I have been working on this blog more, because of Mr. Ayer’s and his perspectives class, and more specifically, I have been reading a book “Social Corp: Social Media Goes Corporate”, and now have an assignment (found on his blog) to write a review of this book.

The book was a pure handbook on how to use social media, such as blogs, twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin to promote a company to a new audience, and promote the proper use of such tools. The book explains in depth about what a “social corp” is, and how one would use the technology at their disposal to promote the company. It also goes into depth about what “web 2.0” versus “web 1.0“.

To me, this book seems to be specifically written for a employee of a company, that has been charged with the responsibility of making their company more social media friendly. The author, Joel Postman (the link is to his twitter, as his website is currently blocked by CRCSD) seems to write this book with a very straight forward tone, which really gets down to business fast, and emphasizes the strategic points, without a lot of the verbiage fluff.

I was fortunate to already have been using several social media sites, like Twitter, and Facebook before reading the book, so that I had a stronger base to what Joel was talking about. I do not think any background with these tools is necessary before reading this book, because the author does a great job of explaining in depth of  the functionality of each site.

Before I read this book, I was pretty even keel about what I would expect from this book. I have never read any books on the topic, and I didn’t know what to expect his style would be. It turns out to be very specific.

I personally thought this book was excellent on the topic, mainly because it was the only book I could find. Not sure what that means as far as other authors. Maybe they really don’t know how to use social media, and need to read “Social Corp”? Other than the fact this was the only book, it seems that they offered quite a bit of in depth knowledge about how social media can impact companies in a positive, and more importantly sometimes, in the negative way.

Also, scattered through out the book, there are pages with a light blue border, that offer separate bits of knowledge, such as a blogging glossary, or a case study on how the American Red Cross handled the Hurricane Katrina disaster with social media. They even set up a “tweet your location” function, that allowed you to tweet to rescuers where you are, and if your okay, so that they could post it on a public bulletin board.

This book disapointed me in the fact that it was written so dry. It is almost hard to read, and deffinatley impossible to read great chunks in a sit down session. My goal was to read this on the way to Colorado over spring break but I got distracted within the first 1 hr of the 12 hour drive there. It required a lot of stopping reading, and practicing what the author talked about, or researching new sites that he lists.

I was also slightly disappointed with how site specific Joel was with photos through out the book. He had screen shots of different features within Facebook and twitter, but quite frankly part of Web 2.0’s definition is that it constantly changes. So these screen captures are no longer valid, and are old and out dated. I would have thought that the author of a social media book would have realized this, and had some way to prevent it, like not including said pictures. I do not think they helped the book enough to justify keeping them in.

Althought there were the flaws to this book, Iw ould highly recommend “Social Corp: Social Media Goes Corperate” By Joel Postman to anyone who is planning on setting up a blog, facebook, twitter, or any other social media for their company, or even for themselves. The book offeres great infomration that will help you become the next Social Corp.