Social Media De-mazed

“Social bookmarking”, “social media”, “Web 2.0″, “social networking”, “blogging”, “podcasting”, “blogosphere”…

How are non-IT business people, who just want to know what’s happening online and what that has to do with their business, to get a grasp of it all?

Well, for a start they could download a copy of the complimentary introductory guide,  Social Media, prepared by  communication professionals Trevor Cook and Lee Hopkins.

It’s a deceptively easy read, with valuable content, clear explanations of “Web 2.0″ words and concepts, and plenty of links to examples and resources.

My only niggle was that there were no page numbers in the version I downloaded. I’m not crazy about reading PDF documents online, so it was a nuisance to have to sort all the pages and get them in order. I’ve emailed Trevor about this, so hopefully there will be page numbers soon, for the benefit of people who, like me, prefer to print out longer documents and read them offline.

Having been asked at a recent presentation on blogging for more

Australian examples of business blogging, I was very pleased to find

that there are plenty of Aussie links to help me in providing local

illustrations of the general principles Trevor and Lee explain so

clearly and succinctly.

There is also a helpful list of benefits, which Trevor and Lee have personally experienced from blogging for their businesses:

• building profile
• revealing expertise
• networking
• generating business