Book Review: Social Media Judo

I am a social media enthusiast and read a lot of books on the subject. Social Media Judo – The essential guide to mastering social media and delivering real results for your brand, by Chris Aarons, Geoff Nelson and Nick White with Dan Zehr, is one of the better books I have recently read. The book provided real concrete information on how to change behaviors and motivate consumers to buy your products via social media.

It is different than many of the other social media marketing books because most of the other books focus on the social networking aspect of marketing. This book brings you into the core, the blogger.

Bloggers are often overlooked and underutilized, but when they are cultivated and have relationships with you, your brand will be more likely noticed.

The authors  from the firm Ivy Worldwide, provide the reader with concrete tips and strategies on cultivating relationships with bloggers, including:
• Be direct and personally engaged?• Provide content that will drive traffic to their blog sites?• Don’t just push your brand
• Provide them with content that their readers would be interested in
They talk about a successful campaign called “31 days of the dragon,” in which they utilized bloggers to get the word out about a new product introduction. By doing so, they orchestrated the launch by having different bloggers write on different days to get maximum exposure. As a result of this, the product had 14% increase in web site traffic; 84% increase in sales and the company set monthly sales records.

The authors say that Social Media Judo gets the brand the maximum amount of impact for the least amount of effort. That’s the analogy. Throughout the book, there are quotations from famous judo experts that although relating to judo also relate to the social media aspect of a campaign.

Whenever Ivy Worldwide shapes a campaign, they shape their approach around the following:

•    They tap into the network of key influencers (bloggers) and use existing momentum to spread the word.
•    They make sure that the program is mutually beneficial to both bloggers and the brand. •    They make sure to build relationships with bloggers as opposed to exploiting them every time they need them.
•    They also make sure to think about and interact with their key influencers online and offline.

One of the more interesting campaigns was when the HP brand targeted college bloggers and gave them $4,000 to throw a party and introduce their product. Ivy Worldwide made sure that the product introduction was not the main element of the party; it was something that was there and used to enhance the experience. These parties were very successful and as a result sales increased significantly.

But, the authors said you need to be careful about the tie-in and connection with your brand. For example, did you know that Office Max underwrote the “Elf Yourself” campaign? I didn’t know that until I read this book and obviously others didn’t know this as well. Although the video went viral, no one related it to the product.

The last four chapters of the book focused on:
•    Learning to fall – brands make mistakes, it’s how you handle these mistakes that can make or break your brand.
•    Mastering the basics – who are your target? Why use the blogger? How influential is the blogger, etc.?
•    Focus on balance – Make sure to go with the flow and keep the message intact.
•    Free practice – social media is part of a marketing campaign.
•    The contest – The authors write, “in judo, the objective is to win the match, and in business and marketing, your job is to grow the bottom line.”

I was pleased to see that the authors felt that bloggers and key influencers were the target and from there, these bloggers or key influencers will get the word out to their communities via social networking sites. Further, I was happy to see that we both had the same beliefs – that social media is not a stand-alone activity. It needs to be incorporated into the overall marketing campaign.

This was a well-written book with great insights into organizing and preparing a social media plan for your brand. Anyone in brand marketing, social media and/or PR/marketing can get a lot of useful information from this book.

Article first published as Book Review: Social Media Judo by Chris Aarons, Geoff Nelson, Nick White and Dan Zehr on Blogcritics.

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• Book Review: Social Media Judo by Chris Aarons, Geoff Nelson, Nick White and Dan Zehr (blogcritics.org)