I just read Socialnomics: How Social Media Transforms the Way We Live and Do Business, by Erik Qualman, the CMO of BazaarVoice, based in Austin, TX. (I am not an Amazon affiliate.)

The book includes a ton of use cases and examples of social media within advertising and marketing, wth a few for customer service and support, and the last chapter contains a section on social media in recruiting.

Given the subtitle, I was hoping that it would include more content on how the inner workings of business will be changed by social media. For example, on page 126, the author states:

… but I was hoping for more details about how that kind of integration can be implemented; how companies have determined their operational strategies for social media; the technologies available to scale social media for customer service; tips and tricks for combining data inside and outside of your firewall to derive greater insights for customers, and so on.

Even so, Socialnomics contains a lot of great examples of social media creating value for companies — especially in marketing and advertising. Below are my top 10 favorite quotes from the book:

• What happens in Vegas stays on YouTube (p. 33).
• Wasting time on Facebook and social media actually makes you more productive (p. 4).
• The inherent fault of search engines is that the user needs to know what they are looking for in the first place (p. 7).
• We no longer search for news; rather, the news finds us (p. 9).
• To effectively leverage the social graph, every company needs to understand that they need to make their information easily transferable (p. 14).
• Social networks don’t allow for much customization… For small business owners, this places everyone on a level playing field (p. 25 – 26).
• A strategy of, “we will only enter the conversation if it gets ugly” is generally flawed logic in the sense that the damage will be done before you can react (p. 30).
• The beauty of social media is that it will point out your company’s flaws; the key questions is how quickly you address these flaws (p. 185).
• Boston College will not be giving out @bc.edu email addresses to incoming freshman for the class of 2013 (p. 47) — [because people entering college these days do not use email]
• It’s only a matter of time before we will see advertising and marketing efforts creep into both fiction and nonfiction materials (p. 113).

Chris Boudreaux helps large organizations develop and implement social media strategies and capabilities, including governance, measurement and operations. His new book, The Most Powerful Brand on Earth, shows you how to transform teams, empower employees, integrate partners and mobilize customers to beat the competition in digital and social media. Buy the book on Amazon.

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