Today, I received a review copy of Social Media Marketing For Dummies by Shiv Singh. I had heard Shiv speak at Digiday Social and was very impressed, so when his publisher asked if I wanted to review his book, I jumped at the chance.

I’m only part way into the book right now, so I will save my review for later. Instead, I’ll reflect a little bit on what he writes about and apply it to an event in my own life today. Several years ago, we got a Senseo Single-Serve Coffee Machine . It served us well over the years, but has not survived the hard water at our house all that well, even when we’ve tried decalcifying it.

The problems we’ve had with the Senseo is that it is out of stock, and the pods, which are sort of like coffee filled teabags are also sometimes hard to get. So, Kim wondered about getting a Bosch Tassimo Single-Serve Coffee Brewer , similar to what her folks have. To relate this back to Mr. Singh’s book, Kim’s parents acted as referent influencers on Kim’s initial considerations about buying a new coffee machine.

However, the coffee for those machines comes in little plastic cups that get thrown out; not very eco-friendly. We talked back and forth and decided that the Keurig Single-Cup Home-Brewing System might be more to our liking. Especially since you can get a Pod Holster for the machine and a Reusable Coffee Filter

I read through some of the reviews on Amazon and they all sounded pretty good. However, I found that this is usually the case on Amazon. They only people who review are people that really like the product and a few that really hate the product. It is probably fair to consider these online referent influencers. However, I asked Kim to check some of the foodie sites she goes to and she reported a thumbs up from these sites. Referring back to Mr. Singh’s book, these would probably be considered by us the expert influencers, although, in my mind, the line between referent and expert influencers is a bit fuzzy online.

In his book, Mr. Singh references John R. P. French and Bertram Raven’s work on social power. People interested in Social Media Marketing for Academics, might want to start there.

All of this begs the question, how do you get a cadre of social influencers online to support your brand? I look forward to getting more of Mr. Singh’s views on this as I read more of his book.