by Robin Carey, Founder & CEO, Social Media Today

I’m writing this in the final days of preparation for Social Media Today’s inaugural conference, The Social Shake-Up (September 2013, Atlanta). And I’ve just finished reading the updated Attenzi – a social business story, a tale that underlines why we’re going to the effort.

The phrase ‘social business’ means different things to different people. For me, it conveys that social isn’t something a business does, but rather the way it does business.

Social is pervasive, and Attenzi prompted me to read the ‘about us’ for Social Media Today to check that’s how we say we see it. And we sure do… “an independent, online community for professionals in PR, marketing, advertising, or any other discipline where a thorough understanding of social media is mission-critical.”

The Social Media Today community will expand to encompass more and more of those other disciplines, particularly as a resource like the Attenzi story helps get your organization up to speed, helps encourage your peers to consider the full potential and impact of social business.

Our objective for The Social Shake-Up conference is to discover the many ways that large businesses are incorporating social into their practices and to demonstrate that all this disruption is actually working to improve the ways that companies act in the world. With that in mind, Attenzi makes perfect reading for the flight to Atlanta, or indeed the flight home.

I particularly like the way the book is available freely and openly, so we can do the social thing of commenting and asking questions on the accompanying website.

Happy reading and collaborating.

Robin.