The Digital Handshake – A Review

I just finished reading Paul Chaney’s The Digital Handshake, seven proven strategies to grow your business using social media. He blogs at The Social Media Handyman. I came upon it several months ago and subscribed to his RSS feed. I have never been disappointed with his content. You can tell he practices this stuff on a daily basis, in the trenches, so to speak. He asked for a little help in getting the word out on his book last week on his blog and I tweeted that along. That led to him following me on Twitter and me following him back. And then me buying his book (still think social media can’t impact sales?) and his asking me, in a tweet, “@greggvm – Thanks Gregg. Let me know what you think. Unvarnished opinion. Shoot straight, like it or no.”

You just have to like someone who isn’t afraid to ask for an unvarnished opinion. And, from reading his posts for awhile, that’s what I would have expected. But, I’m guessing that you don’t know him, or maybe you do a little, as I did, and you’re curious about whether you should shell out your hard earned cash for the book. There is certainly a glut of Social Media books hitting the marketplace. If you practice in the Marketing, PR and Social Media space you probably have a pretty good idea of who you want to read and who you don’t. If you’re a small or medium sized business you might not be so sure. How do you separate the wheat from the chaff? Paul addresses both of these segments, and the ones in between and all around, in his Introduction. He states that his two primary audiences are professional practitioners in the marketing and public relations field and small business owners. However, he further defines and ideal reader and that reader is a little closer to the small business owner and the marketing executive who realize that they aren’t getting all that they want out of their marketing and advertising efforts; marketing readers who are just coming to terms with Web 2.0 technologies and need direction for their future efforts; and, those who need or would like to learn how to use the tools of this new marketing paradigm. The book hits those three nails first strike, right on the head.

The book starts with a forward from Ann Handley CCO of MarketingProfs, a wonderful online resource for navigating the waters of marketing in these social media times. That’s followed by a preface where Paul introduces us to the “Insurgent Consumers” and the marketplace that they inhabit. And, he goes on to frame the questions that the book will address and try to answer regarding a business’s relationship with both of those and with other “voice of the customer media.” Questions that you have probably asked yourself if you’re a small business person or that marketing executive looking to get a handle on this new consumer and all of this new media and the tools it requires. Acknowledgements follow from there and then he provides a brief bio and then the introduction to “A New Communications Paradigm.” And it’s here that you learn what a digital handshake is if you didn’t know coming in and why it’s apropos to today’s world. And it’s also here that you really get a sense of the wonderful way he communicates through the written word. His is a very conversational tone. You could as easily be listening to him at the dinner table or the local pub as reading his book. And, he keeps that up throughout the entire book. You never once get the feeling that he is talking down to you, only that he is offering to help you, as someone who has been there and done that, to understand how to use the tools of the new media age to understand and engage with the new marketplace and those “insurgent consumers.”

The book is divided into three parts and eighteen chapters. Part one deals with the consumer trends that have turned us topsy turvy. The ensuing six chapters break that down and help you to get a very good understanding of just what’s going on, how we got there, and what you need to be thinking and doing in response. Part two lays out the seven strategies, blogging, social networks, niche communities, microblogging, vidcasting, podcasting, and social media news releases. As you would expect, each of those gets a chapter, they are all chock full of great ideas and advice, and, newbie or grizzled veteran, the vidcasting and podcasting chapters cover tools often overlooked in marketing and pr strategies. The last chapter in this part covers all kinds of extra social media marketing tools. You get introduced to sharable content via tagging and bookmarking, RSS, customer service apps, photo sharing and wikis. Part three details the social media marketing plan of action that you want to take, now that you’ve got an understanding of the landscape and the tools you need to navigate it. Paul does a great job in this section showing you how to engage and form relationships with the new consumers and how to monitor the success of those efforts.

If you’re that small business owner or marketing executive that Paul talks about, and if you don’t have the time to read extensively on the subject, which I assume you don’t, I would say that this should be your “go to” book, and goodness knows, I’ve read most of them. And, if you’re a seasoned practitioner, there are certainly some nuggets here for you too, not least of which is his style of conversation.

If you have any questions about the book and it’s relevancy for you, please leave a comment and we’ll talk.