Social Media is Bullshit So there’s this, written...

Social Media is Bullshit

So there’s this, written by BJ Mendelson and published by St. Martins Press.

The premise of the book is that social media friends and followers “mean nothing to you and your business without old-fashioned, real-world connections.” Or, as the book site would have it:

We live in a world where it’s far easier to make money telling people how to get rich using the Internet than it is to actually get rich using it.

Which, I guess, would be fine if getting rich was the only metric one used for measuring their social media efforts.

Otherwise, I haven’t heard anyone ever say that real-world connections are no longer needed. Just the opposite, that our digital social lives help expand our ability to make real world connections.

Anyway, I’ll be adding this to my reading list. I assume the argument is more sophisticated than little blurbs would have it. Besides, it’s always good to hear from a contrarian, even one who leverages his 770,000 Twitter followers to write a book and throw a snarky title on it. Hat tip to the marketing department on that one.

Meantime, here’s an interview with him and Andrew Keen, another Internet contrarian, via Techcrunch. And here’s a free chapter from the book. — Michael

Bonus: Trying to figure out your social media ROI? There’s a conference in New York for that.