Now thanks to the guys and girls at Amazon I am able to manage my recommended readings from amazon and share it with you from here. I will continually update this list with new books about social media, social business and marketing. Hopefully it helps you find new books that will help you come to grips with with this ever changing topic.

You will also be able to click the book and buy it straight from Amazon in paperback or kindle versions.

So here’s my latest version of my recommended reading list. Enjoy!

I recently had the chance to look into Bizcommunity’s latest upgrade to their website and have been suitably impressed. Bizcommunity has built a strong personal interaction element into the new website that has opened the door to turning Bizcommunity from an industry news website to a networking platform.

Inviting people to participate with personal profiles

Bizcommunity has opened the invitation for people to participate in the network by allowing people to add personal profiles in much the same way as Facebook. People can also add their Twitter Profile to their profile which allows a stream of updates in much the same way as Linkedin used to do.

Managing status updates

Bizcommunity allows you to follow users like on Twitter and updates your status accordingly. Although they allow you to post from Bizcommunity to Twitter it seems that they have not allowed the reverse to happen yet. This is one downside that I see in the new website.

What does Bizcommunity Understand?

It is evident by the business shift that Bizcommunity is making that they have understood that Social Technology needs to be adopted into their business model in order to survive in the New World of Work.

Industry News websites like Bizcommunity are great because they add credibility to the industry but they risk losing their grip on being the number one resource to connect with your industry, due to the number of industry experts with personal blogs and twitter accounts.

By building a social networking element to the website Bizcommunity is now able to convert its “reading audience” into a “networking audience” which opens up greater engagement opportunities and better business opportunities for its audience. Increasing the chance of Bizcommunity becoming a first stop for many marketing professionals online.

Well done to the Bizcommunity Team!

Great User Experience

The app probably has the most beautiful interface I have seen in a while. It uses the space of the iPhone screen very well and gives as much as possible to the content. The menu is a small button to the top left of the screen. This menu then allows you to move through the content of the app by overlaying the menu on the content. Very slick.

Supersport iPhone Application

The image on the right explains it a bit better.

The only problem is that it is not very clear that this little button opens up a whole new world of fixtures, logs, news and all the fine details of your favourite sport. A friend I met the other day was raving to me about the app and did not even know about the extended menu’ button.

Great Content

The content is fantastic. The makers of this app understand their audience well and have provided very detailed info on all the relevant sports. This includes Live Results that stream the scores of games that are currently being played. I cannot fault the design of this content in any way.

No Social Media Links?

Here is the biggest opportunity missed. In fact I find it hard to believe that someone can create an app with out the ability to post the articles all over twitter and Facebook. App like this are being used by people who have a strong inclination to using social media and they would most likely become the foundation point of making your content go viral. Especially content this great!

My advice to Supersport?

1. Make the purpose of the menu button more apparant
2. Link to social media PLEASE!!!

Other than those two small elements the Supersport app has a great user experience that is packed full of the content you are looking for in sport and is well worth it.

Congratulations Supersport!

I took a few screenshots for you to look at!

About Dan Zarella

Dan has writ­ten exten­sively about the sci­ence of viral mar­ket­ing, memet­ics and social com­mu­ni­ca­tions on his own blog and for a vari­ety of pop­u­lar indus­try blogs, includ­ing Mash­able, Copy­Blog­ger, Read­WriteWeb, Pla­gia­rism Today, ProBlog­ger, Social Desire, Cen­ter­Net­works, Now­sourc­ing, and SEOScoop.

He has been fea­tured in The Twit­ter Book, Fast Com­pany, The Finan­cial Times, AdAge, NYPost, The Boston Globe, Forbes, Wired, The Wall Street Jour­nal, Mash­able and TechCrunch. He was recently awarded Shorty and Semmy awards for social media & viral marketing.

He has spo­ken at Pub­Con, Search Engine Strate­gies, Iowatas­mic, Con­ver­gence ’09, 140 The Twit­ter Con­fer­ence, The Cool Twit­ter Con­fer­ence, Word­Camp Mid Atlantic, Social Media Camp, Inbound Mar­ket­ing Boot­camp, and The Texas Domains and Devel­op­ers Con­fer­ence, and he cur­rently works as mar­ket­ing prod­uct owner at Hub­Spot.

Why I reccommend this book

I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in social media marketing. This is why:

1. It does not take long to read
2. It defines social media perfectly and covers each of the top social networks (incl. Digg, Delicious, YouTube, Slideshare,Twitter and Facebook)
3. Dan even tells us how we should approach each social medium to get the most from them

I found the book to be very insightful and comprehensive. It would be particularly useful to someone who is getting into social media to profile themselves or their business.

Buy The Social Media Marketing Book from Kalahari.net

“The book will teach readers which platforms are the right ones 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 educated decisions about which tactics to pursue and this book aims to do just that.” – Dan Zarella