Sparxoo is a business blog that inspires breakthrough by tomorrow’s leaders. We are a strategy consulting firm with a pulse on marketing, branding, and development.
This month, the Sparxoo team read Chris Brogan and Julien Smith’s Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust. As top social media specialists themselves, Brogan and Smith have a lot of knowledge to share, and did not hold anything back. We want to share some key points and takeaways, and encourage you to read it, too.
Total Rating
5 out of 5
Who Should Read this Book
If you’re interested in furthering your brand or reputation – business or personal – through social media, Trust Agents is something you’ll want to read right away. No matter if you’re a brand new user, or have been on the Web for years, Brogan and Smith will help give you new insight into the latest trends and advancements in the realm of social media. They explain concepts simply, but well enough to give new users an easy-to-use guide, and advanced users a brush-up on new ways to connect with users and customers.
What This Book is About
Trust Agents shows readers how to use social networking tools to built the best networks possible, using the tips and tools the authors received and used themselves. In turn, they show you can use these networks to gain influence, and make a positive impact on your business, or your personal brand. They also provide examples of others who have built trust in their own ways, whether it was going undercover in the Mafia, or beating a popular video game. The authors are clear to point out that trust isn’t built overnight, and that it takes a lot of work on the user’s end to build that trust among their networks.
Why the Book is Important
In business, trust is everything. The example of Tylenol’s cyanide debacle is popular in PR circles because it’s a clear example of how the company was able to maintain trust with its customers by doing the right thing. With the recent FTC crackdown on bloggers, online trust is more important than ever. Brogan and Smith go in-depth about the do’s and don’ts of using social media, highlighting common mistakes that people make that can hurt their reputation and credibility rather than help. The bottom line – everything is moving to the digital space, and knowing how to use it now will pay off in the end.
Why the Book is Unique
Trust Agents was a long awaited release, and quickly became a New York Times Bestseller. Chris Brogan is well known to almost anyone in the social media world. His grasp of concepts and use of...
To read more about Trust Agents, go to Sparxoo, a digital marketing, branding and business development blog.
- Related Videos
- Related Articles
- Ask / Related Q&A
- Brand Marketers Embrace Social Media
- Brand Marketing-How About Branding Yourself?
- Personal Branding Marketing - A "Must Have" for Success Online - Part 1
- Personal Branding Marketing Why is it so important for online success
- Blogging-article Marketing a Winning Team!
- How Can You Choose Your Best Blogs Brand
- How To Use Your Blog to Market Your Business
- How to Create a Personality-based Brand: Marketing yourself as the Expert
2nd In A Series: Blogging For Profit-Article Marketing: The First Way To Get Traffic To Your Blog
By: Ron Lewis | 04/12/2009This is my second article on blogging for profit. In my last article, Blogging For Profit, I discussed how blogging could be used to generate a crazy income. This article is going to concentrate on taking your blog to the next level. I am going to discuss the first FREE technique to direct traffic to your blog, Article Marketing.
Blogging For Money - Blog Utilization For Online Wealth
By: Amanda Powlesland | 04/12/2009Anyone can take advantage of the online money making opportunities through the method of blogging. Anyone who has a basic knowledge of computers can do blogging for money.
Create a Unique Blog Site with Free Blog Templates
By: Mark Ferrer | 03/12/2009The main goal of bloggers is to send their message across the internet. Regardless of the nature of that message, acquiring a substantial ratio of readership is crucial for any blogging success. Yet while the content as indeed critical for any blog or website, so is the visual feature. If you're budget-constrained, however, you’ll still find great options through free blog templates. Here are some ways to find, pick and customize some.
Blogging For Profit: If Done Properly Blogging Can Create A Crazy Income
By: Ron Lewis | 03/12/2009I have blogged for the last 3 years. Blogging, if done correctly, is a rewarding and fun way to find people with like interests. It is interesting to me that people have very strong emotions about certain subjects. Blogging takes advantage of those emotions, and if done properly, can result in substantial profits.
Save Time With Automated Contents for Blogs
By: Courtney Davidson | 03/12/2009In the blogging world, having content that is of good quality and of interest will determine how successful you are. Having automated content for blogs makes a job less of a hassle. When you choose to have your blogs updated automatically there are programs for these automated blogs that can track and automatically add pertinent information to your blog for you without you ever having to sit in front of your computer and spend some time to a lot time finding information, videos and pictures.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Automatic Blog Posts
By: Courtney Davidson | 03/12/2009The evolution of blogging happened so fast that it left no time to master each version completely. To newbies in the blogging world, this change can be quite shocking. Establishing a well-read blog can be frustrating especially if one us unsure on how to deal with a newer technology. As an offspring of the advancement of blogs, automated blogs were produced.
4 Essential Blog Tools For New Bloggers
By: S McIntyre | 03/12/2009Once you have created your blog, there are essential blog tools to add to your blog to make them more user-friendly and appealing for your visitors.
How to Make Money Blogging Now?
By: donkeymailer | 03/12/2009Could you imagine making money expressions for themselves? It sounds too good to be true, but there are many people do it already. They are Internet bloggers and work either as individuals or as a company employees and attempts to build customer relationships, to improve both their market shares and their profit margins
Boxee Gathers iTunes, Hulu, Last.fm and More in New Set-Top
By: Sparxoo | 04/12/2009 | EntrepreneurshipWith the availability of devices like Tivo, DVR, and online video streaming platforms, we have access to nearly every show on television, whenever we want it. Our growing media consumption – whether it’s through TV, YouTube, iTunes, or streaming video – is no doubt growing each year, and expanding beyond the television set itself to ever more popular on-demand streaming platforms. Online video streaming will get even…
“First Click Free” Will Give Allow Publishers to Re-Enforce Pay Walls
By: Sparxoo | 03/12/2009 | Online PromotionAfter Rupert Murdoch proposed blocking his paid sites from Google (saying, search engines are “feeding off the hard-earned efforts and investments of others”), the search engine giant has made a surprising move to reach across the table and help publishers like Murdoch. In the past, Google has been criticized for thinking like engineers (for instance, the copyright infringements that made Google Books possible), not business people. They might be…
Digital Influencers Usher in a New Era in Branding
By: Sparxoo | 02/12/2009 | EntrepreneurshipBrands are taking two tough punches right now: 1) the economic downturn has continued to spur consumers to buy private label and 2) digital social influencers are taking control from brand managers. The question is not just how brands can survive, but more importantly, how can brands thrive?
Using Google to Optimize Blog Post Headlines
By: Sparxoo | 02/12/2009 | BloggingOptimizing your blog post headlines often seems like a mysterious, esoteric, black art. With data-rich online resources, optimizing blog post headlines can be simple, straightforward and actionable. Such resources, like Google, eliminate much of this mystery surrounding the issue. We will walk you through the simple steps of optimizing your blog post headlines — from how to identify your keywords and…
Optimizing Blog Post Headlines in WordPress
By: Sparxoo | 01/12/2009 | BloggingIf you were to develop a site seven or eight years ago, you would likely need at least a basic understanding of programming codes like HTML or Javascript. Such coding was a significant barrier to entry for many non-digitally savvy users. The game changed when WordPress was developed in 2003. Since its release, Wordpress has grown to an incredible...
Creating a Valuable Network of Business Relationships
By: Sparxoo | 01/12/2009 | Entrepreneurship“We all exist within this complex network of human development. Today, the human network’s reach and complexity have nearly exceeded our ability to understand what we are creating and how it affects us.” We have emerged from a period of excess and frivolity, where objects and things...
Are Connections or Followers more Important: LinkedIn or Twitter?
By: Sparxoo | 30/11/2009 | Internet MarketingIn early April 2009, we witnessed a social media milestone: Ashton Kutcher collected 1,000,000 followers on Twitter. Since then, Oprah has begun tweeting and the microblogging site has been the social network darling of the mainstream media. What does it mean to have a network on Twitter? Could Ashton Kutcher ever collect 1,000,000 connections on LinkedIn? Probably not. But why?