You can now download and own a Kindle or iPhone-friendly version of 360i’s Social Marketing Playbook (image via Flickr).

Last week, Amazon decided to cut the price of its popular e-book reader, the Kindle, by $60 (from $359 to $299). InformationWeek reports that the company is rather tight-lipped about specific sales figures, but claims the Kindle accounts for 35 percent of book sales for those editions in which Kindle versions are available. We recognize that a good number of our readers are not only social marketing enthusiasts – but gadget-lovers, too. For that reason, we’ve made the Social Marketing Playbook available for purchase on Amazon.com.

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O.A.R. used Twitter to engage fans by inviting them to submit lyrics to @ofarevolution (image by Neek11 via Flickr).

Contests and giveaways are becoming a popular way for many marketers to help create buzz for their presence on Twitter. Depending on your company’s goals, these promotions can be extremely effective ways to add followers or encourage deeper engagement. While there have been quite a few Twitter contests that have received attention lately, there have been two in particular that captured my interest: Orbitz’s free ticket giveaway and O.A.R.’s songwriting contest.

If you viewed the Orbitz Twitter page on June 24, you would have been come across the following tweet: “We’re giving away a free airline ticket today! FOLLOW @Orbitz & RT this msg to be eligible to win.” By encouraging people to retweet the message and offering a significant prize, the travel Web site created quite a bit of viral spread for the one day promotion. The promotion spiked the number of Orbitz followers by over 10,000 in a single day (according to Twitter Counter).

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We published the Social Marketing Playbook with the hope that it would be widely read and shared among people with a genuine interest in and passion for social marketing.

To date, nearly 15,000 50,000 of you have downloaded the Playbook! Whether you came across the Playbook from our blog, from Twitter — or perhaps in an email from a friend or colleague, we’re grateful for the broad readership and positive feedback we’ve received thus far.

That said, the Playbook was not intended to be a one-and-done document (why not continue with the sports metaphor). Instead, we hope you will download a copy of the Playbook and revisit it as needed. It’s yours to keep, and we invite you to treat it as such. If you have not downloaded the Playbook already, you can do so here: http://360i.com/playbook.

The brief quiz below will test your knowledge of some of the key points outlined in the Social Marketing Playbook. You can also download a PDF version of the quiz — complete with answers — here. At the end of both versions of the quiz you can review the correct answers and explanations.

CONTEST: 360i is giving away 10 hard-bound copies of the Social Marketing Playbook during the month of July. To enter the drawing, take the quiz below and enter your email into the “Your Name” field at the beginning of the quiz (your email will only be used to contact you if you win). Good luck!

The contest is now closed. But you can still test your social marketing prowess below:

360i created Social Marketing Playbook to help marketers navigate the social landscape and execute a slam dunk strategy for their brands (image via Flickr).

Brandweek editor Todd Wasserman recently interviewed Sarah Hofstetter following the release of our Social Marketing Playbook. In the interview, Wasserman asked why we felt the playbook was needed and what marketers can expect to learn from it. Here are some excerpts from their conversation – you can read the full article at Brandweek.com.

Brandweek: Why did you come out with this playbook? Who’s it for?
Sarah: Through our recent conversations with CMOs and senior marketers at large brands, we were finding a recurring pattern of marketers who wanted to get into social marketing but were either daunted by the landscape or were looking for guidance on how to take the first step. We also discovered that, oftentimes, the individuals responsible for the stewardship of the brand are uncomfortable with social media and those heavily immersed in social media tend to not have formal brand training. This Playbook aims to bridge the two by providing a framework for establishing a set of clear objectives and strategy when approaching social marketing, and encouraging thinking of social marketing as an opportunity to have a continuous, valuable exchange with customers.

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