During my down time over the holiday season, I decided to finally sit down and read The Whuffie Factor written by Tara Hunt. Tara is a Canadian social media guru who was listed as one of the most influential women in technology in 2009 by Fast Company magazine and is CEO & co-founder of the Canadian social shopping start-up Shwowp. Tara’s book provides a lot of insight on ways to utilize the power of social networks to build up a company’s “whuffie” which is also known as “social capital” – the currency of the digital world. Tara shares stories about companies who have successfully built up their “whuffie” and also provides cautionary tales of companies who have failed in the social media space and have had to climb their way back up to restore their social capital. The same rules apply for building up one’s own personal “whuffie” or “social capital”. I really enjoyed reading The Whuffie Factor – it’s a great book for someone (like myself) who is trying to better understand the social media space.
As I was reading Tara’s book, I recalled a number of other notable Canadian authors in the past year or two who have written about the power of social media and how to harness community-building to grow your business. I thought I’d share a reading list to promote all of these Canadian gurus and hopefully discover more Canadian authors through feedback from others who might stumble upon this blog.
Here is my Canadian social media guru book reading list to date:
- The Whuffie Factor by Tara Hunt
- Power Friending by Amber McArthur
- Guerilla Social Media Marketing by Jay Levinson and Shane Gibson
- Wikibrands by Sean Moffitt and Mike Dover
- Six Pixels of Separation by Mitch Joel
Please share other notable books on social media written by Canadian authors to add to the list. Go Canada!