Earlier this week I caught up with Dan Zarrella, a social, search, and viral mar­ket­ing sci­en­tist and author of the O’Reilly media book “The Social Media Mar­ket­ing Book”. During our chat Dan gave me some insight into his latest social media book, check out our chat below:

[Manoj]: There is a lot of consistency throughout the book's chapters such as: History, Protocols and Takeaways - tell us what readers will takeaway from this?

[Dan Zarrella]: I wanted to give readers some sense of the historical context of each of the platforms I was teaching them about. I also wanted to talk about each medium in general terms, hence the "protocol" sections. I did this because I believe that microblogging will be around five years from now, but Twitter might not be. The takeaways were designed to be actionable pieces of advice that readers could act on as soon as they read each chapter.


[Manoj]: What are some of the best ways people can measure the performance of Social Media?

[Dan Zarrella]: In the book I detail on-page and off-page metrics, so people can measure how many followers or replies they have on Twitter, how many fans on Facebook or they can measure how many subscribers they have on their blog, or how many seconds the average visitor to their site spends there.


[Manoj]: How do you define ROI for Social Media?

[Dan Zarrella]: I think social media can be used for direct response, but that is tricky and can take some time. So before actual sales or leads are generate from something like Twitter, you can measure how many visitors each social media channel is driving to your site and how engaged each visitor is with your brand. In this way ROI can be either actual sales numbers or brand awareness metrics.


[Manoj]: Chapter 9 is dedicated to Virtual Worlds, what are some ways users can leverage them for their Social Media Strategies

[Dan Zarrella]: Virtual world tend to be expensive in terms of time and effort allocations needed to be successful, and they offer small potential audiences than many other platforms do, but they have the ability to present visitors with very immersive and engaging experiences that create deeper brand connections.


[Manoj]: How does this book help you choose the right tactics and technologies for an individual business?

[Dan Zarrella]: The book will teach readers which platforms are the right one for their brand and which aren't based on the culture and demographics of each technology as well as the investment required to engage each. Marketers need to understand all the options available to them before they can begin to make educate decisions about which tactics to pursue and this book aims to do just that.

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