Book Review: Social Media Mastery (A Daily Actions Guide)

While on my train trip across the states, I had an opportunity to read Social Media Mastery: 75+ Tips to Help you Expand your Reach, Build your Platform, and Establish your Online Authority (Daily Actions)* by Tara Ross. This was an enjoyable little book well suited for small business owners and beginners to social media. Over the course of 19 chapters, she not only introduced common topics such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube but also included topics not commonly discussed such as Academia.edu, Reddit, and Scribd. I appreciated the glimpse into these seldom-discussed applications.

Across the book, Ross encourages readers to participate in challenges designed to implement the different social media activities into daily use. She has done a great job supporting her book with external resources that either she has created like video tutorials or has collected.

The book begins by examining your social media strategy… why do you want to enter the social media game. One of the pieces of advice that really resonated with me is “I recommend establishing a regular habit of helping others in ways that offer real value” (Ross, 2014, Loc. 193).

I recommend establishing a regular habit of helping others in ways that offer real value.

Ross provided solid ideas for deciding what to write in different social media applications. She also gave guidance about curation specifically about seeking out material, making sense of it in your own terms, and sharing your insights with others. This is very much in line with what I have reported about curation.

Ross then quickly dove into describing various social media tools and how to leverage them for your advantage. Using Twitter as an example, she challenged readers to:

• create a Twitter profile
• use hashtags
• participate in Follow Friday
• host your own tweet chat
• tweet a picture
• leverage bit.ly while tweeting
• schedule tweets
• build a Twitter fan base
• use text overlays on Twitter images
• tweet a video
• use twitter cards
• answer questions with Twitter

It is obvious very quickly that Ross uses many of these tasks in her daily operations. She provided many examples of challenges in action as well as supporting each challenge with great advice for practical use.

Not only did she address Twitter, she also addressed:

• Linkedin
• Facebook
• Google+
• Pinterest
• Instagram
• Scribd
• Slideshare
• Academia.edu
• Reddit
• YouTube
• Vimeo
• Blogging
• Podcasting
• Webinars

I read the book as a Kindle book, I was a little frustrated that I could not easily get back to the table of contents. This is hopefully something that can be fixed.

Towards the end of the book, Ross explains how to intertwine social media tools to get the most impact. Lots of good advice through this section. One piece I really enjoyed was the “Click to pin for later” section. It is something that I will have to implement.

All in all, I found this book to be enjoyable to read and quite informative. For business owners who are interested in starting out in social media, I would certainly recommend it.

Additional Reading

• Book Review: Booked: The Digital Marketing and Social Media Appointment Setting System for Anyone Looking for a Steady Stream of Leads, Appointments and New Clients
• Book Review: The Art of Social Media: Power Tips for Power Users
• Book Review: Smart Social Media: Your Guide to Becoming a Highly Paid Social Media Manager
• Book Review: Social Media for Trainers: Techniques for Enhancing and Extending Learning

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