. The book is well designed. The website for the book is fun and smart. Rohit is a very nice and smart person – SVP of the Digital Strategy and founding member of the 360 Digital Influence group at Ogilvy Public Relations. You can read a lot of his writing online for free at the Influential Marketing blog.

So I introduced the book with A.W. Bruna and they loved it too. After a month or so they purchased the rights to publish the Dutch translation of this book. So this book will be out in October 2009 in Dutch!

At that first meeting with Bruna I also talked about my idea to write a book. They liked the subject that I want to write about. So now I had to write an outline of the book. A proposal about the subjects that I wanted to discuss in the book.

After another month it was clear, A.W. Bruna was ready to accept the publishing of my book. I received a contract and now I need to start writing the book. Luckely I already write a lot and don’t find it difficult anymore. The subject is in my vaines. It is all about strategy and structure now. Every Friday for the next 4 months is now blocked in my calendar.

So today I started to collect books that I want to use for the book either as a reference or for more information on a subject. See the collection:

So now I am analyzing the books to determine my book strategy.

What I like about the book (the hard cover)

• titel can be reduced to PNI
• Personal note on the bookmark with icon (chicken) and email pnibook@gmail.com
• References in the book to ‘secret’ parts on the site
• Book in 2 parts
• Tabs on the side for chapters 1-6 ith the theory
• Theory with 2-3 examples
• Part 2 with Techniques, Guides and Tools

What do I like about the site for PNI

• Order book on home page
• icons on the right
• readers community facebook
• readers community backcover
• bibliografy met alle boeken in een eigen Resource bookstore op Amazone
• Media Kit – with photos on Flickr
• Reviews & Buzz with links from Delicious
• Blog – of course
• Making of – that is what I want to start already so you can enjoy the journey

Rohit also created this great presentation

How To Write A Book: The Making Of Personality Not Included

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Writing a book