Shama Hyder - The Zen of Social Media Marketing: An Easier Way to Build Credibility, Generate Buzz, and Increase Revenue

Praise for The Zen of Social Media Marketing

The Zen of Social Media Marketing demystifies the wacky, yet immensely powerful new world of online conversational marketing and serves as a great primer to understand where to allocate your time, money, and energy. A great read for entrepreneurs, professionals, and small businesses.

JONATHAN FIELDS, Author of Career Renegade

Building on a strong background of expert marketing advice, Shama has again produced a body of work that is at once complete and practical. This is a book that you can read quickly when youre frustrated by what seems like endless contradictions of social media, and then reference again and again as you develop your own sense of place on the social web. It is, after all, quite correctly titled The Zen of Social Media Marketing. I highly recommend this book.

DAVE EVANS, Social Media Strategist, and Author of Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day

Shama breaks down the why and how with easy-to-understand examples that can get you on the right track immediately... and ultimately grow your business.

JOE PULIZZI, Coauthor of Get Content. Get Customers, and Founder of Junta42

Finally! A true authority on the subject of social media has broken through the utter noise of get-rich-quick-with-social-media hysteria. Shama takes the mystery and hype out of social media and gives readers a practical step-by-step action plan to start, grow, measure, expand, and optimize their online presence. It is a must-read for any marketing professional, C-level executive, or entrepreneur. Her conversational writing style, numerous case studies, and how-to guides with screen shots make learning and implementing almost elementary. It will be required reading for all our clients.

JOE ABRAHAM, Founder and Managing Director at En Corpus Group, and Author of B.O.S.I. Entrepreneurship

Ready for a true social marketing awakening? If so, be sure and take Shama Kabanis The Zen of Social Media Marketing on your path to web enlightenment.

DEAN LINDSAY, Author of The Progress Challenge and Cracking the Networking CODE

The Zen of Social Media Marketing is a comprehensive guide for maximizing the marketing opportunities from online networks. Shama Kabani helps you make the most of your efforts in marketing through a stronger knowledge of social media.

PENELOPE TRUNK, Founder of the Social Network Brazen Careerist

Shama is hands-down the industry leader in social media marketing and creating buzz. She has a rare combination of social media savvy and law-of-attraction mastery that businesses clamor to find. Its easy to see why shes called the Shaman of social media. She will transform your marketing and increase your sales. Listen to everything this luminary says.

SHAWNE DUPERON, Five-Time EMMY Award Winner, ShawneTV

The Zen of Social Media Marketing is for anyone that has ever felt overwhelmed by all of the online options available now for networking, socializing, and just plain being online in general! Shama breaks it down so that even the most social mediaphobes will be breathing sighs of relief at how simple she makes it all sound! Get this book today and be on your way to a stress-free online experience that you will groove and align with, thrive, and enjoy.

SALLY SHIELDS, Author of The DIL Rules

Copyright 2016 by Shama Hyder

Previous edition copyright 2013

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

BenBella Books, Inc.

10440 N. Central Expy., Suite #800

Dallas, TX 75231

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First E-Book Edition: August 2016

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data for an earlier edition is available upon request.

e-ISBN: 978-1-942952-40-4.

Copyediting by Rebecca Logan and Deb Kirkby

Proofreading by Erica Lovett, Gregory Teague, Chris Gage, and Christine Koch

Cover design by Faceout Studio, Tim Green

Text design and composition by John Reinhardt Book Design

Printed by Lake Book Manufacturing

Distributed by Perseus Distribution

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Contents

by CHRIS BROGAN

This book has been a group effort. I couldnt have done it without the entire team at The Marketing Zen Group, and special thanks goes out to Angela von Weber-Hahnsberg and David Kirkpatrick.

This book is just as much theirs as it is mine.

To our clients at The Marketing Zen Group: Thank you for allowing us to be your digital Sherpas. Thank you for your trust, your respect, and your belief in us.

And THANK YOU, DEAR READER! You have shown this book enough love to make it to a 4th edition. I hope you find this edition, too, worthy of your time and attention.

Shama Hyder starts off her book with a scene from The Matrix. I know the scene well. Its a little bit of philosophy thrown into Hollywood and made simple to consume. Shamas right for giving us this gem; The Matrix seems to have motivated a lot of us to think differently about how we live online, and how business works.

I know. I wrote about The Matrix a few different times in Trust Agents. We could have just written, To be a trust agent is to know how to be Neo, and it wouldve been a shorter book.

There is a Zen to social media. There is a way. Shamas right about that. And her wayher thoughts, her experiments, her recommendations in this bookis one that can get a lot of people closer to the prize than anything they might intuit and do on their own.

Business rules are different now. Dont believe me? How are the banks in the United States doing? How are the three big carmakers? How are small businesses doing? You want to keep marketing the way companies have been for the last fifty years? Not a good idea, Im afraid.

Were writing new code, and Shama knows it.

Theres human code out there all about how human you can be, how you can connect with people, and what that means for business. Im flying all over the planet right now writing new versions of this code for companies, showing them how to be human. The goal is simple: explain to people that, while face-to-face is just as important as it ever was, now weve got all kinds of new tools that let us tighten bonds in between those in-person moments.

These tools leave a wake of data behind them. Follow these invisible trails of data and you can smell new customers, new opportunities. New networks dont form inside your inbox. New phone numbers dont start following you (frankly, thats probably a good thing). Social media provides the links and connections that allow these networks to form. Ive taken to calling Twitter the Serendipity Engine, because thats what it harnesses: serendipity. And you, too, can harness it for your business.