When I received an email from Jay Baer telling me that he and Amber Naslund had chosen me as one of the bloggers to do a review and giveaway of their new book, The NOW Revolution, I was stoked! Jay and Amber’s blogs are on my must-read list. The knowledge I’ve gained from their social media and business insights has been invaluable, so I expected this book to be nothing short of phenomenal.
And…they proved me right.
I started reading this book with the mindset of wanting to provide my honest thoughts, whether good or bad. If I decided to give it a glowing review, I also wanted to share a few pieces of constructive criticism. Now, Jay and Amber both have several more years of experience doing social strategy work than I do, so I certainly didn’t expect to one-up them on anything. But I had a very hard time coming up with recommendations for improvement. It’s that darn good.
Like Jason Falls mentions in his NOW Revolution book review, this isn’t another social media book. It doesn’t focus on the tools and tactics. It’s a book that helps you understand the fundamentals of doing business in what Jay and Amber have dubbed the NOW revolution – a “new era of open communication and reciprocal and real-time online participation.” I’ve read a few of the more recent books that include some element of social media as the main theme, but this book is completely different. It’s literally a step-by-step playbook that teaches you how to implement the internal and external elements needed to turn your company into a social business. If I were a business owner reading this book, I’d be doing a happy dance.
Here are my overall impressions of The NOW Revolution:
- I like how Jay and Amber honed in on seven key shifts needed to be successful as a social business – Remove silos and drive culture change; hire and empower a new type of employee; organize internal teams for maximum external impact; listen by answering the new telephone; travel the “Humanization Highway” and respond effectively to online feedback and inquiries; plan for, find and manage crises sparked and/or amplified on the social Web and redesign success metrics to be relevant in the instantaneous business world we live in.
- I identified and agreed with every single shift, but Jay and Amber proposed some big ideas that could be very intimidating to a business owner. Breaking the book down into these shifts was a smart idea because it made the book more digestible. Even better, each shift is drilled down and outlined further (with a succinct recap at the end of the shift), making it nearly impossible to be left scratching your head after you finish reading each shift.
- I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the incorporation of the Microsoft Tag technology. All you have to do is download the Tag application on any smartphone and additional resources related to content shared in the book are immediately available. Very creative idea.
- This book is written beautifully. The tone is natural and conversational. It’s not full of social buzzwords and jargon. It’s full of smart business advice explained in a very matter-of-fact manner. Even if your business is doing absolutely nothing with social media right now, I guarantee you will fully grasp the teachings in this book.
- There is no redundancy in this book. Each chapter/shift focuses on a new idea or concept. One of my main gripes with some of the other social-related books is they are full of repetitions. There are only so many ways to say that monitoring is important!
- I very much appreciate that Jay and Amber clearly and repeatedly state that there is no one-size-fits-all approach (there are too many people who think because this particular social approach worked for company X, it will also work for them).
- This book includes really great examples of how other businesses have made social work for them – and they’re not the same case studies those of us who spend a lot of time in this space have heard one too many times. Social Media Club Detroit even gets a brief nod in the section about Moosejaw!
- The book wraps up with the ever important measurement topic (everyone’s favorite, right?), which true to the theme of the entire book, is presented in such a way that your eyes won’t glaze over once you’re done reading it. I really like that Jay and Amber include sales as a reason for incorporating social media into your business, but also acknowledge that creating awareness and building loyalty are two other important rationales for wanting to become a social business. There are ways to measure all three, and you’ll learn exactly how to in this section.
I only have two minor pieces of constructive criticism:
- I wish the Microsoft Tag resources were available somewhere online (most logically the NOW Revolution website) for people who don’t have smartphones. They are great add-ons to the book. Some can easily be found through a Google search, but it would be nice if they were listed with accompanying links on the book’s website.
- I think highlighting the importance of having a social media policy in place should have happened earlier on in the book. Granted, Jay and Amber give a detailed explanation of social media guidelines in Shift 3. But the first two shifts are all about empowering employees to be your brand ambassadors online, trusting them to be potential spokespeople and adding new roles that center on social media and real-time Web responsibilities. If I were a business owner reading those first two shifts and I didn’t know it was custom (and highly recommended) to put social guidelines in place, I may slightly freak out about the “what if’s.”
To sum everything up, buy this book, especially if you’ve yet to learn or are struggling to grasp the fundamentals of what it means to truly be a social business.
And now the fun part – the giveaway! I have one copy of The NOW Revolution to give to one lucky person. Since everyone is busy, I decided to modify my original giveaway idea to avoid anyone having to invest a lot of time to enter. To enter, leave a comment explaining what the NOW Revolution means to you. Feel free to use photos or video to illustrate! The more creative the better (is this an obvious enough hint that I’m judging on creativity???). Make sure you link to your website, Twitter profile or include a way to contact you in your comment. The contest ends Tuesday, February 22. Go!