Remedial Reading for Social Media Marketing Dummies

If you’re new at the game, trying to understand the brave new world of social media marketing can be a daunting challenge. But if you’ve determined that this new marketing discipline is critical for your business, there's a new eLearning kit that can help you jump-start your efforts and get the skills and knowledge you need to succeed. And it'll even help you calculate your return on investment.

"Social Media Marketing for Dummies" (Wiley, 2012) is veteran social media strategist Phyllis Khare's latest effort to make social media marketing intelligible — and doable — for marketers and business owners who need to learn the discipline from the ground up. This hands-on tutorial, a new addition to Wiley's venerable "Dummies" franchise, is packaged as an eLearning kit that includes a full-color printed book and interactive eLearning Course on CD. The CD also offers readers the opportunity to take the course online free for up to six months at the For Dummies eLearning Center.

Khare's primer guides the reader through all the steps required to build a social media marketing plan using the four largest social media sites — Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube — as well as a location-based sites such as FourSquare, Gowalla Groupon and Living Social. At the end of the course, newcomers to social media marketing will find out if their plan is working by calculating its social media return on investment.

[Social Media Now Top Marketing Pick for Local Businesses]

"Dummies eLearning is designed to be an easy and convenient way to develop new skills and learn how to get things done with technology," said Andy Cummings, For Dummies Technology publisher. "The eLearning Kits allow our readers to follow the material sequentially or choose separate sections and learn at their own pace through the book, eLearning course or both."

Reach BusinessNewsDaily senior writer Ned Smith at nsmith@techmedianetwork.com. Follow him on Twitter @nedbsmith.