Book Report: Citizen Marketers

Citizen Marketers, When People Are the Message
Ben McConnel & Jackie Huba

The authors of this book have pinpointed an exact date of when they think Web 2.0 actually started. November 2004. That's the month a couple of things happened that turned seemingly ordinary folk into marketing powerhouses with the same reach and effectiveness of a Fortune 500 company.

"November 2004, that the very idea of media itself was evolving into a two-way, three-way and multiple-way ecosystem of gossip, ideas, news and collaboration. Everyday people could be publishers and broadcasters and audience members."

Citizen Marketers was written to explain the phenomena of how the availability of web 2.0 tools is motivating people to become evangelists, sales people, customer service reps, public relations advisers and more to companies that don't even have them on the payroll and in some cases, don't even know they exist. Just reading the introduction is a fascinating portrayal of examples in social media. If you don't do anything else, pick up a copy of the book and read page 10 of the introduction. It gives a very succinct definition of how blogs, podasts, photo/video sharing sites and other social media tools are being used as the "new, new media".

This book is good primer for any agent or broker that wants to have a better understanding of the power of social media and new media marketing tools. I highly recommend it. Click here to visit the Citizen Marketer blog. Next book report, Search, by John Battelle, How Google and its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture.


Previous Book Reports:
The Power of Place
The Long Tail
An Army of Davids
Mavericks At Work
Waiting For Your Cat to Bark?