|
 Two strategic communications books have risen to the top of my summer reading list.
Welcome to the Fifth Estate by Geoff Livingston is a guide to building a sustainable social media program. Here's how Geoff describes the book:
* Strategy: This book aims to advise you on how to get ready for, build and sustain a great online communications strategy.
* Experience: Social media initiatives for clients likethe American Red Cross, General Dynamics, Google, the National 4-H Council, Network Solutions, and the United Way provide the groundwork for pragmatic conclusions.
* Measurement: Part of building a great strategy includes knowing how to measure it. Kami Watson Huyse provides a guest chapter on how to build a measurement program.
* Pitfalls and Sustainability: Two chapters deal with topics you normally don't see in social media books. Chapter Two deals with the weaknesses and dangers social media presents for your organization. Chapter Seven provides concrete ways to stay relevant once your effort becomes a success.
* Commercial and Nonprofit Case Studies: Each chapter features two in-depth case studies, one commercial, one nonprofit. Every case study has a tangible outcome associated with it.
Join the Club: How Peer Pressure Can Transform the World by Tina Rosenberg, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist. Tina Rosenberg explores the importance of peer pressure in making smart (and not-so-smart decisions). As anyone with teenagers knows, people are more likely to make decisions based on 'everybody else is doing it' than based on cold hard facts. In fact Rosenberg says that the more important and deeply rooted a behavior is, the less impact information has.
Rather than using this to bemoan the state of decision-making about drugs, drinking, overeating and other risky behaviors, Rosenberg highlights successful campaigns to harness peer pressure for good. From an aids prevention campaign in South Africa to a British anti-terrorism effort, success stories abound.
This book is a useful reminder for communicators that you need more than facts to make the case.
| 
Do you have a Facebook page? A Twitter account? A blog? Chance are you answered "yes" to at least one of these. But are you getting the traffic you want online? It's easy to set up the pages, but many organizations flounder when it comes to building and increasing traffic through social media channels.