Two Free e-​​Books on Social Media

Two more down­load­able social media guides that caught my eye over the last couple of weeks.

UGC and The Law

Published by mod­er­a­tion company Tempero, this guide helps site owners get to grips with how their social media ventures might fall foul of the law and how to avoid that hap­pening. Relying on former audience members to generate your site’s content for free sounds like a jolly good wheeze, but the con­sequences of using non-​​contracted employees as your writers might be a spell in the slammer if you aren’t careful. And it doesn’t matter how big you are or where your company’s headquar­ters are located, as Google dis­covered recently. The most common problem is copy­right viol­a­tion, of course, but defam­a­tion, dis­crim­in­a­tion, incite­ment to bad things, privacy viol­a­tions, aiding and abetting and obscenity are all per­fectly possible. Most of the time common sense should be a good guide: if it is illegal offline, then it’s illegal online too; if someone asks you to take some­thing down and gives a good reason, then you should take action or seek advice; a site owner can not rely upon the defence of being a ‘mere conduit’. Nonetheless, pretty-​​much anyone will discover things here that will open their eyes and lead to a spot more caution.

At 48-​​pages, this is quite a com­pre­hensive overview. However, like a lot of ‘free’ legal advice, the guide tells you just enough to persuade you that you probably need a lawyer. ;-)

The Definitive Guide to B2B Social Media

The second guide comes from US mar­keting firm Marketo and gives a good overview of how B2B com­panies can use social media. These media are still somewhat under-​​exploited in the B2B space with the likes of Twitter and Facebook often viewed as wholly consumer-​​facing vehicles. The guide has a workbook format with exer­cises to do and model examples to help show best practise. It encom­passes quick guides to par­tic­ular networks, but the main meat of the book is designing strategies to help guide what content to create, how to measure it and how one might justify the neces­sary invest­ment. Also 48-​​pages long. (Hat-​​tip to my friends at Velocity for their design and sub-​​editing work).

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