You’re Going To Hear A Lot About This Book

I read “Trust Agents” this weekend. Before you read further, please know that both authors, Chris Brogan and Julien Smith, are people I consider friends. Their publisher sent me a free copy of the book to read and review. I’m not unbiased here, nor do I intend to fake it.

But you can trust me when I tell you that even if these two guys weren’t my friends, this book is well worth reading. In fact, it’s well worth buying a few copies to give to friends, business associates, clients or potential clients and so on.

I can give you a synopsis of the book. I can tell you the five or six really good nuggets of thought and overall themes that Brogan and Smith illustrate and nail. I can promise you it will change the way you look at business and will give you a new perspective on the world. But a lot of other people will do that.

Here’s what I want you to know about this book more than anything:

It will empower you.

Regardless of whether you are a marketing or social media expert, a brand manager, an agency-side thinker, an independent consultant, a public relations person new to social media, a developer or programmer or just someone who wants to know more about this Internet marketing thing, this book will provide you with the tools needed to become a trust agent — someone trusted and influential on the web.

The empowerment comes not just in practical advice and street-level knowledge Brogan and Smith bring to the table, but from a perspective only these two can bring. Their message and explanation isn’t just rooted in marketing principles and brand work. It finds its evolution from game theory, psychology and even the inner confines of the lone comfort zone of most technologists: mom’s basement.

I won’t say it’s a blueprint. But it is. I won’t say it’s the best book to read to “get” social media. But it might be.

I just hope that you know me well enough to know if the book was crap, I would at least not say anything about it.

Buy it. Read it. Tell me if you disagree.

And to start your road to becoming a trust agent, help pass the word about the book.

IMAGE: Flickr Photo by J.D. Lasica.