Social Media & Digital Marketing in Singapore

Book Review: Personality Not Included By Rohit Bhargava

Earlier in the year I reviewed Tactical Transparency and said that it’s a good book for an introduction to the social media scene. However, I now feel Personality Not Included is the book I would recommend as the intro book, simply because it explores more than social media, and is about really changing the mindset of organisations from within, which is what the vast majority of organisations these days need to do. Social media is merely a byproduct and tool to helps make achieve this change in mindset easier.

There are five main thrusts to the book:

1. Find (and use) your accidental spokespeople
2. Define your personality by being unique, authentic and talkable
3. Craft a backstory people will care about
4. Conquer internal fear about embracing this change
5. Finding and using personality moments

The first half of the book is about explaining why these are important and providing many case studies of real world examples, and the second half provides steps that can be taken to bring the aforementioned concepts to reality. Of course, the steps are general guidelines and must be tweaked to be made relevant to your organisation.

Many of these concepts and steps will sound simple and intuitive to those of us who have grown up in a world where mere transactions aren’t enough anymore, but is probably difficult for the Generation X or Baby Boomer boss at work to wrap their heads around. If so, buy this book and give it to him or her, and make it an office copy after that.

There’s a really good video introduction to Personality Not Included that I encourage you to check out at the Personality Not Included blog (sorry, I couldn’t find a way to embed it on the site!)

[image taken from Flickr.com]

Tags: accidental spokespeople, accidental spokesperson, authentic, baby boomers, backstory, book review, case studies, changing mindsets, embracing change, generation x, generation y, internal fear, introduction to social media, main thrusts, personality moments, personality not included, rohit bhargava, social media scene, tactical transparency, talkable, unique

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Book Review: Tactical Transparency By Shel Holtz And John C. Havens

Tactical Transparency

As a listener of the podcast For Immediate Release (co-hosted by Shel Holtz, one of the authors of the book), I decided to check out Tactical Transparency and it’s the first book I finished in 2009, and it was a fairly quick and good read.

One thing that is clear about this book, is that it’s not for people who are already “in the know” in the social media scene, but instead for people who are curious about social media and might be thinking about “taking the plunge”. One of the reasons why the book was a quick read was because most of the material was familiar to me.

Although the book is titled “tactical” transparency and indeed many of the chapters focus on a tactical perspective instead of a strategic perspective, there is a fair amount of the book that is dedicated to embracing transparency as a culture. Depending on what you’re looking for (specific steps vs broad perspectives), the book may or may not work out for you.

The one thing I’d like to see from future books dealing with social media, is perhaps a wider range of case studies. We’ve all heard about Dell Hell, the Target story, the Comcast guy who fell asleep on the couch. I’m hoping to see new examples in future books.

I think for anyone thinking about checking out the social media scene, Tactical Transparency will be a good introduction and summary and I’d definitely recommend it. For depth and experience however, no book can replace actually experiencing it yourself, and hopefully books like Tactical Transparency help provide a road map for your journey.

For more information, feel free to check out the Tactical Transparency blog.

[image taken from the Tactical Transparency blog]

Tags: 2009, comcast couch, culture, dell hell, embracing transparency, for immediate release, john c havens, road map, shel holtz, social media, strategic thinking, tactical transparency, taking the plunge, target responding to bloggers, transparency case studies

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