Social Boom! Book Review

Social Boom!: How to Master Business Social Media by Jeffrey G Itomer is his take on how you can use social media to boost your business. He goes through how to ‘boom’ your business with guidelines on each platform. Overall, it had some good key takeaways, however I wouldn’t recommend because his overall book does not seem research driven or concrete and more so opinion based.

This book starts off explaining why social media is important and how deeply ingrained social media is in our culture. He explains that now a customer’s interaction with a brand is preceded by their online presence, and this is why social media is so important.

He first gets into how to manage Facebook. He explains how Facebook for personal use is very different than a business’s Facebook. He says it is all about enticing someone to like your page. He advises that it should feel like a community, and more importantly a community someone wants to be a part of. He also makes the statement that your Facebook page should be ‘information dissemination’. What I interpreted by this section is that Facebook should be a more informative community driven place. It’s less about posting pictures of people as it is on personal accounts, and more about enticing people to like your page by posting informative content about your industry.

The next topic he covers is Linkedin. He started off stating that the 3 stats of connections, recommendations, and summary statement are what set you apart on Linkedin. He explains that a huge part of Linkedin is about having people make comments on your Linkedin based on good interactions. For potential customers then they will see people’s good reviews and it’ll make a good impression. He also said Linkedin is huge for building relationships with people in your industry as referrals.

Then he went into Twitter. The first point he makes is that Twitter is so valuable because of the retweet option. That’s why you need to focus on putting good content out there. Create content that is agreeable so people will feel compelled to retweet and thus put your brand’s name in front of a whole new group of people. His main points were Twitter is about informing, passing on information, value messaging, and connecting. He also points out the importance of the hashtag. He explains how using hashtags makes you searchable and more likely to come up on someone’s feed.

Then he discusses YouTube. He says YouTube is often forgotten about but important. He says it can be a space to share customer testimonies, your business philosophies, or favorite customer of the week. He advises to keep videos short and light. It should be an accurate representation of who you are in your industry.

He then moves on to explain that ‘the glue’ is blogging. He explains that being mentioned in blogs, including your own, helps boost you in search engines and will attract people to your page and create more brand awareness. He explains blogs can include newsworthy things, fun events or initiatives, and ‘pass-on-able’ and ‘subscribable’ content.

I think the key takeaways of this book are as follows. I think his point that he mentions throughout the book that social media is free and therefore it deserves to have time dedicated to is very important for business professionals to understand. If somebody handed you a tool that was free that could boost your brand’s visibility why wouldn’t you dedicate more time to using it? I also thought his advice on YouTube videos was well done. It sounds right that making short and light videos will help engage your audience more. I also think it was vital that he explained that a customer’s interaction with a brand starts online. So often we as consumers google companies before we buy, check out their website, or go to their social media before actually buying from them or attending their event. I also agree with his point on the importance of hashtags. I think they’re a great tool to use on social media.

Overall, my recommendation for this book is to not read it. The only section that I found actually helpful was the YouTube section. The majority of advice being given, besides that section, was vague and not very concrete. I also think in the field of social media, especially if we want to excel, should be research based and it seems this book was only written based on his personal experiences. Personal experiences are great too for insight, but I think if one is going to write an entire book on how to grow your business through social media there should be some level of research to the advice being given.