Afterword

A return to the premise of the book: that social marketing is about building relationships online, making "friends" of people who support your cause or buy your product as a way to increase customer loyalty to the level of customer evangelism.

To this end, the author provides three key lessons:

• Be Bold - In the social Web, just as in life, the timid and quiet remain unknown and unnoticed. You need to stand out, even if it means taking a risk.
• Be Attentive - The social media is a conversational environment, not a broadcast channel. You can learn a great deal by listening
• Be Yourself - People respond to others who are honest and authentic, and can easily sniff out the deceptive and the disingenuous

While social media continues to evolve and change, these three tenets, as well as some of the underling principles discussed in the book, will remain constant and applicable to whatever form it takes in the future.

(EN: revisiting my own remarks at the onset, this author has done a fair job in presenting the topic: social media as a form of public relations work, with a goal of creating a positive image of a company and its brands and reacting to the negative information that may exist or arise in the online medium. Even so, I'm still on the fence as to whether the benefit is worth the cost, and highly suspicious that companies can refrain from poisoning the medium.)