After reading Socialnomics: How social media transforms the way we live and do business the ShopTab team felt this book would be of great interest to ShopTab Facebook App business owners who are looking to leverage social media to engage with their customers.  We contacted the author Erik Qualman and wanted to share with you what we learned.

First a little background on Erik.  He holds a BA from Michigan State University and an MBA from The University of Texas.  He is currently the Global Vice President of Online Marketing EF Education (the world’s largest private education company).  He was Academic All-Big Ten in basketball at Michigan State University and still finds time to follow his beloved Spartans while living in Boston with his wife.

After reading Socialnomics, which made Amazon’s #1 Best Selling List only after three weeks of publication, you can expect to learn how to properly engage with your customer via social media to improve your product or service and ultimately sell more.  There are several case studies in the book from various industries and sectors that help business owners better understand how to harness the power of social media.

Erik shared with ShopTab the following 5 tips:

Q: Are there things that should always or never be done in social media?

A: Fun and common sense — have plenty of both.

Q: Why do you believe social media is so important?

A: As human beings, we have the dichotomous psychological need to be our own individual, yet we also want to feel like we belong to, and are accepted by, a much larger social set. People are willing to have an “open diary” as a means to stay connected — as their ultimate desire is to feel accepted.

Part of this lies in a yearning to have a clear understanding of what the majority is doing. It was much easier to know what the majority was doing when all one had to do was tune into Casey Kasem’s “American Top 40″ to find out the latest and greatest in music or to flip through “Vogue” magazine to quickly grasp every fashion trend. Social media help us make sense of information overload by quickly seeing what our friends find important, helpful, or interesting. It also helps eliminate people performing the same tasks — if three of your friends have already performed the task (finding a good hotel in Bermuda), why should you be redundant?

Q: What main benefit do you see that an eCommerce website owner would gain from leveraging a tool like ShopTab to display their products on a Facebook Fan Page?

A: Ultimately one of Facebook’s greatest offerings may be store fronts for small to medium sized businesses that aren’t experts in setting up eCommerce capable Websites.  If they can get up a store front quickly, easily and inexpensively on Facebook that can also handle transactions many will opt for this.  Tools like ShopTab will help to either augment this or make the experience better.

Q: What is the “next big thing” in social media marketing?

A: The merging of search and social.

Q: There are many social networks such as Facebook nowadays. Should advertisers try each one, or how should they choose the right ones?

A: Start with the placements that have the best chance for success and progressively grow from there — eventually you should be everywhere that is contributing to success (however you determine that). If you’re engaged and using the tools, it’s pretty easy to determine which social media tools your customers are on. If you can’t figure this out, Forrester has a good Social Technology Profile Tool that will help direct you to where your customers are.

Socialnomics is an essential book for anyone who wants to understand the implications of social media, and how businesses can tap the power of social media to increase their sales, cut their marketing costs, and reach consumers directly. You can learn more by following Erik Qualman on Twitter at @equalman or you can purchase Socialnomics at Amazon.

Do you agree or disagree with above or have other comments to share? Or if you have read Socialnomics and want to share please post your comments below.