Remarkable Reading #22: NO BULLSHIT SOCIAL MEDIA: The All-Business, No-Hype Guide to Social Media Marketing and Robbie Kellman Baxter's THE MEMBERSHIP ECONOMY: Find Your Super Users, Master the Forever Transaction, and Build Recurring Revenue

The aim of this section Remarkable Reading is pay a tribute to the books that taught, share trends & insights into where our world in the 21st century is heading in a technology enabled world, and ask the right questions.

Bolded and italics quotes and references do not belong to myself  and belong directly to the author.  The focus is to share valuable insights and teachings from the book to win business for the authors.

Social Media has had a game-changing effect in business and commerce.  The world of marketing specially has had a profound impact in terms of R&D, product development and innovation as well as marketing a product, and most importantly, cultivating customers and conversing with customers.

There are many books on Social Media Marketing out there in the market, however No Bullshit Social Media: The All-Business, No-Hype Guide to Social Media Marketing  by Jason Falls and Erik Deckers is outstanding.  It succeeds in breaking barriers to entry in understanding Social Media.  If you are to understand the practicality of Social Media then this is most definitely the “one” book to read.  An instant vintage of the classical “do’s” and “don’t’s” of a new economy - the digital economy.  No Bullshit Social Media: The All-Business, No-Hype Guide to Social Media Marketing is one book you must read this year.  The uniqueness of the book resides in it’s ability to cut through a lot of the clutter and nonsense - and directly keep it attuned to market realities.

Two Trends we’ll touch on are:

1. Practicality of Social Media
2. Social Sharing

Here are some of the key take-out’s I found informative and conclusive:

Intro, Page 3 - -”Social media marketing has had more effect on the communication would then any technology since television.  Even such a dramatic change to the television landscape like cable was nothing more than segmented television.  You still sent marketing messages the same way: through 30 or 60 second advertisements that interrupted the programming people tuned in to see”

Page 24 - “The formative years of social media marketing are behind us.  This is not an exploratory time anymore.  Social media professionals are helping businesses grow through emerging technologies.  When you add the word marketing to social media, it’s about business.  Draw that line to the bottom line, or go home”

Page 40 - “By writing an industry blog, connecting with like-minded people on networks like Twitter and LinkedIN, and participating in online discussions, people can establish their expertise in short order.  Social media lets people find a public forum to share their knowledge, educating and building trust along the way”

Page 65 - “For example, when it comes to starting a corporate blog, it takes at least six months before you'll start seeing any demonstrable  results and successes. Sometimes it will come sooner, but it usually takes about six months of consistent blogging before you see evidence that it paid off”

Page 115 - “According to this same report, 43% of journalists around the world said blogs and microblogs (namely Twitter) have become important sources of information, and 32% of them said social networking sites are important.  Looking to the future, 72% of business journalists said social media would have a positive impact on the quality of their reporting”

Page 216 - “Put one person in charge of the entire social media effort. This person should be in charge of the committee and the social media campaign, and should ultimately be responsible for making sure everything gets done.  Everyone else can make recommendations and give input, but this needs to fall squarely on the shoulders of one person”

Page 219 - “:Typically, when asked the question, “Who should be in charge of social media in my company?- We answer, “The person most passionate about doing it”.  If that person happens to be a seasoned communicator who falls into the previous description, you’ve got your answer”

One of the other key marketing areas that advances in the technological and digital age is having is loyalty cards and memberships. Marketing and innovation are crucial to a company’s longevity.  Robbie Kellman Baxter The Membership Economy: Find Your Super Users, Master the Forever Transaction, and Build Recurring Revenue is a refreshing and illuminating book about how to successfully harness the power of a small database of loyal customers to build a successful business.

The book is successful in distinctly articulating what potential a membership and loyalty database provides in a 21st Century Technological age.  Baxter has a concise and exhaustive understanding of loyalty memberships and her writing style is instructive and factual. The specific details on Social Sharing and the sharing economy is a revelation. Robbie Kellman Baxter has a smooth and continuous writing style and is able to comprehensively unravel the delicate insights that ensure The Membership Economy: Find Your Super Users, Master the Forever Transaction, and Build Recurring Revenue stands-out from other similar books.

Here are some of the key take-out’s I found informative:

Page x - “Business itself is changing. Software as a service, the sharing economy, digitization of physical goods, and the arrival of virtual goods - these trends represent only the beginning of the coming change.  As the cost of physical foods drops due to automation, as the world of manufacturing becomes massively distributable through 3D printing and other cheap manufacturing technologies, as just-in time logistics become a commodity, the whole idea of owning these is going to change”

Page 11 - “Membership is an attitude, an emotion.  A subscription is financial arrangement.  It’s quite possible for something to be both a subscription and a membership organization.  In Fact,  the Membership Economy is the logical extension of subscriptions”

Page 12 - “But some of the value subscribers get from Netflix is derived from the other people using it and their comments about movies and TV shows.  This value comes from the community.  Netflix also created an algorithm that harvests the data it collects in order to analyze its members behavior.  It can use the information it gets to provide recommendations for other films”

Page 15 - “The sharing economy is a model based on sharing (or renting) assets no currently being used - a car, a spare bedroom, a vacation home.  While there is a lot of interest in the sharing economy right now, the idea itself is not new.  “Sharing economy” is a relatively new term and is very trendy”

Page 15 - “Many of the most successful sharing economy businesses depend on the Membership Economy. A feeling of membership infrastructure is needed so that people can extend trust beyond the people in their physical communities.  In my view the sharing economy is a subset of the Membership Economy”

Page 16 - “For example, consider RelayRides.  You might come to San francisco where I love and need to rent a car.  Meanwhile, my car is just sitting in the driveway most of the time because I can walk to work.  You can rent my car for less than the cost of a traditional rental”

Page 16 - “Changes in technology have enabled sharing to take off.  What enables a large-scale sharing business is a trust.  The internet makes it possible to build trusted systems.  Always on-mobile devices that enable us to connect at any time make it more efficient to share” Ten years ago you and I had wanted to share a car and didn't know each other, it would have been had to impossible to broker that situation.  But with today’s technology - big data evaluating in real time your trustworthiness and mine as well as locating my car -  it is relatively easy to identify my unused asset and your unmet need”

Page 185 - “RelayRides is based on the idea that there is unused value stored in cars, and expensive, underutilized assert, and that advances in technology could unlock that value”

Page 185 - The harder part was convincing owners to rent out their cars and convincing people who needed a car to feel safe driving a car that belonged to a stranger.  It was expecting a lot to ask members to let the organization put technology into their cars and make their precious personal asset available for rental at any personal way”

Page 206 - “The idea was that moving from offline to digital was about more than putting the newspaper online, but rather taking advantage of digital technology to extend the brand's reach and value/  Instead of thinking of the transition as a catch-up exercise.”

For business development, marketing and innovation, I highly reccommend you explore both these business books further.

You can purchase a copy of NO BULLSHIT SOCIAL MEDIA: The All Business, No-Hype Guide to Social Media Marketing on Amazon here, you can follow Erik Deckers on Twitter here, and follow Jason Falls on Twitter here.

You can purchase of THE MEMBERSHIP ECONOMY: Find Your Super Users, Master the Forever Transaction, and Build Recurring Revenue on Amazon here and you can follow Robbie K. Baxter on Twitter here.

Thank you,

Praz

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