I subscribe to over 350 blog feeds. These are my window on the world for the news of the day and the current leading edge thinking on social media, public relations, marketing and technology.

This daily reading gives me bite sized chunks of information. But I still turn to books for the broader context and depth that only a longer form study of a topic can provide.

I’ve read some great books. And I’ve read some not-so-good books. To help you make the best of your reading time, here are my recommendations for your social media bookshelf.

Top Shelf

The Cluetrain Manifesto

This book was ahead of its time. It’s authors, Christopher Locke, Rick Levine, Doc Searles and David Weinberger, laid out the vision for the Read/Write Web at a time when the ability to code html was essential for anyone wanting to enter the conversation. I would recommend this as a primary resource for anyone wanting to understand the spirit of social media. And if you read it, you’ll be able to participate in a conversation when someone is referred to as “clueful.”

Naked Conversations

Shel Israel and Robert Scoble‘s book celebrated and documented the popularization of blogging as a vehicle for online conversations among people with shared interests. The book captured the spirit of the blogosphere and lays out the essentials of good blogging. Transparency, authenticity, authority. The examples in this book are classics (e.g. Kryptonite locks, the English Tailor). The principles they illustrate are timeless.

The Long Tail

This book started as an article by Wired Magazine‘s Editor in Chief, Chris Anderson. Anderson explores the notion that the unlimited storage and global reach of the Internet make it possible for businesses to be built on a different model than the hit-driven model of the Hollywood studios and old line music labels. The Long Tail suggests that online businesses based on selling small quantities of a large number of products (witness iTunes, Amazon) can be just as lucrative as the blockbuster-driven businesses that are dependent upon massive sales of just a few titles. The same new economies apply to ideas as well as products. This realization comforts bloggers who set out to write about niches that will never have mass appeal, but will find a specialized audience.

The World is Flat

Thomas Friedman explores the potential for the ubiquitous Internet to transcend geography and transform the global economy. My children are no longer in competition with the kids in their school or city. They now can look forward to a life in which they compete and share with people on the other side of the globe. Sweeping changes for North Americans and Europeans who have taken for granted an economic order that emerged in the mid-fifties.

Wikinomics

Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams bundle up several themes from The World is Flat, Naked Conversations and Cluetrain and demonstrate how they are rippling through corporations. They illustrate how savvy organizations are opening themselves to outside ideas and incorporating notions such as peer creation and open source in order to accelerate innovation and increase their competitiveness.

Everything is Miscellaneous

Cluetrain co-author David Weinberger makes a second appearance on my bookshelf with this exploration of a new way of organizing information that has been made possible by the combination of digitization of information with powerful search engines. Weinberger points out that tradtional organizing schemes such as the Dewey Decimal System are rooted in the physical world’s requirement that each object must be in only one place. The place assigned to each object or piece of information reflects the social and cultural perspective of the schema’s author. Meaning and context are shaped and limited by decisions taken by that author. Digitization and search engines instead enable individuals and groups of individuals to assign meaning and order to information as we need it. The same information can have different meaning for different people depending on their context and reference points. This gives rise to tools like del.icio.us and the concept of folksonomies. Individuals sorting, categorizing and sharing information in multiple ways as they need it. A powerful concept.

The New Rules of Marketing and PR

David Meerman Scott has written my current favourite practical book for applying social media concepts to communication and marketing. This book is chock of hands-on advice that will help online communicators transform their static sites through a focus on great content and social media fundamentals.

Second shelf down

Other great reads that occupy space on my social media bookshelf include Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point and James Surowiecki’s The Wisdom of Crowds, along with Seth Godin’s Permission Marketing. Each is a good read that provides insight into the sociology that underpins social media.

On Deck

New books about social media are published every month. My next read will be Now is Gone by Geoff Livingston. (The only problem is that it’s tough to get in Canada. Chapters doesn’t even list it and Amazon lists it as out of stock. Hnnh. Was it ever in stock?) Once I’ve read it, I’ll decide whether to add it to this list.

Update

Chris Thilk has published his own list of the books he turns to for inspiration and support. His list reminded me of Joseph Jaffe’s Life After the 30 Second Spot. I also keep this one on my top shelf.

Geoff Livingston, author of Now is Gone, offers his own list. Guess which book is his first choice?

Andrew Careaga compiled a list of his readers’ recommendations for books which deal with the intersection of public relations and social media.
Your Turn

Do you agree with my assessment of these books? What other books are you reading that you’d recommend I add to my social media bookshelf?