Digital marketing reading list

I recently presented at a conference. Once of the questions was: Can you suggest a list of books to read to get better at social media? It was a good questions, and, of course, I gave a crappy answer. But this got me thinking. Here is the result:

1. To learn social media is to practice social media. Social media is the way we communicate by sharing. It changes, it evolves, it happens now. So the best way to learn it is to do it.
2. It’s no longer about books (books take time to be published), it’s about faster, up to date knowledge that’s developed through the community members sharing information. So, it becomes a question of NOT “What book to read?” BUT “Who to follow?”.

Instead of a list of books, here’s a list of select people I follow and listen to. Actually most of the have written books on the subject. Unfortunately, by the time most of those books came out, the online community has already evolved beyond the book’s contents in many cases.

• Guy Kawasaki, GuyKawasaki.com
• Jeremiah Owyang, Web-Strategist.com
• Charlene Li,  Groundswell Blog
• Chris Brogan, ChrisBrogan.com
• David Armano, Logic+Emotion
• Seth Godin, Seth Godin’s Blog

Here’s a list of more people I follow on Twitter. And I’m sure I’m missing some of the brilliant modern minds, so feel free to suggest more people to the list above. Who are YOUR gurus?

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