Posts Tagged ‘book reviews’

A reminder that on January 27, I’ll be hosting the first edition of the FIR Book Club.

This is an outgrowth of my position of Book Reviews Editor for the wonderful podcast For Immediate  Release, created by Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson.

In a quick 30 minutes, we’ll have a chat with an author and a call-in so that you can ask the author questions.

Our first guest on the FIR Book Club will be Christopher Barger, author of the new book “The Social Media Strategist.”

Join us on Blog Talk Radio on the 27th.

And two other book-related notes:

1. If you have a book you would like to hear reviewed — or if you’d like to do a review yourself! — get in touch and tell me about the title.
2. If you’re interested in being a guest reviewer, let me know what book you’re thinking about. In the past, we’ve had folks like Shel and the mellifluous Donna Papacosta do reviews. More voices are better.
3. If you’re a book publicist or an author of a book that is related to public relations, social media, communications, marketing — get in touch with me. I’d like to hear about your book and perhaps review it.

It’s a little surprising (maybe not very surprising, actually) that I don’t hear very often from authors or publishing companies asking me to review books. Try me.

Christopher Barger has found himself in some pretty hot seats — including leading the social media team at General Motors during its bankruptcy. In addition to being a senior vice-president at Voce Communications, Christopher is also a blogger for Forbes. But will all that have prepared him for 30 minutes in an entirely new sort of hot seat as the inaugural guest author on the FIR Book Club?

This is a new idea that I’ve been working on with Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson, the hosts of For Immediate Release (if I may say, the pre-eminent PR and social media podcast out there.) Since last year, I’ve been doing book reviews for FIR, and really enjoying the opportunity to get into some great (and maybe not so great) books on PR and social media.

So now we’re taking the book review idea a step further, and poor Christopher is our guinea pig.

Christopher is the author of the hot-off-the-presses book “The Social Media Strategist” from McGraw-Hill Ryerson.

According to the McGraw-Hill site:

Conquer the unique challenges of driving social media success within a large company

From the social media director who built successful programs at both GM and IBM, The Social Media Strategist provides the tools you need to meet all the challenges of building a social media strategy in a large company, which include corporate culture, legal barriers, and the kind of bureaucratic resistance that that are unique to large organizations.

The Social Media Strategist explains how to get legal departments to say “yes” to social media programs; get employees engaged without exposing the organization to risk; build “buzz” that parallels business goals; and avoid the internal turf wars that can doom new initiatives.

I am starting to read the book now, and will have an audio book review up sometime soon.

And on January 27, we’ll do the first FIR Book Club with Christopher as our inaugural guest, using the services of Blog Talk Radio.

In a fast-paced 30 minutes, we’ll talk a little about his book, and then give listeners — that’s you! —  the opportunity to talk with Christopher and me about his book. Listeners can call in or they can participate in a chatroom on the BTR site.

Keep watching this space and the FIR site for more promos and information as we get closer to the 27th.

The 5Ws:

WHAT: FIR Book Club #1
WHO: Christopher Barger, author of The Social Media Strategist, with Bob LeDrew, FIR book review editor
WHEN: 2:00-2:30 pm Eastern time, January 27, 2012
WHERE: Blog Talk Radio
WHY: For lively chat with a leading social media thinker

Shockingly enough, I appear to have missed an opportunity for self-promotion.

I started off 2011 with yet another contribution to the world of podcasting. Not happy with doing The Kingcast, The Contrarians with Joe Boughner and Susan Murphy, and PR and Other Deadly Sins with Mark Blevis, I’m also the new “book review editor” for one of my absolute favorite podcasts, For Immediate Release.

Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson, the hosts of FIR, have been pioneers and examples of how business can use podcasting to inform, to engage, and to entertain too. Now approaching their 600th episode, they’re respected and followed by many people. Their past and present columnists, including Lee Hopkins, Sallie Goetsch (rhymes with sketch), Michael Netzley, and Dan York offer great content — to the point that I’m still a little intimidated to be sharing the webspace with them.

But never having been one to let my own inadequacies hold me back from grasping the coattails of the great and good, there I am.

You can check out my audio reviews of Deadly Spin by Wendell Potter, UnMarketing by Scott Stratten, and most recently Resonate by Nancy Duarte on their site. For a permanent fix of these reviews, there’s an FIR Reviews feed you can subscribe to. Or you could just subscribe to the For Immediate Release “Everything Feed.” If you work in public relations, communications, marketing, social media, or have a professional interest in those fields, you will find it a source of great news and analysis.

I’m looking forward to continuing to review books for FIR as well as posting new entries to the Translucid Bookshelf, and I hope you enjoy listening to them as much as I do making them. If you have books you think I should review (even if it’s YOUR book), please let me know about them.