Platform

Michael Hyatt's Platform is, in short, a book about getting your online presence in line, and why you should care to do that.

Many people, myself included, maintain an online presence including active Facebook posting, Twitter, websites or blogs, activity on other sites of various interests, etc. In this age of information and the internet, people depend more and more on these activities not only for social interaction, but for personal recommendations of products, books, and pretty much anything else you can imagine. Less and less are we being influenced by traditional media advertising and at the same time, we are being swamped with information from every direction in all of our online activities.

This excellent and short (~250 pages) book doesn't talk in generalities like other books before it have done. It has short, direct chapters that serve in some cases to show you why you should care about a particular tool. In other cases they are essentially a “To-Do List” of how to get the most out of social media and your online presence.

Many chapters cover how to increase your social influence, how to get more out of Twitter. Why you should consider starting or maintaining your Blog and how to go about doing that. There are a number of chapters that cover what NOT to do as well as many people don't realize that side of things.

I read a lot of non-fiction and personal enrichment books and it's rare to find one packed as densely with useful information as Platform. If you are a professional of any sort, you should read this book.

A wealth of information that I will revisit several times. It can be almost too much information and can be overwhelming. I took away a couple points this reading and I'll take away a few more next time.

Having never read his blog or most of the others he mentioned, his information and resources were new to me. If you are familiar with his blog or that of other experts that he mentions, you may not find as much useful information in here. If you are just beginning in the world of social media and marketing, this book would be very helpful. This is one book that your personal experiences and goals can make or break its usefulness to you.

Platform is a good book to get you up to speed with how to blog and build an online presence. Most of what's here is very basic, with occasional insights that make reading it worth it to people who have been around a bit. It's not so much that there is any major aha moment, but there are some tips on how to determine post length, handle guest posts, post frequency, post title. How to get started on Twitter and maybe even get a few followers. How to keep your personal brand coherent across the various social media sites. etc.

I should say that I started this expecting a book on how to build a product that becomes a platform. Clearly that is not what this book is about. If someone has a recommendation for a book about building software platforms, I'd love to hear about it.

WONDERFUL book full of so many resources! Would suggest to anyone starting their own business.