We have seen an incredible shift in the role of social media over the past three years. It has moved from an outlier in the marketing mix to one of the strategic pillars of any corporate marketing or branding exercise:
— Drew McLellan.
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Three years ago, I began a conversation with Drew McLellan on the topic of social media and crowdsourcing. Thousands of book sales and downloads, two editions and hundreds of collaborators later, we are pleased to announce that the Age of Conversation 3 is now available.
It all started when Drew blogged about a similar collaborative book effort and I suggested we get a few fellow bloggers to produce a marketing book in the same vain. Three emails later, and we had named the book and set what we thought would be an impossible goal: 100 bloggers. Within seven days we had commitments from 103 authors from over a dozen countries.
Back then, the marketing industry was abuzz about how citizen marketers were changing the landscape, whereas the second two editions have revolved primarily around the growing field of social media and how its methodologies have affected marketing as a whole. What all three books have in common is that they each capture a uniquely global vantage point.
The first Age of Conversation raised nearly $15,000 for Variety, the international children's charity, and the Age of Conversation 2 raised a further $10,000 for Variety. This year’s proceeds will be donated to an international children’s charity of the authors’ choosing.
It’s available in a sexy hardcover, softcover and even a Kindle version.
As the many authors of this new book explain, the focus may be on conversation, but you can’t participate in a conversation from the sidelines. It’s all about participation. And this book provides you with 171 lessons in this new art.
Get the inside running on how you turn social media theory into practice with the Age of Conversation 3 – it’s essential reading.
One wouldn’t be sorry for trying to incorporate social marketing to social media. Thanks for your great insights. By the way, if you’re looking for the best website design for your online business, then you’re search is over. Good luck!
Gavin,
I just heard about this via Karen Swim, one of the contributors.
Congratulations on the success of your new book, it really does sound like a worthwhile read.
Effective marketing strategies must evolve with changing patterns of consumer behavior. Some years ago, I read a statistic in BusinessWeek that suggested that in the U.S, roughly 30% of consumer media time was spent online, yet online activities accounted for only 5% of marketing expenditure. I’m not certain about current statistics, but I would have thought that online marketing activity is still lagging behind consumer take-up of online platforms. Marketing activity will therefore have to continue to evolve as it adjust to the changes which are taking place within consumer behavior – the social media landscape is at the forefront of this change.
Gavin,
It’s been a wild ride and quite a case study in both herding feral cats and the amazing power of working together for a common good. Without much effort, the authors of this series of books have transcended time zones, language barriers and over committed lives to create something remarkable.
I’m glad we’re in it together and every author involved should be very proud of this last installment!
Drew