In this podcast, Lon Safko, the author of The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools, and Strategies for Business Success, talks about the social media choices companies wrestle with both for internal and external use, as well as social media trends.
Renaissance man best describes Lon Safko. He is an author, inventor, entrepreneur, motivational speaker, and executive coach. He created the first computer to save a human life. The Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. houses that computer, 17 of Safko’s other inventions, and his more than 30,000 papers. Safko’s latest endeavor is social media. In fact, he co-authored The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools, and Strategies for Business Success. This 844-page tome became the largest and most comprehensive publishing effort in John Wiley & Sons’ 202 year history.
Safko says The Social Media Bible came about because the business community wanted something more comprehensive than just another vertical business book. He says, “When we asked the business community what they wanted – they told us ‘a resource that explains all of this stuff that we've been hearing about, yeah, what are people talking about with their blogs and tweets anyway?’ They just wanted to be part of the conversation, and have someone explain it in their terms.”
Obviously with a topic as constantly moving as social media, no single person could be the expert on it all. Safko and his co-author David K. Brake determined the best way to become the definitive voice is to let others speak. Safko says, “We spent the better part of a year researching, interviewing, connecting and having conversations with 100 of experts from all aspects of the social media movement. We began the task of aggregating and editing thousands of blog posts, vlogs, podcasts, wikis, emails, interviews, presentations, and more – all with permission of course – and all from real life residents of this realm we call social media.” As a result, the book offers vignettes and essays from luminaries such as Biz Stone, co-founder of www.twitter.com; Vinton Cerf, father of the Internet and futurist; and Peter Booth Wiley, chairman of the board of John Wiley & Sons.
In this podcast, Safko talks about the social media choices companies wrestle with both for internal and external use, and social media trends, such as the friendly collision between customer relationship management and social media , and applications for mobile phones.
Bio
As an inventor, Lon Safko has created numerous hardware and software solutions for the physically challenged, developed the first CAD software for civil engineers, designed the archetypes for the Apple Newton & Microsoft’s Bob Operating Systems He created those handy little Tool-Tips help-balloon pop-ups! He even represented the Smithsonian at its annual conference called The American Inventor.
He has received numerous awards for his creativity, including The Westinghouse’s Entrepreneur of the Year, Arizona Innovation Network’s Innovator of the Year, along with other awards. Publications, such as Popular Sciences and Entrepreneur Magazine, have featured Safko in feature articles.
He has founded eight companies including Paper Models, Inc., which uses downloadable three-dimensional models in business advertising, promotions, and education.
Safko has either written or co-authored five books about how to think creatively. He does about 100 public speaking appearances a year, mostly for company training sessions. Some of his clients have included First American Title Insurance, Teledyne, and the United States Postal Service. Meanwhile, he privately coaches Fortune 500 companies on harnessing innovative thinking to create higher productivity and profits.
Resources
The 10 Commandments of Social Media - Fast Company
Google Unleashes Web App Tidalwave - Technewsworld.com
Social Media Good for Business - Miami Herald
Production Credits
Elizabeth Ferrarini, Executive Producer
Tom Parish, Host and Audio Producer
Audio Editing by Doug Marcis
