I teach undergraduate and MBA courses in social media management. In the courses I stress experiential learning, especially projects such as a campaign for a personal passion, self-branding, or consulting with an organization. I tell my students that the only way to learn social media is hands-on.
I personally started blogging and then tweeting and benefited from mentoring with Mark Schaefer and Kent Huffman and learning together with Cheryl Burgess. However, on reflection I have also benefited from reading some wonderful books on social media.
Take a look at the books I list and most importantly let me know ones that you think I omitted!
THE THREE GREATEST BOOKS ABOUT THE SM Phenomenon
- The Cluetrain Manefesto
- Groundswell @charleneli + @jbernoff
- The Tao of Twitter @markwschaefer
Three other Great Books about the phenomenon
- The New Rules of Marketing & PR @dmscott
- Socialnomics @equalman
- Likeable Social Media @davekerpen
Other really good books about SM and specialized topics in social media (alpha by author)
- Blogging @jeffbullas
- Socialized! @markfidelman
- Inbound Marketing @bhalligan
- Content Rules @cc_chapman
- 8 Mandates @KentHuffman
- Winning the Zero Moment of Truth @Jimlecinski and Google [Free!]
- The Third Screen @chuckmartin
- Realtime Report’s Guide to Influence @toniaries
- Return on Influence @markwschaefer
- Maximizing LinkedIn @nealschaffer
- End of Business as we know it @briansolis
- Social Media Analytics @webmetricsguru (Marshall Sponder)
- Crush It! @GaryVee (Vanyerchuk)
- Science of Social @mich8elwu (Michael Wu)
Once again, what did I miss??
Social Media Marketing 4 Business 
To be released shortly, and I have no doubt that it will be a very interesting and informative ‘read’: Ted Rubin and Kathryn Rose “Return on Relationship”. Ted mentioned it would be released January 29th.
There are some great books/pieces here, but to my mind there has never been anything than surpassed or really did anything but elaborate on Cluetrain (except some specialty things). Long live Chris Locke, wherever he may be!.
There is a reason Cluetrain is there at the top!
Thanks for your comment! – Gary
Thanks for some great recommendations. I’m currently reading “The Impact Equation” by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith. It is an excellent read that goes beyond social networks.
Thanks for your thoughts, Shauna!
You are the third person today to recommend that book. I think I will make a Amazon run!
Netsmart: How to thrive online – Howard Rheingold @hrheingold is another to add!
On Twitter Kristen Daukas @Kristen Dau kas noted:
You have to have @jaybaer Convince & Convert on there.
Shorter than a book, and describes a possible next big thing in social media:
http://www.reengineeringllc.com/A_Wiki_for_Business_Rules_in_Open_Vocabulary_Executable_English.pdf
It is not a senior editor or a human resource manager but people that decide what to read and what to watch.
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