This is the book that started it for me.  This past May, Michael Hyatt published his New York Times bestseller Platform:  Get Noticed in a Noisy World.  The blog you are reading now was built on what I learned in this book.

In January 2010, I sat in on a webinar where a man laid out a social media strategy.  Until that day, I thought that Twitter was ridiculous.  I believed that the ROI on a social media strategy equated to wasted time.  I listened to this man spend an hour describing the benefits of having a social media strategy.  That hour changed things for me.

As I write this post, I have 2,677 followers on Twitter.  I have 1,502 business connections on LinkedIn.  I have 2,698 ‘friends’ on Facebook.  I don’t share this to boast.  I simply want you to know what is possible.  I am certainly not a celebrity.  What I have done is execute a plan, and it has worked.

When I read Platform in July of this year, it had the same effect on me as did the webinar on social media.  I finally understood the importance of blogging in conjunction with these other social media tools.

So what is a platform?  It is something that you stand on to be noticed above the crowd.  It provides visibility.  It allows for the amplification of a message.  It facilitates a connection between the messenger and the audience.  I don’t care if you have a product or service to sell or a cause to promote, you need a platform.  If this describes you – and it does – this book is for you.

The social media revolution makes this even more important.  Consider these statistics:

• 14% of people trust traditional advertising (that is an incredible figure!)
• 18% of TV ads generate a positive Return on Investment (ROI)
• 90% of people skip ads if they have a DVR/TiVo
• 78% of people trust recommendations from connections via social media
• 70% of people trust recommendations from strangers via social media (wow!)

Michael Hyatt has been blogging for over 8 years and has built a truly world-class platform.  He shares with the reader what he has learned in that time from his success and failures.  The book is laid out in 60 short chapters that cover the following 5 steps to build an effective platform.

1. Start With Wow – He uses a quote in the book that says great marketing simply makes a bad product fail faster.  The idea is you must have great content.  Wow your audience!
2. Prepare to Launch – This is the preparation for launching your platform.  He covers everything from thinking bigger, to defining your goals, to setting up your tools.
3. Build Your Home Base – This is the section of his book where he really dives into blogging.  How to blog.  How to write posts faster. How to avoid common mistakes.  This section has been invaluable to me as I launched my blog in September.
4. Expand Your Reach – This section is all about how to build your audience.  It is full of sage advice and helpful tips that I use on a regular basis.
5. Engage Your Tribe – Social media is a phone conversation – not a mega-phone.  The entire idea is to build and then engage your audience.  In this section, Hyatt shares with you all he has learned in building a platform that has over 300,000 unique visitors to his blog every month.

This is now a reference book for me.  It is highlighted and underlined.  I have notes written in it everywhere.  It is also the one book that I’ve loaned out and actually made sure I got back.  What I love most about it is the 3-5 page chapters.  Whatever I have a question about, I can grab this off the shelf and quickly find the answer.

This book needs to be on your shelf as well.  Here is where you can order it – Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World (affiliate link).

So let me hear from you.  Have you read it?  What did you learn?  What could a larger platform help you accomplish?