RonAmok!

Last year I founded OC New Media, LLC to help executives incorporate New and Social Media technologies into their corporate communications strategies. I’ve spoken with hundreds of execs during the past seventeen months and have learned that although most realize that New/Social Media is initiating a business communications revolution, they just don’t know where to start their education on the topic.  As a result of these conversations, I wrote Read This First: The Executive’s Guide to New Media–From Blogs to Social Networks.

The book offers a step-by-step approach for making important business decisions with regards to technology adoption. It teaches managers how to measure and evaluate the effectiveness of their New/Social media endeavors. And lastly, it outlines the organizational changes that upper management must consider before blindly presuming that these technologies must reside within the staid confines of marketing or public relations.

With the ink-and-paper version of Read This First soon to be released, I’m excited to share the fruits of my labor by releasing the audio book for free. My hope is that if you like what you hear, you just might decide to purchase one (or ten!) copies of the physical version when it’s available in late November 2009.

The entire book was recorded a few weeks ago and I’m in the process of editing those audio files. My goal is to complete one chapter per week for the next eleven weeks until I’m done.

So, without further ado, I present to you: Chapter 1: The Economics of Influence.

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Note: The chapter is 26 minutes long.

If you’d prefer to download the file, please right-click on the following link to save it to your computer:

Read This First: Chapter 1: The Economics of Influence

Lastly, if you’d prefer to subscribe to the podcast, you may do so through the following iTunes or RSS Feed buttons:

Feel free to share this audio book with anyone who is trying to make business sense out of New/Social Media. For example, do you have a boss or a client that you’ve been trying to convince to use New Media tools? Perhaps Read This First will help you make your case:-)

I’ve established both the Twitter hashtag #ReadThisFirst, and the bit.ly URL http://bit.ly/ReadFirst for your convenience. Please feel free to use them liberally:-)

Tags: Read This First Business Book: New Media Social Media Executive’s Guide Executive Ron Ploof ronamok audio book free podcast

In 2007, while leading a Fortune 1000 company’s charge into the exciting/scary world of New/Social Media, I devoured books that taught me about the corporate use of New Media:

• Levine, Locke, Searls, and David Weinberger’s seminal The Cluetrain Manifesto, predicting that the power of communication would reside in the hands of the consumer
• David Meerman Scott’s, The New Rules of Marketing and PR, that taught how to harness the power of online communications,
• Paul Gillin’s The New Influencers, that taught about a new breed of online content creator, who has as much (if not more!) influence on our brands as we do
• Debbie Weil’s The Corporate Blogging Book, that taught the importance and role of the company blog.

But as I attempted to incorporate the ideas contained in these great books, I encountered something that none of them prepared me for–huge internal resistance to their innovative ideas. For example, marketing wasn’t willing to release control of corporate messaging; PR fretted over rogue bloggers; and gatekeepers such as the “Web Team” and Information Technology (IT) were terrified by opening a technical Pandora’s box–the fact that anyone within the organization could post text, audio, or video onto the corporate website…without going through them!

The experience did two things for me:

1) taught your New Media Evangelist much about the political ramifications of introducing New Media channels to those wedded to Old Corporate Communications thinking

2) provided the inspiration to share the lessons that I’ve learned.

I’m happy to announce that the fruits of my labor are nearly complete. Last week, I got the news that my book, Read This First: The Executive’s Guide to New Media–from blogs to social networks has gone into production.

• If you are an executive looking to adopt New Media technologies into your corporate communications strategies, I suggest that you Read This First.
• If you are a Social Media consultant who’d like to help your prospects understand the fundamental foundation by which to build their Social Media strategies upon, I highly recommend that you have them Read This First.

I don’t have an exact publishing date yet, but I do know that it will be available in October of this year. Please subscribe to this blog for updates as we get closer.

Tags: Read This First New Media Evangelist Traditionals Debbie Weil Paul Gillin David Meerman Scott Cluetrain Ron Ploof