With the launch just a few days ago of the Kindle application for the iPhone and iPod touch, you might be looking for some new books to add to your library.

Here are the best selling books on Amazon in the Computer & Internet category under Business & Culture.

Amazon’s results are updated hourly so this list is a rough approximation of the most popular books at the moment.

(As a side note, something worthy to note is that the books in the top spots in ALL categories on Amazon are also available in a Kindle edition.  No surprise that books offered in a variety of formats appeal to more people.)

1. The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing and Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly by David Meerman Scott

2. Groundswell:  Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff

3. Social Media Marketing:  An Hour a Day by Dave Evans and Susan Bratton

4. Twitter Power: How to Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time by Joel Comm

5. Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky

6. ProBlogger:  Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income by Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett

7. Web Analytics:  An Hour a Day by Avinash Kaushik

8. Wikinomics: How mass Collaboration Changes Everything by Don Tapscott,  Anthony D. Williams, and Alan Sklar

9.  Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking by Andy Sernovitz and Guy Kawasaki

10. Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords: How to Access 100 Million People in 10 Minutes by Perry Marshall and Bryan Todd

Other notable titles:

Facebook Marketing: Leverage Social Media to Grow Your Business by Steve Holzner

Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World HC by Don Tapscott

Twitter Revolution: How Social Media and Mobile Marketing is Changing the Way We Do Business & Market Online by Warren Whitlock and Deborah Micek

Please leave your comments below.  Which have you read? Which would you recommend or not?

The debate hit the Internet Marketing world last week when Ed Dale announced on his blog he’s flushing most of his Facebook friends and starting fresh.

(Why did flushing, friends, and fresh just seem weird to me? Anyway.)

It really isn’t anything new, the desire to have lots of friends on the social networking sites is viewed as a type of social validation. You know, “Hey I’m cool, look at all the friends I have”.

Come on, admit it. How cool did you look on MySpace when Tom was your only friend?

Hey, I’m just saying…I’m not pointing any fingers, I fell for it too.

But this led to a mad rush to add friends as quickly as possible with friend adding software and viral gizmos and gadgets that are still prevalent to this day. Especially on Twitter.

Yet time has shown, that just like in the real world, it’s not the number of friends or followers, but who is actually listening and cares what you have to say.

You can’t fake influence. Just like men can’t fake…well, you know. It’s either there or not.

So here we are, a ton of useless friends that put in question our use of social media socially.

Huh? Well, the cartoon below says it all. Are you so busy adding friends that you are missing out on the real value of the sites you use either personally of professionally?

With over 175 million people on Facebook, as marketers we start rubbing our little hands. And yes it’s tempting. Oh yes very tempting. I mean, if Facebook were a country if would be the sixth most populated in the world! (And we don’t need a passport or have to put up with airline security.)

But Ed has a point. He says:

People who study Internet marketing intensely as we do, use Facebook completely the wrong way. Actually let me rephrase that, we do not use it the way “real people” use it.”

I’m certainly rethinking my use of Facebook. I haven’t logged in for months, simply because it was a time hog having through sift through an Inbox full of solicitations, spam, and useless conversations to find anything of value and personal.

And although I don’t know wether I’ll be flushing friends from the bathroom of my account just yet, not because I don’t want to, but because I’m too lazy to do it myself, I don’t think there is a right or wrong answer.

Its really going to boil down to answering this question for yourself: What’s my purpose for using it?

I’d love to hear from you. Especially those using Facebook both professionally and personally.
Will you be flushing your friends? How do you use Facebook and what do you get out of it?

Talk soon.

If a blogger writes on the web and nobody sees it, did they actually write anything?  You have to look at the way bloggers communicate to really get a feel for what I mean.

I just read a unique blog post from a good friend of mine.  She sent me a direct message (DM) from twitter to alert me about it.  The title intrigued me, so I went to her blog, read it and commented on it.

Social Networks are a very potent force in communication.  People hear more about MySpace, Facebook and Twitter from their sitcoms, because those platforms reached a critical mass, where people can no longer ignore them unless they want to continue being completely anonymous.

But posting on social networks just for the sake of posting is like writing just to fill lines on  page.  If you are not providing value of some kind, nobody will read you.  In many cases, people who do not provide good content become lost in the sea of information.

What is content?

Content falls into 3 major categories:

• Information
• Help
• Entertainment

Some people on the social networks are information junkies who just need to consume facts, figures and trivia.  They need a steady diet of these to keep their active minds filled with new data.

Others on the social networks have a problem that they need solved, and they look to the social community for their assistance.  They might ask where something is located, they might need to find a particular person or maybe they just need to connect with someone who has a specific talent.  In all of these cases, the distressed networkers can quickly sift through the responses to find the nugget that they were looking for to solve their problem.

Finally, the group of social networkers who are looking to be entertained are looking for laughter, music and videos that keep them filled with joy!  So if you are a provider of entertainment value, you are going to build a large following by being entertaining.

With that said, your presence on the social networks should give people a sense that they know you.  If you are using my favorite social network, Twitter, you might be telling people who you met at the latest seminar, or how you and your family are going to see a movie.  While those seem like insignificant things to talk about, they are defining you to the outside world.

Being yourself is what draws people into your circle.  If you try to be someone you aren’t eventually the facade will come off when people are around you and you will lose them.  Much better to be yourself all the time and only attract those that like you for being you.

So when you update people on Twitter, you are giving them a slice of your day, make it count by giving your slant on the topic. Say you are ready to try out the new restaurant in town, make it an event!

“I took a chance on the new Asian Restaurant in town and was rewarded with great service!”

This tells people what you did while providing information to the info junkies.  The fact that you took a chance tells people that you usually do not go to new restaurants.  People who are used to staying within their established routines will look at you as a daring adventurer and may actually venture out on your recommendation.

If you just say, “I had Pork LoMein For Dinner.” You aren’t telling anyone much, and probably irritated a bunch of people with growling stomachs!  Think of each of your updates as a part of your autobiography.  You are writing each sentence of it with the updates you choose to post!

If all you want the world to remember about you is that you ate Pork LoMein, you will blend into the scenery with all the other meal updates the world has to offer.

Remember that your followers, friends or acquaintences in the social networks around the world have more than just you to read about.  Make each update count toward them developing a relationship with you that means something.  While you are reading this, your next million dollar partner or client could be looking over your tweet-stream deciding whether or not they want to press the “follow” button on your profile right now.

Make your story be the one which makes them anticipate each chapter daily.  Once you start to examine what you find is important to you, your updates will show it… The life you change may be your own as you write your story one update at a time!

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… C: wait… SD: wait…

I get this question from local businesses and potential clients all the time.  After I take the time to explain the benefits of Social Media to them, they are awe struck!

Well I should say most of them are.  There are a few, a very small few, who only look at measurable results and measure things in ROI (Return on Investment).  The problem is, you can’t put a value on a conversation or a contact.  I like what Jason Falls had to say about it:

“The problem with trying to determine ROI for social media is you are trying to put numeric quantities around human interactions and conversations, which are not quantifiable.”

If this is true, then how can I bring a budget to the board, or to the CEO, or to the President?

Let’s start by asking some questions of your business as it is now:

1.  Is your business currently involved in conversations about your product or industry?

2.  What are people saying about your business, on the Social Media Landscape, vs your competitors?

3.  Does your business maintain a dialog with it’s clients?

4.  Do people know, like, and trust your business and employees?

1.  Lets look at what some of the companies who are embracing Social Media are doing.  Let’s look at Comcast.  Customers of Comcast can use the micro-blog Twitter to reach customer service.  Customers using this method of contact have seen their reported problems resolved within 24 hours!

2.  Motrin created a website which was targeted at moms.  The video at the site showed (in cartoon) a mom wearing a baby carrier and went on to say that it’s a pain and it’s time to take care of yourself with some Motrin.

However, there was a huge backlash from women all across the Social Media Landscape.  I joined the conversation on Twitter, and let me tell you, it was heated!  Women took multiple points of view on the subject but the backlash on Motrin was so great, that they removed the site that very day.
There were so many people talking about it all at once, it created a groundswell.  This registered on many of the web monitoring sites as a spike in searches and traffic to Motrin.com to see the video.  The problem is, Motrin didn’t enter the conversation.  It was more like they cowered in the corner and hid.  If they would have asked the visitors one question, things could have been a lot different.  Jeremiah Owyang had a great suggestion on his blog. He suggested that they ask the question: “What pains you?”
Something as simple as that could have changed everything.  But let’s not just look at Motrin here.  Where were Tylenol and the others in this conversation.  This was huge and yet none of them were involved in the conversation about mothers and their pain!

So are you keeping abreast of the conversations going on about your business or your industry or your targeted market?

Photo Credit: Kirsty Pargeter

3.  Just like in #1 above, maintaining a dialog with your clients is important.  What was mentioned in #1 was how customers could contact the business for support.  That’s great, but what about the company contacting its customers or clients on an ongoing basis?
Sites like Facebook allow “Fan Pages” to be built.  This allows people, who are a fan of your business or product or CEO, whatever, to say: “This is cool and I’m a fan!”
Big deal you say?  Well yes, it is a big deal.  Why?  Because you can communicate with all of your fans!  Your fan page keeps track of visitors, where they went and what they did while there.  On top of that, you can send an update to ALL of your fans.  So if you have 18,200 people who are fans of yours, you can send them a message giving them a coupon or special discount to encourage them to buy from you.
Remember though, Facebook is just one site on the Social Media Landscape.  There are thousands of other sites where YOUR potential customers and current customers are.  They are involved in conversations, maybe with each other, and could be talking about your product or service.
Creating an account on some of the sites on the Social Media Landscape is an easy thing to do.  Sending out a message to say hi to your current customers would make them more loyal.  The more loyal they are, the louder they get about how much they love your business.  These people will be your evangelists on the social networks.  All you have to do is continue to give them fuel to add to their fire and you have a great relationship.

4. Combining everything together will get people to notice you or your business.  Just by being where your potential clients hang out, will get you noticed.  By entering conversations, providing great content, and LISTENING, people will get to know your business on a more personal level.

When it comes down to it, people buy things from people.  If they know you, by interacting with you or just listening to your conversations, they may begin to like you.  If they like what you have to say then they may trust you.  When they trust you, they will buy from you.

But it’s not about the sale. – No!  It’s about the relationship you created.  Creating relationships with your customers is the key to long lasting return patronage.  Why do you go to the same hair stylist?  Why do you continue to go to the same store?  It’s because of the people.

I personally drive 30 minutes to shop at Best Buy.  I have a Best Buy 10 min from my house, but the customer service is better at the one farther away.  It is because people buy things from people.

This holds true no matter where the sale takes place.  With Social Media, you are able to reach people on a more personal level.  It’s not just about having a site anymore.  It’s about having a relationship.  When you have that, you will see amazing results.

So why should YOU care about Social Media? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

In this interview with Facebook Marketing stud, Deontee Gordon, we cover a few strategies that you can start implementing today.

The thing I loved most about this interview was the tip about Facebook “Events.”  I don’t hear a lot of people talking about Events within Facebook so I’m glad Deontee shed some light on this for us.

Enjoy this 60 minute interview that I did on my weekly show, SuccessfoolTV.

Comment & let us know what you liked best!

Stay tuned for more news & insights on what’s REALLY going on in Social Media Marketing!