The NOW Revolution: 7 Shifts to Make Your Business Faster, Smarter and More Social [Kindle Edition]

In case you've been living in a cave, Jay Baer and Amber Naslund have teamed up and published The NOW Revolution - 7 Shifts to Make Your Business Faster, Smarter, and More Social.

Their new book has been receiving rave reviews and I received a copy with the understanding that I would share my thoughts after reading it...

There is a high probability that this book will frustrate you.

Yes... frustrate you, but follow me here. Jay and Amber have decided to tackle the challenge businesses are facing to adjust to being social and not just doing social. For those of us in or around the "social" industry, we completely grasp this concept.

The NOW Revolution is organized into seven sections - the 7 shifts mentioned in the title. Each shift walks us through the process of becoming social, scalable and sustainable. There are action items, questions, summaries and plenty of additional documents linked via Microsoft Tag technology.

But, you're wondering why this book may frustrate you.

Most companies are not social.

Even the companies that do social.

Most companies have processes and organizational hierarchies that inhibit being social.

If you have a finger on the pulse of where you work... there is a good chance that reading an actionable guide of what you should or can do to infuse social into your business will lead you to the conclusion How the *$&^ am I going to make this happen?

Being a social company is not a fluffy thing. It isn't a trendy thing. It isn't creating cool content that is sharable. It is changing the entire culture of your organization and embracing the fact that there are TONS of things out of your control.

If this was an easy thing to do, we wouldn't need a book, guide, agency or consultant to help.

What will you get out of The NOW Revolution?

- Lots of ideas for things to do within the workplace
- A better understanding of scaling social
- What to look for and cultivate in employees to become more social
- How to handle real-time crises
- A more in-depth knowledge of what listening and monitoring really means
- Potentially frustrated, depressed or overwhelmed trying to make this happen

Again, I'd like to reinforce the fact that if this was easy... every company would be social. This book when read, understood and placed in the correct hands can be a catalyst to help you start the process of becoming social.

Who should read this?

- Ambitious, social savvy folks that don't mind overcoming adversity
- Executives who don't want to be years behind the curve (hint: you're already a few behind)
- Agencies and consultants that are tasked with improving or creating social strategies and business units

This book isn't a get rich quick scheme. It isn't a guide to monetize your blog. It isn't a direct aide to your personal brand. It isn't something one person can read and do themselves. However, this book is one that can be passed around to a few key folks and used as a guide to restructure, revamp, create or destroy business practices and processes.

The NOW Revolution is one of the better books I've seen to tackle the business and organizational challenges of social media and give you a roadmap to improve things.

I recently ordered the Kindle version of this book allowing me to devour its contents on my iPad while traveling.

The Now Revolution is an essential book that will change your thinking on how your business needs to adapt. It is also an important read for ad agencies to better understand the struggles and mindset for creative solutions for their client's businesses.

This is the first book I've read that takes advantage of Microsoft Tags interspersed throughout the various chapters. These coded tags linked to additional online content, illustrations, video, podcasts and additional materials such as questionnaires, forms, quizzes, etc. A very beneficial addition to the book.

Jay and Amber do a great job of simplfying the steps needed to for a company to change its culture to deal with real-time communication, networking and create a culture that is more social. The book is chocked full of great illustrations, helpful insights and creative ideas.

The book introduces 7 key shifts that business leaders need to address along with laying out a plan for each.

Every person in the C-Suite of your company should read this book. The change in the way that we do business, in real-time, is one that will require the change of your company's culture. You will need 'all hands on deck' to successfully implement and sustain Jay and Amber's guidelines.

I read a book about once every five years. The last book I read cover-to-cover was probably Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. So it's no small feat that I made it through The NOW Revolution: 7 Shifts to Make Your Business Faster, Smarter and More Social by Jay Baer and Amber Naslund.

Luckily, it was a quick and accessible read.

First, let me point out what The NOW Revolution is NOT: It's not a how-to book. If you want a tutorial on how to use Twitter, how to create a Facebook Page, or how to write a corporate blog, this isn't the book for you.

What The NOW Revolution does well is lay out a vision for what a people-centric business could be. It offers guidelines for how you might organize people and processes to take advantage of the social web. And while it sometimes takes for granted the reader's familiarity with the norms, mores, cultures and behaviors of the social web, it provides easy to swallow suggestions for becoming more social.

The QR codes (images that can be scanned with a smart phone to direct you to an external web page) are a nice addition, and extend the book's value beyond what you get in print. And I like the way each chapter closes with a summary action plan.

If there's one shortcoming of the book, it's that I'm not sure who it's written for. An experienced social media consultant or strategist (and whomever you trust in that role BETTER have experience) will find it a little elementary. An C-Suiter untrained in social media may question some of the assumptions. And small businesses may find discussions of "internal teams" too big to be relevant to their business.

Still, there IS a workplace and marketplace revolution upon us, and we're all participants in it. The Now Revolution does a nice job making the shift seem less daunting. It teaches readers to embrace flexibility, agility, and adaptability. And for that, it's a worthwhile read.