20 Experts, 1 Awesome Resource: The Social Media ProBook

You may have noticed that over the past month or so, several influential social media professionals changed their profile pictures to funky avatars of themselves.  Edelman’s David Armano went so far as to name his digital persona Vector David (I didn’t have the heart to point out his digital doppelganger’s unfortunate initials).

Specifics around the who and what of the avatar project were purposefully lacking. Together we were having a little fun teasing a project cooked up by Eloqua and JESS3, and made possible by several of the best and brightest in social business.

That project goes live now. Right now. It’s The Social Media ProBook (#ProBook): a 42-page free e-book collaboratively written by a cross-section of social marketers from brands and agencies, analysts, and social support professionals across both business-to-business and business-to-consumer industries.  If you want to grab your free copy of the Social Media ProBook, you can download the Web version here or the print version here. But I urge you to read on to discover a bit more about the book itself, which is current right through Google+.

The ProBook is a “re-imagining” to last year’s award-winning Social Media Playbook. (Thanks to Ann Handley and CC Chapman for inspiring the re-imagination, and thanks to James Nichols for coming up with the term “ProBook”). Unlike last year’s basic Playbook, this advanced resource was written for professionals with some working knowledge of social marketing. Specifically, it will answer the following questions (and more):

1. How to optimize your Facebook newsfeed to be seen by as many fans as possible (by Jeff Widman, aka “The Facebook Whisperer”)
2. How to scale your social media program globally (by superstar Intel strategiests Ekaterina Walter and Bryan Rhoads)
3. How to measure something other than “Likes” (by Vector David himself)
4. How to create infographics that wow the Web and drive crazy traffic (by Robin Richards, director of information design at who else but JESS3)
5. How to build relationships with influencers (by the most important person in my career, Leslie Bradshaw, and me)

Here’s a look inside the ProBook, click the image to download your free copy:

But the what is only half of the story. The rest is the who.  We were able to assemble a supergroup of contributors by making the project rewarding (each contributor received his or her own avatar), social (everyone was free to share their avatars ahead of time), and collaborative (contributors could be interviewed, contribute a column, or submit other content assets). But, most importantly, it was fun. Few rules, even less hassle.

So who exactly made up this 20-person supergroup? Check out the image below. It depicts each contributor and his or her corresponding avatar (thanks for the picture idea Jeremiah). How many can you name?

Enjoy the latest Eloqua and JESS3 collaboration. Of all the projects we’ve brought to life, this is without question the one of which I am most proud.