20 Free e-books about social media

I was checking up on my reader and came across this by Chris Brogan:

1. The New Rules of Viral Marketing – David Meerman Scott
2. Marketing Apple – MarketingApple.com
3. Masters of Marketing – Startup Internet Marketing
4. Podcast Marketing eBook – Christopher S. Penn
5. Google Adwords Secrets – SEOBook
6. Get Viral Get Visitors – Stacie Mahoe
7. Marketing With Case Studies – Dynamic Copywriting
8. How to Write a Marketing Plan – Geisheker Group
9. SEO for WordPress blogs – Blizzard Internet
10. Social Web Analytics – Social Web Analytics
11. Geeks Guide to Promoting Yourself With Twitter – Geekpreneur
12. The Zen of Blogging – Hunter Nutall
13. What is Social Media – iCrossing
14. A Primer in Social Media – SmashLab
15. Effective Internet Presence – Effective Internet Presence
16. Introduction to Good Usability – Peter Pixel
17. Increasing the Response to Your Email Marketing Program – CRM Transformation
18. We Have a Website. Now What? – Craig Rentmeester
19. Blogs & Social Media – PRSA
20. The Podcast Customer Revealed – Edison Media Research

How Not To Use Facebook

Social media isn’t about blasting people with marketing messages. It is about community building and acting like a real person…is this obvious, idk. Some marketers still really don’t get it though. Some real estate person asked to be my Facebook friend accompanied by a sales pitch about how great his company was blah blah blah…that’s not why people use social media. They can turn on the TV, or Radio to get inundated with marketing messages. Social media is about connecting with people. Companies can benefit greatly from this, but they have to adapt to this and not treat it the same as direct marketing.

photo cred: mashable

Buzz Content Hustlers by Dean Hunt & Barry Dunlop

http://www.deanhunt.com/Buzz%20Content%20Hustlers%20eBook.pdf

What can I say, this e-book is really good! It is short and sweet with many case studies, exactly what I like. These guys combine humor with amazing viral marketing ideas. I think that anyone could read this and right away start a successful blog.

This e-book is really about how to get the most people to your website. It provides ideas called “hustles” that will get your website off the ground and have thousands of people tune in quickly. The ideas here can be applied to pretty much any product in any industry. For big companies it is especially useful for their blogs or micro-sites and smaller companies can use the ideas for any product.

Some “hustles” are:

The Ego-Stroking Hustle – launch a blog praising everyone in your industry. People’s ego’s are a great thing to play off. They will be so happy with this they will sing your praises off of rooftops in the form of links. One of the biggest money making blogs on the internet accomplished its success doing just this. Ex. alltop.com

The Challenge (with forfeit) Hustle – ex. “One man’s challenge to see how much weight he can lose using Nintendo Wii Fit” People love to see challenges, especially ridicolous ones like this. And the beauty is that even if you don’t succeed the forfeit can get as much attention as the attempts.

This will only take you ten minutes to read and its worth it.

Logic + Emotion by David Armano

http://darmano.typepad.com

Everyone teaches differently and David Armano does so with elaborate, yet easy to follow charts. So if you are a visual learner interested in new media and especially how to use it for marketing purposes, this is the blog for you. That is why Advertising Age is consistently asking David Armano to write articles for them. He posts at least one a day and has a wealth of knowledge on his site. From daily thoughts to web2.0 usability you can find it on his website.