Chris Heuer's Insytes

Please take this survey www.contentconnections.com/socialmedia2007 to help me with my book – keep reading to find out why…
There is a lot going on these days and a lot of different books being written about what’s happening, with an apparent emphasis on social media, communities and user generated content. As the founder of Social Media Club, it should be obvious that I am writing a book focused on the rise and importance of social media – to a large extent, I am writing that book, but as Doc Searls says, there is something of greater significance happening beneath the meme.
While I am still torn on the title of my book, it is now being envisioned as “The Social Media Playbook.” The goal for me is to help people understand the era we are now entering and enable professionals to maximize the effectiveness of their participation on behalf of the organizations they represent. For me, this is best seen through the framework of Look, Listen, Join, Lead. In that it is as much art as it is science though, the book will be peppered with PURPOSE – or rather, illustrating the answer to WHY through metaphor and real world stories.  Ultimately, social media is the spark that has ignited the movement towards the HUMANIZATION OF THE ENTERPRISE, which I will illuminate better over the coming weeks.
There is quite a bit to get done in the next 3 months, which is not a lot of time for 60,000 words – especially considering the problems I have with Repetitive Stress Injury, but it will be done. I will be revealing more details of the book very soon (within the week) along with my plans for leveraging the best practices of “social publishing” I have been researching, but I am torn on a few decisions we need to make, so would love to hear what you think is the most effective way to leverage social media in creating the book here in the comments, or even call me 408.834.0884
More urgently though, I am participating in a survey put together by David Brake of Content Connection together with entrepreneur extraordinaire Lon Safko to determine what you really know about Social Media and what you would like to understand more deeply. Receiving the gift of your time to take the survey, and better still, to pass it forward to others, would be a huge help in getting the right information into the book. There are a few iPod nano’s being given away as prizes, your responses/personal information will be kept private and your participation will be recognized appropriately.

Please take the survey here www.contentconnections.com/socialmedia2007. Please note that Lon is a friend, but not a co-author of my book – he is writing his own book on the subject from a different angle. It is an interesting situation, to be collaborating in this way on market research, but to essentially be competing for attention in the market once the books are published – I think of it as an experiment in co-creation and co-opetition, which in and of itself makes for an interesting case study…  Then again, this is just a more explicit expression of support similar to what I have been giving to others such as Paul Gillen, Geoff Livingston, David Meerman Scott, Shel Israel/Robert Scoble, David Weinbergber and Debie Weil.  I expect I will be doing the same with Charlene Li and Tara Hunt’s upcoming books – each of whom has a valuable perspective to be considered that helps us all move along in the right direction, which is my ultimate goal – to help make the world a better place by sharing what we know.
More to come very soon…