The Social Media ProBook

#ProBook is the brainchild of Joe Chernov and the team at Eloqua and JESS3 - a team I've had the privilege of working with previously on this site. They were responsible for The Social Media Playbook, the Blog Tree, and a little cartoon about hashtags. And yes, it can now be revealed that the avatar I've been using on Facebook was in fact tied to this project.

While the first ebook was focused on tools to help you master social media, this one is more personality-based. To be clear, I'm not saying that it's one of those insular, narcissistic, same-old-recycled-list-of-webutants kind of a book. But it uses people to convey broader messages - people with great experience actually doing the very kind of work they're writing about. Not just those providing thought leadership, but "do leadership," as the epilogue points out.

One of those people is Steve Rubel, the EVP of Global Strategy and Insights at Edelman Digital (and someone I've been following since my earliest days in this industry), who writes:

   A few years ago at a 2007 Paley Center confab, Cisco executive Daniel Scheinman predicted that, in the future, content would find us through our social networks, rather than requiring us to seek it out.

   Flash forward four years later and there’s no doubt he was right. Increasingly relevant information - whether it be from brands, the media or individuals - is finding us through our

social networks. However, with everyone and their mother creating content, standing out is becoming only more challenging.

   Enter this guide. Eloqua and JESS3 have once again pulled together an allstar team to share their best practices in social media. However, talk is one thing. Action is another.

   Thankfully, the the team proved it had the know-how to stand out in an age of too much content and not enough time...With this resource, it’s clear that you’re in good hands to navigate the challenges.

Some of the hands that Steve alludes to include:

• Jesse Thomas of JESS3 looks at some of those famous social networks of yore in "Whatever Happened To...?"
• Joe Chernov of Eloqua helps us understand "How to Organize Internally" 
• Brad Cohen of JESS3 takes us to the next level when he expounds upon "New Entrants"
• Jeremiah Owyang of Altimeter brings his snappy visuals to the table with "Operational Models"
• Ekaterina Walter and Bryan Rhoads of Intel team up to outline "8 Critical Elements of Scaling Your Social Media Strategy Globally"
• Leslie Bradshaw of JESS3 gives us "Usage Guidelines"
• Jeff Widman, founder of PageLever has all sorts of tips on "Writing for Facebook"
• Chris Thompson of About Foursquare locates some "Practical Uses for Geo"
• Joe and Leslie team up to talk about "Influencers"
• Robin Richards of JESS3 sketches out some thoughts on "Infographics"
• Sarah Evans of Sevans Strategy tells us "How PR People Should Approach Social Media"
• David Armano of Edelman Digital asks "Do You Believe in Life After Likes? Measuring Social Business"
• William Beutler of The Wikipedian gets down to the basics of "Wikipedia Fundamentals"
• Leslie Poston of Magnitude Media lists "10 'Rules' of Social Advertising" 

Just for fun, the book is interspersed with more personal interviews as you're invited to go on "A Day in the Life Of..."

• Adam Singer of Lewis PR
• Liz Phillips of Hewlett-Packard
• Jamie Grenney of Salesforce.com
• Frank Eliason of Citi
• And yours truly :-)

Leslie Bradshaw wraps everything up nicely with an Epilogue that describes the inspiration for the project and those involved behind the scenes, before heading into a very comprehensive index that gives readers websites and Twitter handles of every entity mentioned in the book. Even better, you can follow all of those with this handy Twitter list. There's also a Flickr set with everyone's avatar, in case you'd like to see them a little more closely.

The book in layout form

As usual, Eloqua and JESS3 have published The Social Media ProBook under a Creative Commons license which allows you to redistribute, share or host it, provided that you don't change it in any way. They've made it available as a downloadable PDF; I've embedded it here as a Scribd document:

Social Media #ProBook 

Please share this post and this book with anyone you think could use it. What was the most helpful part of the book to you?

Related link: Eloqua's Social ProBook

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