A Book Review

If you didn’t read Socialnomics, by Erik Qualman, when it originally came out in mid-2009, a revised and updated edition just came out in November. It’s worth checking out.

Qualman is an unabashed cheerleader for all things social media, which for someone with a skeptical bent like myself can be a little hard to take at times, but most other social media authors are no different – as Gartner analysts would say, the depths of the “Trough of Disillusionment” for social media are not yet upon us (though 2011 may be the year). This book is written primarily as a guide to social media for marketers and entrepreneurs. Like most, it comes at it with a B2C emphasis, with the rare exception. But that’s nothing new. The fact is that B2C is still ahead in social media so those of us focused more heavily on B2B need to learn from those experiences.

Here’s Qualman at a recent TedX event.

The Good:

1. Word of Mouth to World of Mouth: This is the heart of Qualman’s thesis and it’s hard to argue with. As I’ve said on this blog ad nauseum, every bit of research I’ve ever encountered shows word of mouth as the most powerful influence on the purchase decision-making process. This is at least as true for B2B purchases, and maybe more so. But traditional word-of-mouth influence is slow and each individual only influences a few of the people they know. Grease word-of-mouth with social media and suddenly reach and speed explode with little loss of impact. He calls that “World of Mouth.”
2. Silence is Not Golden. Qualman cites a study by the Strategic Planning Institute that found that 96 percent of dissatisfied customers don’t bother to complain, and yet 63 percent of those silent dissatisfieds will nevertheless not buy from you again. Yikes! Thanks to social media, it’s getting much easier for those customers to complain when something doesn’t go right. The author emphasizes for skittish companies that this is An Opportunity, a chance to take that feedback to make your product or service the best it can be. Of course, you also don’t have a choice because you can no longer hide the things that aren’t working. It’s better to face up to reality.
3. Stats. Those of us who have to give presentations on social media are always trying to keep track of key trend stats, and not only has Qualman peppered the book with many, as you’d expect, he did us the courtesy of assembling most of them in the last chapter of the book under Eye Opening Statistics.  Oh, okay, I know you want a couple right now.  One out of eight couples married in the U.S. last year met via social media. Also, 50 percent of the mobile Internet traffic in the UK is for Facebook. There are pages of these handy stats.  (Too bad they’ll all be hopelessly out of date in a year, but so it goes. Maybe he’ll keep updating this.)
4. Thoughtful Case Studies, without clear villains, just like real life. Sometimes the big companies get it right, sometimes they get it wrong, sometimes there’s more than one winner, and sometimes it takes two tries to get it right. And when we think we get something right, inevitably hubris sets in. I loved the travel example, where ACME Travel, a big player, gets something right on Facebook, but not quite right. A newcomer, Where I’ve Been, one-ups ACME. In turn, TripAdvisor tries to buy Where I’ve Been, but the latter gets a little greedy so TripAdvisor builds their own travel sharing app for less than it would have cost to acquire Where I’ve Been. In the end, TripAdvisor ends up with the most users. Fascinating story.

The Not So Good:

1. It’s Not All Rosy. Although Qualman does acknowledge that there may be some downsides to social media, he doesn’t try very hard to think of many. I’m certainly a fan of the concept of “Socialnomics” but the fact is there are threats posed by social and digital media besides the possible decline of interpersonal communications skills in some young people. One of the great things about social media – really the Web in general – is we can really open our eyes to new ideas if we want to. On the other hand, you also have the opportunity to surround yourself only by people who think as you do and to read news and information that only conforms to your narrow point of view. This can actual reinforce socioeconomic and cultural isolation. Here’s a New York Times piece about that from way back in mid-2009.
2. The Future is Not the Present. This is mainly something for marketers to be cognizant of. Qualman will often state emerging trends as if they are already the current state of affairs. He notes, for example that the media now do interviews via email instead of by phone or in person. Well, some industry media do, in some instances, but certainly that’s not the way any tier-1 journalist conducts interviews today. (The Washington Post ran such a story today on Chinese President Hu Juntao, but not because THEY wanted to. Rather, Hu insisted.) The author also says, “People are now living their own lives rather than watching others.” Presumably, because you see other people doing cool and amazing, you’re less satisfied spending days working, washing clothes and mowing the lawn, and are now taking up skydiving and treks to the South Pole. I’m sure some are but it feels more like wishful thinking.
3. Search Engines Subsumed by Social Media. Qualman’s concept here is that I care more about what my neighbor thinks than what Google thinks (true) and so we don’t need to go hunting around on search engines.  I would note that most searches on search engines are not for products. Look at Bing’s top 10 searches of 2010 and none were product-related. And most of what we buy, we never did find on search engines. A B2C example: I want a new car. I don’t know about you but before social media, I wasn’t punching in “four-door sedan with good gas mileage” into a search engine. I was talking to my dad over coffee and emailing my friends. Doing that via social media doesn’t strike me as a radical change. A B2B example: Did I ever hire an accounting firm by trolling search engines? I don’t think this trend is as big as he makes it out to be.
4. It’s Weber, Weber! Sorry, I’m the only one who cares about this, but in his Social Media Rolodex, Qualman gives a nod to Larry Weber, who founded the Weber Group, which merged with us to become Weber Shandwick.  But it’s “Larry Weber” not “Webber.” Had to be said.

Bottom Line: If you read a lot of books on social media, you’ll have heard most of this before. If not, this is one of the better ones for describing the fundamental impacts of the social media era on business and society.  Plus the sources and references in the back are handy.  Just go easy on the Kool-Aid.

You can follow the author on Twitter at @equalman.