The End. And the contest begins!

Well, I just finished The Now Revolution. I was a little bit on edge, I admit, because I pretty much gave you my summation (positive in nature) in my last review. What if the last two chapters just really stunk? I’d look pretty silly.

Well, no worries!

Fire Extinguishers and Crashing Planes

Chapter Six deals with crisis management as it intersects with Social Media. Having spent the book up to this point illustrating how Social Media can and should touch every facet of your business, seeing the word “crisis” in the same sentence as Social Media can give you the willies.

Jay and Amber begin the chapter with the famous safe landing of the United Airways plane in the Hudson River. While most angles of the story have since been covered to death, the chapter brings up something that I somehow had not thought about. So, this story breaks on Twitter – somebody captured the video on a mobile device and posted it right away. If you’re United Airways and you’re monitoring Social Media the way you’re supposed to, how in the heck do you react to this thing as it unfolds? You don’t know the scope of what you’re dealing with and you are totally not in control of the situation.

Yikes.

Jay and Amber do a great job of talking you down, and they are honest. Sometimes you can’t win the hearts and minds of everyone. But sometimes, you can ease the fire. You can get the winds to blow favorably. You can pour water on the fire instead of making it spread (cough, BP, cough).

Social Media ROI

Chapter Seven covers the issue of Social Media ROI. Now, I know what you’re thinking, especially if you speak Yiddish. “Oy vey!”

However, this chapter treats Social Media ROI in a brilliant way that I have not seen anywhere else (boy am I getting tired of saying that in the context of these reviews. *yawn*).

Instead of just saying, “Meh, can’t do it,” or, “Here, this is the one true answer, take it or leave it,” Amber and Jay take three different objectives and give you ways to track measurements specific to those objectives.

Pretty nifty, right? Especially if your objective is to make money using Social Media. Knowing that there could be ways to wrap your arms around what in the heck Twitter is doing for your bottom line could be some outstanding news, no?

My guessing game ends

I’m a little heartbroken because Jay has already informed me that I’m abysmal at guessing who wrote which chapters. This problem plagues me in the world of telephones too. You could talk to me a million times and I’d guess your voice wrong (so don’t be offended). But, I’m going to say that chapter 6 is a Jay Baer product just because I remember well his post about the James Joyce incident (which happened against my Indians, by the way. If you’re going to try for a perfect game, pitching against Cleveland is a powerful first step).

I’ll go ahead and guess that Amber wrote chapter 7 (because 50/50 is great odds in my book).

And now the contest!

Starting today, and going through next Sunday, drop me an email. explaining why reading this book and posting a review would benefit you – either in terms of your blog, your company, or otherwise. Please put Now Revolution Contest in the subject line, ok?

Since I’m giving away one of my copies at TweetDiner (2/26) I only have 1 copy to give away in this contest now. I’ll announce the winner one week from today!

Sound good?

This was a really enjoyable book to read – full of information that would work for a beginner but nuanced enough to be an excellent read for a grizzled veteran of Social Media wars. I send my thanks once again to Jay and Amber for letting me blab for a week about their creation 🙂

Image by Kriss Szkurlatowski. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/hisks