I read a lot. Who doesn't these days. I read pretty much every book on social media out there (I read many other things as well - Design, Branding, Strategy, Business Innvovation, Fiction, Comic Books (re-reading Watchmen now). I periodically update my Amazon Reading List. I teach graduate school and routinely pick out the most useful books for class.
Anyhow, many of the social media books are not useful. Perhaps they are written quickly with little research or insight in order to get their authors into the speaking circuit and hopefully to more lucrative consulting careers. (If you are a great speaker with a great topic I am guessing that doing 30 speeches a year at $10K is a bit rough, and much harder to do today).
I read Tactical Transparency over the holiday break by Shel Holtz and John C. Havens. I was expecting another unoriginal speech-justifier (not due to any reputation issues, just a fatalist attitude I had at the time). What I got was a great synopsis of the significance and opportunities of social media for "business communicators" or corporate communications PR specialists.
I am not sure if there are new insights in the book beyond the umbrella proposition that "transparency" is a "critical business issue." This is certainly ground many, including Shel, have been talking about for years. But nowhere has anyone pulled the argument together so clearly and comprehensively as Tactical Transparency (here's their book site). Where Groundswell summarized again the phenomena that is social media marketing and became the replacement "textbook" for those who wanted to catch up quickly, Tactical Transparency does the same for corporate PR.
The Opportunity with Internal Communications
One of the richest parts of the book is their thinking and coverage of social media's impact and opportunity for employee relations and communications. Each of us works inside businesses comprised of a potential army of brand ambassadors or a silent population, or worse, grumbling legion of detractors. Too little attention is given to the potential of social media to unlock the potential of employees. I suspect that may be due in part to the lingering leadership of "traditional" communications experts in and around the C-suite who see employee communications as the least they can do to "control" messages.
The "One Book" for Business Communicators
Tactical Transparency is a great, catch-up guide to how social media impacts communications. If there was only one book you could read to learn (as you also apply social media to your life, of course), this is it. It is also perfect for the current generation of corporate comms PR person. As for the PR Professional of the Future you can see the ingredients I feel they will need going forward here. You can also get introduced to their boss, The Chief Marcom Customer Service Officer here.
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