Book Review: Manners in Emily Post's Digital World: Living Well Online

The Emily Post Institute, the authority on all things etiquette, has just published an up-to-the-minute guide called Manners in Emily Post’s Digital World: Living Well Online. In keeping with the times, it’s the first-ever e-book to come out of the organization. The book’s author, Daniel Post Senning, has been at the helm of technology at the Emily Post Institute for years, building their first website, figuring out analytics and e-newsletters, and a WordPress blog to answer etiquette questions from the general public, among other things.

In a relatively short book, Senning covers a lot of ground. The book effectively targets the social media/mobile device novice as well as the more experienced user. It suggests the right way to coexist with technology as well as the people you interact with offline: family, friends, coworkers and even store clerks. It discusses in-depth the circumstances under which it’s acceptable to play a game on your mobile phone in public (sometimes OK), take a phone call in a public bathroom (never OK), friend an ex or a coworker online (sometimes OK), or stir up trouble in a chatroom or forum (never OK) .

The book outlines the wonderful advantages of touting your business on Facebook and other social media platforms. It gives advice on determining a website’s credibility. It suggests ways you and your family members can make rules about turning off mobile devices in favor of quality time together.

Perhaps the most power takeaway from the book appears in Chapter 4: Facebook: “You can always delete something you decide you don’t want on your wall [or on Twitter, in an email, on a dating profile, etc.], but you can’t take back the impression it made while it was visible.”

You can follow the Emily Post Institute on Twitter @EmilyPostInst and see what others are tweeting about with the #etiquette hashtag.

The Ultimate Web Marketing Guide

I really didn't intend to be absent from my blog for nearly a month. I've been doing a lot of reading but I haven't been talking about it because the books have been long ones. I'm reading Gone With the Wind and am about three-quarters of the way through. The other long one that I've just finished is The Ultimate Web Marketing Guide by Michael Miller. It's over 600 pages and I've been reading a chapter or two a day when time allowed for the past several weeks.

Fifteen years in high school ago I was a media assistant and the library was the only place on campus students could access the Internet. I remember checking out a few websites and wondering what good it would ever do me. I just had my 10 year college reunion earlier this summer. Nearly everything that's in this book didn't exist when I was taking classes in professional communications to prepare for life after college. As I was doing research online for papers for the first time there wasn't yet a standard way to cite those resources. So things have changed a lot and this will continue. I imagine that everything I've just read about in the Guide may be obselete in just a few years.

The book was recommended to me by a graphic designer colleague several months ago. Reading it all the way through has been immensely helpful for me in thinking about how clients could utilize these tools to leverage their online presence. Some of the tools are things I deal with often (effective websites, search engine optimization, email marketing, blogging, Facebook and Twitter) and some are things I don't do directly but need to know about (podcasts, mobile applications, mobile websites, pay-per-click and display advertising, and others).

To me learning new things for business and personal growth is part of life. All the time it took me to read this book was well worth it. If you're in the business or in charge of marketing where you work but not sure where to start, get this book.