sábado, 29 de enero de 2011

Review of The Facebook Marketing Book by Dan Zarrella and Allison Zarrella

19:00 by Zalakain · 3 comentarios

After watching the too much bloated movie on Facebook’s beginnings, I had the impression that to be a successful web-entrepreneur you have to be either a total nerd or the luckiest guy around, not having a clue on how and if that “Facebook” is a real business or not.

 

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Then I had the chance to review Zarrellas’ “The Facebook Marketing Book” which finally helped me finding out. It is not a silly attempt to create an interesting history from a dull money-making one, as the movie is, but rather a clean and practical way to learn what can be done with Facebook in order to perform a good Web 2.0 marketing attempt. A word of advice though: no magical recipes are going to be found here, any marketing effort just gets as good as the persons doing it.

 

The book is a very easy reading: each topic covered has an accompanying screenshot of real life Facebook’s examples, which gives also some hints on what companies to follow or “mimic” when doing your own marketing efforts. The book covers in 12 chapters the main aspects of Facebook: Profiles, Pages, Groups, Events, Analytics… etc. After reading each chapter a clear idea is obtained of what the purpose of each of those elements is in Facebook’s world, when, how and what for they can be used. And upon closing the book I really think I now understand where the money in Facebook can be found and why so many companies are there trying to get as many “Fans” as possible.

There are a couple things missing on the book that I would have really love to have found included, and thus my rating of it doesn’t get too high:

  • First, nowhere in the book I found a good basic guide of a Web 2.0 marketing campaign using Facebook. A chapter covering a simple “how to” once all the main Facebook’s components have been explained would have really rounded up the book, even considering that there’s no “one size fits all” advice. But given that the book seems to have been thought as a “newbies” guide into Facebook’s marketing, I missed this.
  • Second, I found that the Application devoted chapter was too bleak not giving too much value on how to actually program those apps. Ok, this is a marketing focused book and it does actually talk about what can be done with Facebook apps so as to get more “marketing revenue” so, well, I cannot really complain about this. But being the IT kind of guy that likes trying everything, I missed it, just a bit.

All in all, a good reading which doesn’t require a big effort to get through, gives a good bunch of good advices and examples and can give you a good idea of what really is that Facebook about (the money, that is!).

The book is here http://oreilly.com/catalog/9781449388485/

comentarios

3 Responses to "Review of The Facebook Marketing Book by Dan Zarrella and Allison Zarrella"
Unknown dijo...
25 de julio de 2011, 14:41

I found the book to be an interesting guide to the features of Facebook, and a good overview. If you seek a guide on implementing FBML or how to create a Facebook page, this is not the right source. However, if you are new to Facebook and want to understand what a Group is versus a Business Page, this book will answer these questions for you.

social media management


Rodney Cobb dijo...
30 de octubre de 2012, 11:29

I also ant to get Facebook marketing book to get ideas about the advantage of Facebook in making money online.


Zalakain dijo...
30 de octubre de 2012, 11:57

It's difficult to get that, even from a good book. I think FB is a good source of "leads" that you have to work out with a proper strategy so they give you money (anyhow). What's good about FB (and others) is that they provide you with a simple and (almost) free communication channel with them, something that was not possible or was very expensive before. But then, it's up to you to transform those leads into business, and that depends on what you sell, how you do it, how serious you are about our on-line strategy, etc.
Another good value of FB though is that it's a two way channel, that means it's a great way to get feedback, ideas and even critics from your customers.

I agree with kuan, the book is a good overview of FB. But just this. I thought by its title to be more on how to do Marketing properly with FB, and that's what I found misleading.


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