Likeable Social Media by Dave Kerpen: Book Review

Likeable Social Media: How to Delight Your Customers, Create an Irresistible Brand, and Be Generally Amazing on Facebook (& Other Social Networks)
Author : Dave Kerpen
Publisher : McGraw-Hill
Publication Date : Jun 7, 2011
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Reviewer: Siti Aishah Abdullah
Siti Aishah Abdullah is a medical officer, a MBA student in GSM specializing in General Management. Being the President of Srikandi Tun Fatimah School which is the school’s Alumni, social media seems to be a very communicative tool in interacting with her members that touches over two thousands members till date. She has not been published in any books or journals except for some articles and documents which she has to prepare for Health Policy and Planning. She has written columns, done copywriting, technical writing, article reviews, and case study and key notes to those documents. She also has done some ghost-writing in the newspaper as well as through social media. Siti can be reached at: [e-mail] and on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/SK86SitiAishah , and on Twitter at @PrezSK86.
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Ever since I took up my first marketing subject last semester, I have only read a few books on marketing. To be honest not a single one owns by me since in my library only fills up with Medical related books. I haven’t been in any marketing line before except for accidentally becoming one of the MLM agents when one of my staffs one day showed me a product which I think worth having. But when a friend first handed me the book Likeable Social Media: How to Delight Your Customers, Create an Irresistible Brand, and Be Generally Amazing on Facebook by Dave Kerpen last week I almost fell off the chair. I was hoping for a thin book that wouldn’t be too hard to read because I had less than a week to read the book and entertain my family at the same time since this book review has to be submitted after the long holidays of Chinese New Year. Luckily, this book ended up being absolutely wonderful. This book to me is one of the best tools for Marketing via Internet. Dave Kerpen is the CEO of Likeable Media, which is one of a social media marketing firm, is acutely aware that social media has been a fast growing phenomena. It was so fast that most companies have not been able to catch up with it. These companies don’t have a clear understanding of how they can actually incorporate social media in growing their brand and business. Kerpen does not go into Marketing with social media alone but he begins with general information on the social media. Kerpen’s book Likeable Social Media: How to Delight Your Customers, Create an Irresistible Brand, and Be Generally Amazing on Facebook (and other social networks), (McGraw Hill, 2011), helps businesses to catch up. Before his jump to the social media’s role and function, in the early parts of the book he did mention about how the internet got started. Kerpen recaps the history of the Internet beginning with the US military’s desire just to be sure networked computers could talk to each other even if some of them went offline. They needed a network that wouldn’t be vulnerable to a direct hit on a central point of control. He then goes into a discussion on how the Internet works, and he goes into some details on the different uses of the web. Thanks to Kerpen for teaching us to walk before teaching us to run.
Quoting from World Wide Web Marketing by Jim Sterne, he mentioned that “The World Wide Web is a pull medium, not a push medium.” Kerpen kicks off the discussion on the role of the web in marketing business that is using the social media. He begins with a great saying that, he believes this would be the basis for his entire book, and with that Kerpen had taken the reader step by step on how social media helps in the marketing strategy by building a site and make an impression along the way. He looks at everything from investor relations to public relations. He suggests of having a “What’s New” column in the social media site so that people can access this information easily for possible PR efforts.

The book seems to me is for rookies and old-timers alike, therefore it 's very much suit me. There are altogether 25-pages of appendix containing a simple starter’s guide to Facebook, Twitter, blogging, and beyond. This same section is also a refresher course, giving social media-savvy readers great ideas on how they can utilize these platforms to become more engaging and visible. This book reminds me of my college medical textbooks, but of course not the terribly boring ones. It is somehow more like the ones that have lots of subsections so that you don’t feel like you’re reading so much actually and the writing seems very simple that you can actually walk away with some knowledge about the topic discussed.

Some of the social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and so forth are the wave of today’s most innovative marketing strategies which are moving into the future. Dave Kerpen has some whimsy in his book. To prove his point on the importance of customer service and how to do it right he mentioned about being honesty, authenticity and transparency which we know that it’s something very difficult to catch one in the real world of business. No doubt, insincerity can be spotted a mile away when communicating through social media outlets, therefore it is imperative to be honest, authentic and transparent. Without a strong sense of trust, patrons will not buy from you nor will they share their stories about your business with their friends. In order to build real relationships with the consumers, we need to be transparent and authentic, says Kerpen. In a world where marketers once used dishonest tactics, social media is seen to be demanding on being real, transparent, and honest.

Kerpen also looks into aspects of design as it relates to marketing. He came into an interesting topic that has been the source of several discussions that is the issue of making your social site visible vs. making you technologically flashy. He stresses that while it is important to have an updated status with a flashy technologically new updates it is also important to have the information easily digested and require simple and acceptable language used across the nation, for instance he suggested to have a “What’s New” or known in the FB or Twitter as updating the status using an easy simple language.

Kerpen is devoted entirely to feedbacks from customers. There is a section in the book where he mentioned about tips on how and what to do in order to get feedback from clients. Kerpen focuses specifically on surveying the clients. He then focuses on ideas to incorporate the survey findings into the social media site. One of the best ideas and also the seemingly simplest idea is “Asking What You Like”. Kerpen quoted Amazon.com as an example of a company who makes an effort to ask its clients about their choices of books. Amazon sends its customers email whenever a new book by a certain author is published. It’s quite an important section to check out because this is to enhance the relationship with the consumers specifically those repeat customers who has been loyal with the products. In attracting customers’ attention, Kerpen focuses on the Social Media’s effectiveness which demands top-notch listening skills. Despite in making your site stands out by giving it an outrageous look by working on metatags and being listed on the large search engines, he also looks at ways to measure success by examining the traffic flow in the social media site. He believes in “Less Talk, More Listening”. After all, people want to be heard, says Kerpen. The biggest mistake companies make is that they’re still talking too much. They’re still investing all their marketing dollars in print advertising, radio and television commercials, and email blitzes that scream in the customer face to “Buy!” without providing a listening ear. Listening takes time and so does developing a friendly “likeable” relationship with your customers, says Kerpen. The social networks may provide companies the infrastructure, but an investment to listen needs to be made. This investment includes listening to the conversations made by customers about the company. It also involves in listening to competitors and potential customers. Through social media listening, businesses are able to understand more clearly on how customers are using (or not using) their products, according to Kerpen. They can discover new opportunities and understand what is most important to their customers. Kerpen suggests it’s good to avoid pricey advertisement campaigns which will champion things we think people will love about our product or service but instead to listen to what people actually want before we decided to spend a dollar on the campaign. He did raise some problems which may occur with social media and at the same time is devoted to starting out building a site and looking to the future. According to him any Internet-related book that is more than one month old is considered as out of date. However, a starting point is needed when trying to figure out how best to promote our organization, product or service through social media. This book is a good starting point. The writing style and level of understanding is easy for most individuals especially those with an interest in the subject matter. It is dedicated to people who want to undertake publicity on the Internet using social media, not at the technical aspects. With only the most basic understandings of what the social media is all about, we should have no problem following the books advice. Social Media is quite comprehensive. It refers to the process of gaining website traffic or attention through social media sites. Social media marketing programs usually center on efforts to create content that attracts attention and encourages readers to share it with their social networks. A corporate message spreads from user to user and presumably resonates because it appears to come from a trusted, third-party source, as opposed to the brand or a company itself. Hence, this form of marketing is driven by word-of-mouth, meaning it results in earned media rather than paid media. Social media has become a platform that is easily accessible to anyone with internet access. It has seen to has increased in communication for an organization fosters brand awareness and often, improved customer service as well. Additionally, social media serves as a relatively inexpensive platform for organizations to implement marketing campaigns. It talks about how to get the most publicity value out of announcements, press releases, news groups, chats, mailing lists, search engines and the list goes on. A small portion of the material in the book is however, seems to be out dated where the book devotes a section to the use of the social media services which has grown considerably and has changed considerably since the book was written.

The author also offers suggestions about the limits on the proper use of some of these Social Media. However, these are primarily the author 's opinion. There are times when following his advice might ruffle some feathers. Some groups of people may feel upset that there is some kind of commercialization issues of the Internet exist here. Others may find objectionable some practices that the majority of net citizens accept as part of having an open communication media, even when they are less than thrilled with some of its manifestations. To the author 's credit he points out some of the instances when one of his suggested practices might result in you being "flamed."

Throughout the book, the author makes extensive use of real-life examples. The only weakness is that the examples are weighted towards the author 's own interest and experience on the Internet. However, extrapolating the examples for other use in other areas is not a big step. For instance, he mentioned about Blendtec, who sells powerful blenders, posted YouTube.com footage that is hilarious. Millions of people have viewed their entertaining videos. This led them to having one of the most popular corporate YouTube channels ever. The point here is, if you can entertain your community, then just do it.

Another example is Chill Zone, a slushy-like product offered by Cumberland Farms. They had opened a fan page on Facebook that makes them became very popular. They then held a contest to give away a full year’s supply of their product to the person with the best story illustrating on why they are Chill Zone’s favourite fan. Stories poured in through emails and videos, with a wide range of storytelling from fans. The key point here is: Storytelling is powerful. It connects people. The sharing of these stories that grew a community among fans has contributed to growing Chill Zone Facebook page to over 140,000 “likes” strong.

Another example that he uses is Starbuck. Starbuck’s uses Facebook advertisement to broadcast offers and announce events that draw fans into their stores. Communicated via Facebook ads are great deals such as “free pastry day” and “Frappuccino Happy Hour.” The point here is: Facebook advertisements can be used in a number of creative and dynamic ways. They’ve made a great impact on Starbuck’s targeted audience by bringing in millions of fans to in-store locations.

Likeable Social Media is very well written in a relaxed, conversational manner and sometimes you get the feeling that you’re sitting in a comfortable chair talking to the author one-on-one. Unlike some authors who tend to rewrite history, Kerpen gives you some realistic situations. Excellent insights have been made to some of products branding activities that went sour due to Social Media. There is a lot of practical, battle-tested advice in the pages of the book. In addition, in an analytical manner he discusses why some otherwise Social Media failed.

In today’s world the war is won or lost on seemingly insignificant battlefields around the globe. In this sense, perhaps corporate management, marketing, advertising and public relations really should begin thinking in terms of brand environmentalism by Social Media marketing rather than branding programs. Every company today is under financial pressure to slash costs unilaterally. However by abandoning their brand marketing and brand responsibilities in the short term will make them suffer in the long term. The problem is that most CEOs don’t understand the importance of implanting the organization’s brand on every employee. At the same time, a lot of marketing and advertising people don’t want to understand that they can do very little to a firm’s brand management just by understanding the role of Social Media well.

Likeable Social Media offers a clear analogy to understanding Facebook’s algorithm called EdgeRank, which according to Kerpen is “the most important innovation of our time.” It filters out the junk, and allows for the best content to rise to the top. Kerpen explains: “EdgeRank is Facebook 's algorithm for determining what appears in user’s Top News Feeds. It’s a complex formula, but essentially the more relevant your content is, and the more comments and “likes” it generates, the more likely it 'll show up in your fans ' News Feeds.”
In other words, the best content wins.

The rest of the book is filled with marketing strategies and advanced tools that social media technology has to offer. Likeable Social Media is an easy book with a crystal-clear advice and suggestions. At the end of every chapter are “action items” thought-provoking questions and exercises that readers can actually participate in, putting the content of the book into practical use. What sets it apart from other social media books is that it’s full of “simple solid case studies and easy-to-follow strategies,” says Kerpen.

A unique feature of Likeable Social Media is its interactive nature. The author says he will discuss the book and answer questions on both Twitter and Facebook. The book is meant “as the beginning of an ongoing conversation,” says Kerpen. If we can get our organizations thinking along these lines it may be less difficult to obtain the resources that are necessary to keep the firm’s message fresh, simple and relevant to people inside and outside the organization. Of course there will always be the myopic marketing or advertising person whom you’re going to have to deal with who firmly believes that Social Media is solely his or her area of responsibility/authority.

In his personal life, Kerpen values family, transparency, authenticity and creating a better world for his children. His values transfer to his professional life and all throughout his social media book. As the CEO of Likeable Media, Kerpen keeps his family close: his wife is his business partner and his eight-year-old daughter is already a twitterer.

Kerpen dedicates chapters of Likeable Social Media to authenticity, and on being honest and transparent. He believes that the value of transparency can create a better world. Being transparent will force other companies and politicians to also become transparent, and as a result, become better listeners who stay deeply connected to their customers and constituents. Social media can change the world by becoming more likeable, responsive, engaging, more customers friendly and more authentic. There is a commitment and a bond between the company and the customer. Once that bond is broken it is difficult and impossible to win the trust of that customer again.

Last but not least, Likeable Social Media is a likeable, engaging, value-packed, educational reading tool for marketing. Two “likeable” thumbs up for this book. This book can be a great tool for the website building novice and the expert. It’s an easy readable tool with lots of examples. I recommend reading this book near the computer as there are some great web addresses to check out along the way with some step by step coaching on Social Media starter guides. Enjoy your reading with leisure!

References;
Land, S. E. (2012, January 11). What is Social Media Marketing.
Scott Bedbury, S. F. (February 2002). A New Brand World: Ten Principles for Achieving Brand Leadership in the Twenty-First Century. Viking Adult.
Sterne, J. (June 2001). World Wide Web Marketing, 3rd Edition. John & Sons, Incorporated Publication Date.

References: Land, S. E. (2012, January 11). What is Social Media Marketing. Scott Bedbury, S. F. (February 2002). A New Brand World: Ten Principles for Achieving Brand Leadership in the Twenty-First Century. Viking Adult. Sterne, J. (June 2001). World Wide Web Marketing, 3rd Edition. John & Sons, Incorporated Publication Date.