In today’s networked world, connecting with customers has never been easier. Savvy marketing professionals know that they must engage with individuals directly on the Web, and smart businesses know that their customers can be their best friends—with benefits.

For marketers and businesses getting into the online marketing game (but with no clue about how to succeed), No Starch Press offers Friends with Benefits: A Social Media Marketing Handbook (October 2009, 304 pp, $24.95, ISBN 9781593271992). A tactical guide filled with tricks, tips, and real-world case studies, Friends with Benefits shows marketers how to increase their companies’ visibility and traffic – and win over the new online influencers. Readers learn how to create viral campaigns, craft a compelling social media pitch, and market effectively within daunting social media channels.

Readers learn from the pros. Authors Darren Barefoot and Julie Szabo have specialized in social media for years, beginning with their first blogger outreach program in 2002. Barefoot and Szabo have been using (and teaching) social media marketing full time ever since, and they know from experience that shrewdly applied alternative marketing tactics can offer great results at low cost.

“In 2009, advertising and marketing budgets are shrinking, not growing,” said author Julie Szabo. “Used effectively, marketing in channels like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter can compensate for that reduced budget.”

Friends with Benefits teaches readers how to:

• Get started with the who, what, where, why, and when of social media marketing
• Find potential customers and join their conversation
• Tweak their websites to support their social media marketing campaigns
• Promote their products or brand and manage the toughest negative feedback
• Track marketing campaigns, monitor discussions, and measure success
• Work with sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, MySpace, Digg, and StumbleUpon, and make sense of the new ones that pop up daily

Table of contents overview :

Chapter 1: What is Social Media?
Chapter 2: Getting Social Media Ready
Chapter 3: Flagging a Ride: Finding the Right Bloggers and Communities
Chapter 4: Netiquette: Miss Manners for the Web
Chapter 5: Stick Out Your Thumb: Devising Your Pitch
Chapter 6: Measuring Success: How to Monitor the Web
Chapter 7: Is Social Media Marketing Risky Business?
Chapter 8: Damage Control in the Digital Age
Chapter 9: Does MySpace Still Matter?
Chapter 10: Understanding Facebook
Chapter 11: Video Marketing with YouTube and Other Video Sharing Sites
Chapter 12: The Twitter Revolution
Chapter 13: A Social Media Grab-Bag: Social News, Social Bookmarking, Wikipedia, Virtual Worlds, and Private Social Networks
Chapter 14: A Look Ahead

The rules of marketing have changed. With viral videos racking up millions of views and Twitter mavens influencing tens of thousands of their friends, social media marketing is unquestionably here. The expert authors of Friends with Benefits teach readers how to market effectively inside intimidating social media channels, where honesty and connections are far more important than the size of the marketing budget—and real results are just a few clicks away.

About the Author : Darren Barefoot (@dbarefoot) and Julie Szabo (@julieszabo) have run social media marketing campaigns for national retailers like Best Buy, Future Shop, and Brother International. They’ve been quoted as experts on social media on the CBC and BBC, and in Wired magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and dozens of other magazines, TV, and radio programs. Founders of Northern Voice, Canada’s social media conference, they regularly speak around North America on social media, marketing, and emerging technology. Barefoot runs a popular blog about social media marketing (among other things) at DarrenBarefoot.com.