October 30, 2006
Social Media For Business 101 - free white paper
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. You can even subscribe by email! Thanks for visiting!
The legendary and (in)famous Trevor Cook from the major Sydney PR company Jackson Wells Morris has kindly allowed your humble correspondent to co-write a white paper for businesses with him, with the aim of explaining to businesses what this ‘Social Media’ thing is all about and showing them how they can join in the fun.
Entitled “Social Media, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Communication“, the white paper is 30 pages in length and full of insight, wisdom and ‘how to’.
You are free to download it and distribute it widely. Why not pass it on to your colleagues and friends?
You can download Version 1.0 now; as the online world changes we will update the paper and of course let you know via our blogs that a new version is available. Coming soon: a section on SecondLife and its implications for businesses — training sessions, meetings, negotiations…
Download CookHopkins-SocialMediaWhitePaper.pdf
Other Websites: Health insurance leads provide agents with a great marketing resources to increase the book of business.
Stumble it!
Filed under: miscellaneous
11 Responses to “Social Media For Business 101 - free white paper”
Leave a Reply
Please note:
1. If this is your first time commenting using the email address you have given, your comment will be held in 'moderation' and won't appear until one of us here at BetterComms Towers approves it. This stops spammers from flooding our posts with garbage. It may take up to 48 hours for your comment to appear -- sorry!
2. This blog runs the WP-Cache plugin, which reduces the amount of processing our host's server has to perform on this blog. The result for you is that our site crashes less. The downside is that sometimes it might take a minute or two for your comment to appear. Please don't resubmit your comment if it doesn't appear straight away. Please be patient and try refreshing your browser after a minute or two... Thanks, Lee
October 31st, 2006 at 1:01 pm
[...] Trevor Cook and Lee Hopkins have teamed up to offer a wonderful new resource — an introductory guide to social media. Are you a newbie to the online space? Or maybe you’re already well involved in social media, but you’re such an expert you might need some help explaining it to folks new to the medium. Then step right up — this 30-page e-book is for you! [...]
October 31st, 2006 at 8:54 pm
I’m very social and I’m into media - so I guess this is the white paper for me! Thanks Lee and Trevor forgiving me ways to articulate this space. Some times people want to make it WAY more tricky than it really is.We are venturing into this space with our job board for mature professionals - http://www.adage.com.au - and with coaching from Lee and this white paper tucked under my arm, I shall proceed with confidence.
November 1st, 2006 at 10:33 pm
DAMN!! You weren’t supposed to READ it, Catriona — now I have done myself out of thousands and thousands of dollars of consultancy fees! Who’s stupid idea was it to write this white paper anyway???
[author exits amidst much wailing and gnashing of teeth as he remembers that it was he who suggested it...]
November 2nd, 2006 at 5:38 pm
Social Media in Action
Pointing to lots of good stuff today as the PR b-sphere practices what it preaches. Computers: Rohit Bhargava is working on social media projects for Intel. The most recent one is the Intel Centrino Duo Blogger Challenge. It brings six bloggers togethe…
November 3rd, 2006 at 7:34 am
[...] Trevor has posted a number of the comments we have received from folks regarding our white paper — it seems that it has been positively received and we thank you for that! [...]
November 6th, 2006 at 8:59 am
Hello Lee, I love what you do on this blog, on FIR and on your Cafe podcast. But all this social media stuff is a bit scarey to me - I am a small business owner, not a PR/marketing person. Blogging and podcasting I get.
However, tonight I signed up for Second Life and visited the Cafe and Crayonville. (Why aren’t you a Crayon, by the way?) It was a lonely, soulless experience. Now I have got to p11 of your white paper, and you are raving about wikis, which I have also struggled to get much joy out of. No doubt you will talk about Second Life later on in the paper.
Of all the new media podcasters/bloggers I feel I know Lee, it’s only you I dare ask: is it OK to think Wikis and Second Life are a bit naff? Wouldn’t it be better to have our own names in Second Life? Aren’t avatars too cheesy for grown ups? How long does it take to get the hang of using wikis usefully?
I know you early adopters are all excited about social media - and I am too - but I struggle to convince my colleagues in the UK public and not-for-profit sectors that it could help them. They’re not even into blogs yet. The seemingly blind enthusiasm I hear in the podosphere doesn’t help.
I don’t want to be negative; I want to shift things forward for my field, but I’ll never be able to sell wikis and Second Life the way they are now.
November 7th, 2006 at 10:40 am
Hi Libby,
Thanks for the compliment about feeling comfortable enough to ask me.
I agree with you that ’selling’ Second Life, even ‘wikis’ is tough at the moment. For most organisations (and individuals) a blog is a big step (as you know).
However, as a communicator (anyone who has a business has perforce to be a good communicator, otherwise you go out of business very quickly) you need to be aware of this new collaborative technology, even if it does feel strange. After all, it was only a few short years ago that businesses were saying that the world wide web was a waste of time and no one would use it…
But I also totally agree with you that the avatar issue in Second Life is a block to business takeup. I have long held that a ‘Second Business Life’ needs to be developed, without silly avatars and names, before the bulk of businesses will take it seriously.
Wikis are one of those things that on the one hand are incredibly useful collaborative tools, on the the other a bit difficult to learn how to use properly; a bit like when we first sat down with Word or WordPerfect and tried to get something to look half reasonable.
The reason Trevor and I focused on blogs and podcasts is because those two are the collaborative tools most useful / easily-understandable to the majority of businesses at the moment. Once they try out wikis, get the hang of them and get their heads around them, wikis will too become staples of business technology. But like you, I feel it will be a little while yet…
Many thanks for your great comment so far — I am sure that you would not be surprised to learn that you are not alone in your thoughts and that a great many share your skepticism and doubts.
Kindests, Lee
November 9th, 2006 at 8:22 am
[...] Web 2point2 is being hosted by Chris Heuer’s Social Media Club. I went to a recent SMC event at SAS last month titled “From Social Media to Corporate Media.” It comprised largely of PR people discussing strategies for convincing their corporate overlords about the “how to learn to stop worrying and love communication” (see Cook & Hopkins‘ Intro to Social Media). It was an interesting afternoon run in a series of “World Cafe” round-robin discussions that allowed everyone to talk. [...]
November 11th, 2006 at 1:41 am
[...] You will remember, of course, that recently Trevor and I released a widely-praised White Paper on Social Media — “Social Media, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Communication”. Well, one of the areas that Trevor and I didn’t focus too much attention on was wikis, for very sound reasons: most Australian businesses are barely coping with the word ‘blog’; throw in ‘wiki’ and you are going to be able to count the eyes glazing over in your audience. [...]
November 23rd, 2006 at 7:18 am
[...] Since I had the good fortune to be in Sydney for a client presentation recently, I caught up with Trevor Cook, a fellow PR blogger and co-author of our exceptionally popular White Paper. [...]
April 23rd, 2007 at 8:34 am
[...] Young (Trafcom News 42) 12:30 Bryan Person comments on Trafcom News 42 and 43 14:46 I recommend the social media white paper by Lee Hopkins and Trevor Cook and Bryan Person?s New Comm Road podcast, particularly the episodes [...]