The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools, and Strategies for Business Success, Second Edition

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This project was the largest and most passionate undertaking of my career, and using social media to create a book on social media was by far the most enlightening.

When I first created the plan to write a book on social media, I thought it was going to be another typical business book: 250 pages, 20-plus chapters, 50,000 words, the typical business book formula.

Then I realized that it was not only in my best interest to use social media, but also in a way, that I should use social media to create this book. I knew that if I asked the business community what they wanted in a book and wrote it that way, the book would be successful and it was. What I didn't know at the time was the magnitude of the journey I was about to undertake.

We brought the initial concept of the book on social media to more than 1,000 people. They were mostly professionals with annual incomes over $100,000; most had college degrees, from associates up to PhDs.

Of more than 1,000 surveyed, 66.4 percent said that they could not define what social media was, while 99.1 percent said that they knew social media would have a significant effect on them and their businesses. Let me restate this: Two-thirds of these professionals didn't know what it was, but nearly 100 percent knew it was going to affect them. This is whom this book is dedicated to.

By using user-generated content and feedback, I also learned that the business community didn't want just another vertical business book; they wanted something ...