"#tweetsmart" by J.S. McDougall O'reilly Media
Twitter stands out as a bit of an enigma in the social media world. You are given 140 characters at a time to express yourself. It isn't about making business contacts. It isn't about catching up with high school classmates or college buddies. It started as a simple question 'What are you doing now?', changed to 'What's happening?', and now resides as small prompt 'Compose New Tweet' yet it captivates hundreds of millions of people.
But this book is not about that. You won't find a history of the company here. There are no in-depth chapters covering how to gain more followers or how to have the wittiest of thoughts. Some terminology is covered, but it really isn't the point of the book either. Simply put, this books gives you 25 easy to follow ideas and options that you can have fun with on Twitter.
To be fair most of these work better if you are working with some kind of base message, product or company. They are ways to have fun with the system and get name recognition without being an annoying spammer. It is a quick book to read. The style is very easy to follow and the projects are something just about anyone familiar with Internet technology can follow. The author also sprinkles in humorous anecdotes and a few cautionary warnings about how to go about doing things the wrong way.
If you are reading this as ideas for an individual, you may not find as much value in the book. As I alluded to above this books is geared more for organizations to interact with and build an audience without causing too much pain for everyone involved. In fact, these projects should be fun for everyone. As the book states it is NOT a social media marketing guide, it is a guide to interacting with your audience.
Overall, keeping the intention of the book in mind, I give it 4.5 stars. It is concise as well as entertaining and it may even spark some creative ideas of your own.
You can purchase it here in paperback or e-book.
The book reviewed was provided as an e-book as part of the O’Reilly Blogger Review Program.
