By now, I’m sure you don’t need to hear that social media is taking over the world. In fact, it already has. Entering into the new decade, the way we interact with each other has drastically changed. 

Remember the days when we were scared of uploading photos of ourselves on Facebook?

It wasn’t that long ago. 

Social media is an ever-changing environment, and although it’s easy to use, it’s sometimes hard to keep up and use it for business. Whether you want to leverage a platform to promote your startup, sell products online or advance your knowledge to further your career in marketing, knowing each platform is essential to succeed.  

Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook

Social media expert and digital influencer Gary Vaynerchuk shares his social media marketing strategies for a brand to excel online.  When managers and marketers outline their social media strategies, they plan for the “right hook”—their next sale or campaign that’s going to knock out the competition. Even companies committed to jabbing—patiently engaging with customers to build the relationships crucial to successful social media campaigns—want to land the punch that will take down their opponent or their customer’s resistance in one blow.

Marketing Made Simple: A Step-by-Step StoryBrand Guide for Any Business

Every day, brands lose millions of dollars simply because they do not have a clear message that tells consumers who they are and what value they will add to their customers’ lives. To solve this dilemma, Donald Miller created this checklist is a strategic and actionable guide to applying a proven framework to any brand and an essential part of any marketing professional’s tool kit.

The Catalyst: How to Change Anyone's Mind

Everyone has something they want to change. Marketers want to change their customers’ minds and leaders want to change organizations. Start-ups want to change industries and nonprofits want to change the world. But change is hard. Often, we persuade and pressure and push, but nothing moves. Could there be a better way?

This book takes a different approach. Successful change agents know it’s not about pushing harder, or providing more information, it’s about being a catalyst. Catalysts remove roadblocks and reduce the barriers to change. Instead of asking, “How could I change someone’s mind?” they ask a different question: “Why haven’t they changed already? What’s stopping them?”

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire. Just as a single sick person can start an epidemic of the flu, so too can a small but precisely targeted push cause a fashion trend, the popularity of a new product, or a drop in the crime rate. This widely acclaimed bestseller, in which Malcolm Gladwell explores and brilliantly illuminates the tipping point phenomenon, is already changing the way people throughout the world think about selling products and disseminating ideas.

Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals

Storytelling with Data teaches you the fundamentals of data visualization and how to communicate effectively with data. You'll discover the power of storytelling and the way to make data a pivotal point in your story. The lessons in this illuminative text are grounded in theory, but made accessible through numerous real-world examples—ready for immediate application to your next graph or presentation. 

The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail (Management of Innovation and Change)

Aruguably one of the most well known books on this list, The Innovator’s Dilemma is a bestselling classic on disruptive innovation, by renowned author Clayton M. Christensen. Christensen shows how even the most outstanding companies can do everything right—yet still lose market leadership.

Christensen explains why most companies miss out on new waves of innovation. No matter the industry, he says, a successful company with established products will get pushed aside unless managers know how and when to abandon traditional business practices.

Expert Secrets: The Underground Playbook for Creating a Mass Movement of People Who Will Pay for Your Advice

It doesn’t matter what message, product, or service you are selling online, if you don’t build a mass movement of people who will pay to hear your message, it’s unlikely you will achieve success. Russell Brunson, founder of the gamechanging software Click Funnels shares his strategies in this book to help you create a movement behind your brand. 

Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant

BLUE OCEAN STRATEGY is a marketing classic and a must read for anyone who plans on releasing their own product. Blue Ocean presents a systematic approach to making the competition irrelevant and outlines principles and tools any organization can use to create and capture their own blue oceans.

A landmark work that upends traditional thinking about strategy, this bestselling book charts a bold new path to winning the future. Consider this your guide to creating uncontested market space--and making the competition irrelevant.

Way of the Wolf: Straight Line Selling: Master the Art of Persuasion, Influence, and Success 

Immortalised by the movie Woft of Wall Street, Jordan Belfort opens his playbook and gives you access to his exclusive step-by-step system—the same system he used to create massive wealth for himself, his clients, and his sales teams. Until now this revolutionary program was only available through Jordan’s $1,997 online training. Now, in Way of the Wolf, Belfort is ready to unleash the power of persuasion to a whole new generation, revealing how anyone can bounce back from devastating setbacks, master the art of persuasion, and build wealth. Every technique, every strategy, and every tip has been tested and proven to work in real-life situations.

Conclusion

It's no marketing secret anymore that business owners should leverage social media. 

In fact, those who aren't on any sort of online platform are shooting themselves in the foot. 

Each platform has their own unique content styles, but at the end of the day, if you learn the fundamentals of marketing and selling, you can do well no matter which platform you want to build your audience with.