Everything You Wanted to Know About Social Media But Were Afraid to Ask.

Everything You Wanted to Know About Social Media But Were Afraid to Ask. Yes, that's a book written by Hilary JM Topper.

I am a bit of a social media expert being an early adopter on this blog and being active on Twitter, Linkedin and to a lesser extent Facebook. I think like many areas, I have deep knowledge of some of it but little knowledge of other aspects.

I found the book to be very entry level to begin with. But as I got into it more, I did find I was learning (and any book that helps me to learn gets high marks from me).

I learned about social networking sites that I had never even heard of like BxExchange, Identi.ca, IncBizNet, Spoke and Tumblr. I was familiar with many of the others like Flickr even though I am not active on them.

Topper covers what each site does, what they are intended for then in a comment box notes her personal views (called her 2 cents). I liked her comments.

I learned about Twellow.com - a yellow pages type search of Twitter.

Topper gives success examples of what people have done with Social Networking like get a book contract etc. I worry that some people will have such success and many more will not.

The big question for me is the value return on my time from social media. And that ties into goals. Knowing what your goals are is key as with almost anything in life. Then determine how much time will need to be invested to get the desired result.

I wrote about how to control the time spent on social media because it can be a big time waste. Of course being a time guy, I would have appreciated a chapter on time use and social media.

Enough for now. Cannot really write an article "In Praise of Brevity" then run on...