5 thoughts on “Social Media 101: Tactics and Tips to Develop Your Business Online Reviews”

1. Review by Robin N. Uncapher for Social Media 101: Tactics and Tips to Develop Your Business Online
   Rating:
   Will books be replaced by blogs? Social Media 101 is a blog in book form. While there’s some good information here, the book lacks narrative, mixes cliches with some worthwhile tools and serves up a lot of scattered information.

   The longer I read Social Media 101, the more I wondered if author Chris Brogan had read a book lately and realized that what works in an interactive medium looks like a mess on the printed page. Readers of blogs find their minds wandering after 800 words. Book readers expect more than a bunch of ideas that flashed through someone’s head. Moreover book buyers expect a product that provides more value than something free. Much of Social Media 101 reads like a stream of conscious conversation. Brogan starts with “Above all else people,” gives us a few cliches and then moves on to “People like to be engaged.” As he skips from topic to topic the book gets worse. A chapter entitled Velocity, Flexibility, Economy includes a blurb on Google’s smart phone, Flexibility, a blub on various applications and Economy, descriptions of things like Skype which reduce the costs of many jobs. The fact that the author, publishers and editors all okay’d this (probably because the topic “Social Media” is such a draw) is pretty sad.

   I know that everyone is dying to find out more about social media and what they can do with it. Unfortunately what readers’ need is a thoughtful, well organized tool that will help them put together a strategy. This book of tips won’t cut it. The author never bit the bullet and took the time to write a real book from the notes in his blog.

2. Review by Sacramento Book Review for Social Media 101: Tactics and Tips to Develop Your Business Online
   Rating:
   Chris Brogan is a social media genius, but unfortunately, the book is not. In fact, it seems to be nothing more than a collection of scratching-the-surface blog posts (not even the best ones, as far as I can tell) with no rhyme or reason as to why they’re included in the book. Along these same lines, there’s little, if any, logic to the organization of the book. Had Brogan presented a better framework or context into which to organize the posts, it probably would have been much easier to get some value out of them. Another problem in reading this book is that Brogan often refers to other Web sites, and while it’s easy to click over to those while reading online, it’s a disruption to do so when trying to read a book.

   Those who want to give it a try, though, will find parts and pieces of Brogan’s social media values and beliefs on things like building relationships, branding, and strong communication.

   Overall, this is a book that sure takes a lot of pages here to say very little. Stick with the blog, or if your curiosity kills you, consider finding the free version of this piece at the author’s Web site.

   Reviewed by Allena Tapia

3. Review by Fernando Colosimo for Social Media 101: Tactics and Tips to Develop Your Business Online
   Rating:
   I am a fan of chris brogan blog. He knows a lot about social media. I am a top producer in south america and I am begining to build my personal brand using social media. This book has the best articles of chris`s blog with a lot how to for people like me who want to introduce in the social media arena but it is a little desorganized and I would expect a little more than I read in his blog. Anyway i recomend it because it will become the first book to read for everybody who want to introduce in the social media

4. Review by T. Edmund Jenkin for Social Media 101: Tactics and Tips to Develop Your Business Online
   Rating:
   Being on social media and all, this non-fiction piece is written slightly tangentially (almost as if the author had just pulled together dozens of their blogs!) and probably almost works better as a reference book – i.e. look up the chapter you are interested in and just read that.

   While I did enjoy the book, and found some parts to be informing, I feel like Social Media 101 is not entirely user friendly. Being computer savy but not expert, I often found myself floundering when Brogan name dropped and didn’t bother explaining anything that would be obvious to a social media user already.

   All in all, this is more of an `interesting pointers’ book rather than a well constructed thesis on the use of social media. The book could have perhaps been stronger if it had been related to specific business ideas other than just sales pitches. Not a huge burden to read but hardly a light bulb in the dark either.
   

5. Review by Steve Walker for Social Media 101: Tactics and Tips to Develop Your Business Online
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   This book was more of a random and disorderly jumble of thoughts than a well structured, well thought out book. I agree with the previous reviewer that said that it is more of a blog than a book. If this were it’s only flaw, though, I might have forgiven it. The real problem I had was that there was just too little information of value and there was far too much extraneous information that a reader had to slog through to find those few nuggets of value. For instance, do I really want this writer telling me how to run a meeting? No. I bought this book to get the writer’s perspectives on social media. Unfortunately, I got far too little of that perspective and far too much of everything else. I would recommend you avoid this book.

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