Friends With Benefits: A Social Media Marketing Handbook by Darren Barefoot and Julie Szabo

Social media has exploded in the last few years with millions of people using the various sources to connect with each other. Obviously, with that many people using the different ways to reconnect and connect with one another, businesses have looked to social media as a method to market products and services. "Friends With Benefits: A Social Media Marketing Handbook" by Darren Barefoot and Julie Szabo is an exceptional guide to assist with the online marketing game. This book provides tips, tricks and real-world case studies that show how you can use social media to increase your company's online visibility and Web traffic and win over online influencers. Regardless if you are familiar with social media or just beginning to enter the waters of this daunting ocean of sites such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Digg, MySpace, Flicker, and all the others, this book will guide you through the waters and help you steer a course to effective online social media marketing.

The book begins with a short introduction that explains a bit about the book and who it is for. It then goes into chapter one which describes just what social media is. This is a great introduction regarding the explosion of sites now called social media and how the communities formed. Chapter two delves into RSS feeds and readers, Blogs, and how to get ready for social media.

Next, in chapter three, the authors provide a lot more information about blogging and interacting with blogs that others write. The fourth chapter focuses on netiquette, or as the others say, Miss Manners for the Web. I thought this was a very important chapter, because if you don't follow the acceptable rules of social behavior on the Internet, your efforts at marketing will surely fail.

Chapter five focuses on devising your pitch, while the next chapter shows you how to measure your success and monitor the Web. The authors provide a lot of useful resources and tools that you will be able to use. The next couple of chapters discuss the risks involved with social media and damage control in the digital age.

The next chapters focus on some of the most popular social media sites and how a person can use them for marketing purposes. These chapters are great for people that have not used these sites yet, and the authors help you understand how they fit in an overall marketing strategy. Even if you are familiar with these sites and using them, there is good information in these chapters. They include: Does MySpace Still Matter?, Understanding Facebook, Video Marketing with YouTube and Other Video Sharing Sites, The Twitter Revolution, and The Power of Crowds: Understanding and Participating in Online Communities.

There is a lot of information in this text. After reading it, I'll now go back and use different parts of the book depending on what I'm working on. I also like the philosophy the authors put in the book, because I agree with them that this philosophy will be important regardless of how the social media sites and programs change and evolve. The authors also provide a short recommended reading list of books, blogs and websites.

If you are wanting help navigating the waters of social media marketing, "Friends With Benefits" is a great resource and handbook to help you along.