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.