Savvy Book Marketers Guide To Successful Social Marketing: Book Review

Normally, my book reviews run on Wednesdays, but today's review is scheduled as part of a blog tour for a new resource that's hot off the virtual presses. I will be taking a look at Dana Lynn Smith's Savvy Book Marketers Guide To Successful Social Marketing. If you had questions about social media marketing, you will want to see what I have to say about this new book.

Before we get to the review, I have a couple of housekeeping announcements I am compelled to make, so hang with me for just a few moments and we will dive into the review.

1. The serial release of my award winning action/adventure novel starts today. Chapter 1 is now ready to read. Each Monday, I will release the next chapter of this novel until the entire book has been released. When you visit the site, make sure you enter the contest to win a signed copy of The Samson Effect and read about the million to one odds that brought The Samson Effect to the attention of a major Hollywood film producer.

2. For my free video tips newsletter subscribers, the new tip for the week is out. In it, I will walk you through the process of setting up your own Amazon Connect account and show you how to import your current blog into your Amazon Connect account. If you are not a subscriber to my newsletter, you can join now for free to watch this video and I will even give you access to over 45 minutes of other video training instantly.

Now, on to the review.

Dana Lynn Smith joins the ranks of marketing experts who lend their voice to authors who may be confused about the choices they face when it comes to social media marketing. She has created a hefty e-book that weighs in at over 200 pages. But within the virtual covers of this book lies a treasure trove of advice, instruction, and illustrations that can walk you through the forest of social media sites and teach you how to harness their power in marketing your book.

Dana packs so much into this book that it can be overwhelming if you set out to try and implement everything she presents. She says herself, "It's important to develop a strategy before you dive in. Don't try to do everything covered in this book!" (Emphasis Dana's). But what makes this book such a valuable resource is that it presents the reader with many alternatives available to them. If you follow Dana's advice, you will be able to choose from the marketing smorgasbord that she has laid out for you and then let her walk you through setting up your chosen social media site.

The guide covers:

• Blogs (ie, Blogger, TypePad, WordPress)
  
• Social Networks (ie, Facebook, Twitter)
  
• Reader Communities (ie, GoodReads, LibraryThing)
  
• Forums (ie, bulletin Boards, news groups)
  
• Media and Content Sharing (ie, video, photos, articles, podcasts)
  
• Social Book marketing (ie, Digg, StumbleUpon)
  

At the end of each chapter, Dana includes an action plan to help you incorporate what you learned in that chapter. The last chapter in the book contains a seven page, 10 point action plan to help you develop your social media marketing plan. In my humble opinion, this is one of the most valuable resources that is found in the book. There are a lot of books and sites that teach you about social media marketing, but not many that adapt it to authors and helps you create a detailed marketing plan to put the power of social media marketing to work for you. Dana nails this on the head. This alone is worth the cost of the book. If you have yet to start a social media marketing plan or you have tried to but you are not seeing the results you want, The Savvy Book Marketers Guide To Successful Social Marketing will help you accomplish your goals. It covers the subject with such depth and expertise that it is the closest thing I have yet to come across that can be called a definitive guide to social media marketing.

Tony Eldridge