Fully titled Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies, this book is a must-read for anyone trying to figure out how to profit from the social media phenomenon. There is only one major downside to this book: it wasn’t written 3 years ago.. Shame on you, Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff! (joking of course!)

This book is perfect for anyone who doesn’t understand ‘social media’…and for those who think they do! Provides case-based examples of how organizations have used social media to engage their users. The examples provided in the book are quite good and describe how organizations have used social media to embrace their community.

Before you go out and buy the book on my recommendation, let me make a couple of important points:

• This book does not tell you how to implement a social network.
• This book will not solve your problems with social networks. It will help you understand your problems and give you some ideas for solutions.

What this book will do is help you understand that there is no single answer to the “how to adopt social media” question. The book provides many examples of social media experiments… some successful and some unsuccessful.

The book provides a ton of information on demographics and age group differences and how age typically affects social media use. Excellent information that everyone should check out.

For me, the most interesting section of the book is the one where the authors state very clearly that any social media project (or really any project) can be more successful if the following four steps are followed:

• First, look at your People.
• Second, set your goals.
• Third, review your strategy.
• Fourth, look at the technology.

This approach, which the authors abbreviated as POST, is no different than any proper strategic planning initiative… at least in my book. When any organization starts looking at new things like social media, it must first look at its people and customers. Is this new strategy something that can be easily achieved? Its viable?

The second step is to set your goals for the project. What are you trying to accomplish with this social media project (or any project)? The third step is to review your overall strategy and determine your ‘go to market’ strategy. The last step (which most organizations do first) is to select the technology platform that you will use to carry out your strategy. I can’t count how many times I’ve seen this process done in reverse with the technology selected before I really thought about strategy, goals and people. Many of those projects failed miserably because of it.

The book is well-reviewed…and serves those reviews well. This is an excellent book for anyone interested in this subject. Highly recommended.