We are using Groundswell as our text book, and it is a great one as it focuses on social media for relationship-building, not just as a set of technologies. While you were reading it, did you see a great idea that you would like to dig into further? Did you read about a really cool blog that you would like to subscribe to (in a reader, of course)?
Here is a great resource for you which supplements the book. There are links to all of the blogs, posts, and websites from each chapter. The authors, Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, also each have their own blogs where you can get more information and hear their thoughts directly about Groundswell as well as other topics.
Let me know if you find these additional sites helpful!
3 comments:
One comment I do NOT like in Groundwell is about file-sharing services like BitTorrent. File-sharing of copyright material is still illegal and the music business will still prosecute people who share a lot of files. This really does hurt musicians.
Alex Maas
I do not know where I should put the following information. Please move it to wherever you want.
I will write a list of both blogging and social media marketing books that I have found very helpful. I review most of them on Amazon.
One very old book about blogging is called "We Blog" Not much useful information in it, except that you should never write about anything that would not be acceptable to your randmother--she may be reading your blog anyway.
ProBlogger.net, mentioned in class, is probably the single best text about turning a blog commercial. However, it has nothing to say about how to do this with Twitter.
The worst book I found, even though it has a boatload of good reviews on Amazon, is called "Building a WordPress Blog People Want to Read". After looking through the book, I found not a single word about how to go about creating a blog that people would want to read. I found much better information in the book
"Google Blogger for Dummies". This was published in 2009 and comes with a 25 dollar coupon for Google advertising. Note this is NOT the same book as "Blogging for Dummies" that was published in 2006. That book is somewhat outdated but maybe worth the 10 bucks I paid for it at Fry's.
I also found useful information present in both
Web Sites Do-It-Yourself For Dummies and
Creating a Web Site: The Missing Manual
The focus of both of these books is way outside of social media marketing, but the information on blogging is very good.
If anyone is interested, IMHO, the best current software available for building a web site, not mentioned in either of these books, is called
Site Spinner by Virtual Mechanics, that has one version for 50 dollars and one for 100 dollars, and both versions have free trial versions. People who have built web sites professionally for years with Dreamweaver, HTML, and Front Page (now called Web Expression) have started using it instead of those programs. There are other programs, like WebEasy Professional with rave reviews, but when you look into them, they do not produce professional sites. With SiteSpinner you can even import HTML shopping carts into your site, without knowing much about HTML.
If you are interested in videoblogging, your book choices are somewhat more limited. There is Videoblogging for Dummies, published in 2006, which sells for almost nothing used on Amazon. There is also
Videoblogging, also published in 2006,which sells new for 1.44 on Amazon from some sellers. There is also Secrets of Videoblogging. I prefer the first two, but I got them out of the public library. There are lots of others, and some have never been reviewed and sell for under 5.00 (plus shipping of course!)
I also suggest two other books on
making videos if you are as clueless as I am:
The Little Digital Video book.
This one is for rank amateurs like me, but it is written by a professional who talks to an audience that is not going to be buying thousands of dollars of video equipment. This book is very cheap, even at your local bookstore.
Another book digital videobook I recommend is
Web Video: Making It Great, Getting It Noticed.
This book retails for 1/2 price on Amazon. It stresses using high- end equipment which I would just ignore, but the tips on lighting and tripods are really good.
There is a book sold as an Ebook an Amazon about how to get around the Facebook rules named
Facebook Marketing: 25 Most Effective, Unknown, Black-Op Marketing Techniques for Bands and Businesses (Kindle Edition)
by Nick Jag ) Since I do not own a Kindle I bought the book from his website, but I did not realize at 16.99 it was also an ebook. I think that is steep. I did not realize that lots of cellphones, like the one I have, have applications built into them
that allow you to read Kindle ebooks right on your phone.
There is another book called
Facebook Marketing: Leverage Social Media to Grow Your Business
This is a good book,and there is an identical book for MySpace.
Finally I would also recommend Social Media Marketing:An Hour A Day. It covers some things not covered in our class. No way anyone can be expected to keep up with all of it. Several Twitter-like applications failed in the last year. That is the good part of Groundswell, not focusing on the tecnology of the day, as it is always changing.
Finally, maybe you think that buying all these books are expensive. A lot of these books sell for almost nothing on Amazon.
I also have a Borders card, which costs nothing. Once a week they send me a coupon for one book)or sometimes one or more DVDs) from 20 to 40 percent off. I also have a Barnes & Noble card, that gives a 10 percent discount off of all their books. For some reason, some of the social media books are already 20% off at Barnes & Noble,
like Problogger.net and others. Then you add the extra 10%.
However, I look at it all this way.
If I were taking this same class at National University it would cost me 1700 dollars or so, so comparatively investing in books is cheap.
If anyone is interested, there is a Master's of Science Degree in Online Marketing you can get from Full Sail University in Winterpark, Florida, near Orlando. They have 18 graduates associated with the current round of movies up for Oscars. It is legitimate and accredited but only recently started the Master's Degree program, making it a university instead of a college.
The classes are given once per month, like at National University. The price is cheaper than The Arts Institute of San Diego, and there is more focus on the business end. Even compared to National, the cost is competitive.
You do not have to pay the tuition all up front either. They also have an on campus program for undergraduates, for the most part.
They, unfortunately, will not accept any marketing classes from UCSD Extension, however they do not accept transfer of most graduate classes from universities either.
I hope some of you might have founds some of this helpful.
Another comment I object to in Groundswell is what they say about Prosper.com, which is a way you can lend money to individuals, and they get a better interest rate than they would from the bank--if the bank would even lend them money
In Groundswell they say something about this this completely taking business away from banks, but if this were true, none of the financial mess so many banks have would have happened. Most people still borrow money from banks and not from individuals.
I have lost large amounts of money by investing in certain stock funds (not recently like everyone else), and one of these mutual companies was as crooked as any invidual can be..the Nevis Fund that reported profits that were not at al; what they said,.and they lied about how they made the profits they did make. What did they get for doing this? Nothing. What I mostly learned from failing that time was the truth of the old adage for investing
"Buy low; Sell high"
Alex Maas
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