I took a few hours this past weekend and read through Socialnomics: How Social Media Transforms The Way We Live and Do Business by Erik Qualman (Wiley, 2009).

The book was just published about a month ago, and I was looking forward to reading it. This was another one I was carrying around for the past few weeks, but hadn’t yet had a chance to open.

It was a fast read- taking me about 2.5 hours total. One thing that struck me was how catchy the individual chapter titles were, for example, “What Happens in Vegas Stay on YouTube.”- the word construction was interesting and intriguing, and made me want to read more.

Overall, I experienced the book as entertaining, but I can’t say that I learned anything new. If you’ve been reading other books on social media, many of the examples and case studies referenced in this book will be familiar to you.

What this book does have is more recent examples- such as United Breaks Guitars, which is only a few months old.

The author was very careful to highlight that social media is changing rapidly, and that some of his examples or referenced URLs might be out of date by the time the book was printed. This did adequately convey the rate of change and fast pace of social media.

The book is written in a series of case studies and soundbites. There were definitely many quotable phrases- ones that you could repeat and sound profound. It was definitely a bird’s eye type view on social media, which seemed familiar to me, somehow, from other social media books I’ve already read.

What I liked best about the book was that it did try to make social media accessible to the reader. It was based on some interesting findings and research pulled from other sources. It did present the information in an engaging and entertaining way.

I tend to prefer to read social media books which teach me something or move me to think more deeply about social media strategy and tools. What I found in this book was that, rather than learning much new, I was more entertained- and, also, had many of my ideas validated. This was nice, but I was hoping for something more revelatory.

If you are looking for more specific or advanced social media strategy or tools, this might not be the right book for you. As I said, it presented some entertaining examples and a good broad view, but didn’t seem to provide too many specific strategies or tools you could use immediately.

But if you are looking to add to your general knowledge of social media, or are looking for books which provide you a broad overview of social media, this book may be a good fit for you.

Get Your Copy of Socialnomics from Amazon

If you’ve been following the news on Twitter overnight, you’ll know that human error led to a mass suspension of 1000s of accounts. This meant that those affected could not send updates, connect with their followers, or do anything on the site until their access was restored.

While my account wasn’t impacted, I think there are some important lessons to think about from this event:

1) Never rely on just one social media site for your marketing efforts. We all have favorite social media sites, and we tend to frequent the same places over and over again. We like what we like, and we are creatures of habit. The problem with relying too heavily on one site is that if it goes down (or your account gets taken down), you have built your business on a shaky foundation. Never rely on an external site as a mainstay to run your business.

2) Technology is only as good as the humans running it. Twitter reports that it was human error which led to the mass banning. This is a good reminder that technology has its limits- and we shouldn’t overvalue what technology can do for us. If you’re only using social media as a push marketing method, you are putting yourself at the mercy of technology. If your “other controlled” distribution channels go away, you have no way to get your message out.

3) You need to have a central hub for your business building efforts. Ideally, this would be your own self-hosted blog. The goal of all social media is to create conversations, and try and lead people back to your central hub. If you overbuild on sites you don’t control, your effort can be lost or wasted. Companies lose funding, sites are abandoned, databases become corrupted.

My friend and colleague Denise Wakeman offers a great article on Why Blog When You’ve Got Facebook (read this!), and she makes some really great points about how you need to create a multi-focused social media platform in order to get the most from your social media marketing efforts.

The final lesson, I think, is that social media is an evolving space, and if you’re following the rules of engagement, you should be able to get your account put back in good standing, simply by pointing out that you weren’t doing anything wrong in the first place.