You might be reading this in a bookstore or in an online preview, and you might be wondering why you should bother. Books about social media are as ubiquitous as books about golf, as common as hip-hop songs using Auto-Tune. The world needs another social media book like it needs another new reality TV show.

If I promise that this is a bit different than other social media books, would that be enough to get you to keep reading?

When Julien Smith and I wrote Trust Agents, a lot of people thought we were going to write a book about social media. It's often reviewed as a book about social media, and yet it's not. Not really. It's a book about how people can earn trust using many factors, including the use of online tools.

Because I didn't write the book you expected, I thought I'd present you with this book. This book is about social media.

Social media tools aren't something new anymore. They might not be used by you and your company just yet, but they are everywhere in the marketplace. Your competitors are using them. Your customers are almost definitely using social media tools.

I've written this book in the hope that it's useful to both existing practitioners and people looking for a solid starting point.

More likely than not, this book is something you've bought for the person in the office who needs to "get it." This book will help you solve that one.

Repetition abounds in this book. I frequently talk about the same tools in slightly different ways. This is intentional. I'm presenting this information in such a way that any one piece of it can stand on its own. We called this "Give your ideas handles" in Trust Agents, and the plan works here, too. By the end of this book, you'll know exactly how I feel about things like Twitter, Facebook, blogging, and all the rest of it.

One final note before we dig in: This book is a collection of several posts that originally appeared at www.chrisbrogan.com. You could get this book (in a very raw form) from my blog for free (minus all my updates and edits). I teased best-selling author and entrepreneur Guy Kawasaki about this when he published his book, Reality Bites, which is an excellent collection of Guy's wisdom. I'm saying this because now I'm going to have to listen to Guy (who keynotes on many stages each year) tease me for doing the same kind of thing.

I promise this: If you've bought the book, there will likely be some new things you take away from it. It's packed with info.

Let's begin.