The only list of the best social media marketing books you need to bookmark.
There may be a lot of online resources available to study but nothing beats a good book. While blogs offer bite-sized knowledge and videos engage visually, books elaborately compile hundreds of research ideas in a sophisticated manner – nothing gets missed.
As a social media marketing team, we recommend it’s time you add a good social media marketing book to gain in-depth knowledge and rise above your peers.
Brilliant marketers have compiled years of experience into social media marketing books; and there are tons to choose from.
Being avid readers ourselves, we’ve gathered a list of the best social media marketing books for content marketers and social media managers. This list consists of beginner-friendly social media marketing books as well as pro-level stuff.
Best Social Media Marketing Books You Have to Read Once
1. Everybody Writes
Author: Ann Handley
Ann Handley is a popular writer and digital marketing pioneer with a lot of experience in writing for the web. She shares her expertise in writing SEO-friendly, grammatically correct content that ranks high on Google. In her book, she also teaches how to infuse storytelling into your content to connect better with the reader.
2. Influencer: Building a Personal Brand in the Age of Social Media
Author: Brittany Hennessy
Brittany Hennessy was the head of influencer marketing at Hearst Magazines. At her job, she used to engage and deal with multiple influencers every day. In her book, she compiles the best strategies, tips and tricks to nail influencer marketing. The book also contains past experiences, mistakes and the achievement of great influencers so you learn from their experiences.
3. 10x Marketing Formula
Author: Garrett Moon
This book is all about applying tried and tested marketing formulas and shortcuts effectively to get the best results. Garrett Moon marketed his startup to success and he shares his strategies in this book. It’s best for people who like done-for-you guides and follow examples rather than creating strategies from scratch.
4. Confident Digital Content
Author: Adam Waters
Marketing is not a one-person job. As a leader, you oversee people with different skill sets who make a marketing campaign successful. To do this effectively, you need to understand these skills yourself. This book talks about the different skills that are needed to create engaging marketing content. From video editing to community engagement, it covers all aspects that make up a successful marketing strategy.
5. Content Marketing
Author: Gavin Turner
This book covers everything about content marketing and bringing more exposure to your brand. Gavin uses real-life examples from top companies who’ve led brilliant marketing campaigns. The book contains tactics about sharing the right content at the right time so you reach a maximum number of people.
6. Become a Content Brand
Author: Chris Carter
Chris Carter acknowledges the impact of video content in this book. The book contains step-by-step instructions to create brilliant marketing videos and build a team of talented video professionals. He provides industry secrets from video editors, filmmakers and marketers across the globe to create eye-catching video content.
7. They ask, you answer
Author: Marcus Sheridan
As the name suggests, the book shares tactics to build a loyal audience by genuinely answering questions on social media. Marcus himself brought his company back to life by sharing his knowledge and building authority across multiple social media platforms. This serves as a good social media marketing book for beginners and mid-level marketers.
8. Chasing the Monster Idea
Author: Stefan Mumaw
Most business owners have a lot of brilliant ideas that they never execute. The book provides seven questions that you can use to analyze your ideas. The outcome tells you whether it’s worth investing in. Stefan shares case studies and success stories so you compare your ideas and execution methods.
9. Made to Stick by Chip Heath
Author: Dan Heath
We live in a time when people forgot taglines with a scroll. Dan Heath’s book teaches you to create ideas that ‘stick’. He shares effective frameworks to partner with the right influencers who spread your idea to a larger audience in the right way. The book urges you to create emotional stories so your audience relates with your beliefs and chooses you over the competition.
10. The Tipping Point
Author: Malcolm Gladwell
The tipping point is when businesses become trending amongst their target audience. The book is all about starting the right discussions to market your business with the most powerful tool – word of mouth. It’s about identifying the right people – or influencers – who spread the word in their community and make your product “viral”. The book also takes a shot at companies with more than 150 employees and talks about why a huge workforce doesn’t work.
11. Start at the End
Author: Matt Wallaert
Most companies today start with a big marketing budget and larger-than-life campaigns. They might grab attention but miss out on the ROI. ‘Start at the End’ highlights the importance of understanding customer behavior and creating products they actually need. Only then, marketing would strike a chord – and that’s why it is one of the best social media marketing books.
12. Growth Hacker Marketing
Author: Ryan Holiday
Growth Hacker Marketing teaches how to use the right tools to hack client growth. It follows the idea of finding the right product-market fit and using it to genuinely help your clients win. It’s about creating campaigns that are unique to your product and clients, and not blindly following the traditional approaches.
13. The BAMF Bible 2019
Author: Josh Fechter
Josh teaches the concept of growth hacking in the BAMF Bible. The book contains multiple marketing formulas that you can directly put to use. It lists out tools that make your job easy and help you attract new customers quickly and easily.
14. The Manifesto on Content Marketing Teams
Author: Xenia Muntean
This book provides a guide to building effective marketing teams who ace content operations. It dismisses the idea of hiring people just for the sake of it or because you’ve heard of the position in a competitor company. The book also stresses on the application of social media management tools and touches on the concept of content paralysis – the short and long-term impact of content.
15. The Idea Factory by Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation
Author: Jon Gertner
This book is all about technological innovation. It talks about various inventions that changed the way we do daily tasks. The book backtracks the origin of such inventions and highlights the role of the people involved in them.
16. The Growth Hacking Book
Author: Parul Agrawal
The Growth Hacking Book diverges from marketing formulas and compiles ideas of famous marketers, business owners and thought leaders who really made a dent in the world of marketing. It motivates you to create your own ideas to make a campaign work. The book shares overviews of the mindset and skills required to survive in the highly competitive marketing industry.
17. Entrepreneur Voices on Growth Hacking
Author: Inc. The Staff of Entrepreneur Media
As the name suggests, the book shares the voices of entrepreneurs who disrupted the industry with groundbreaking ideas. It shares inspirational stories along with the tools used in them. It talks about achieving fast business growth by streamlining every lengthy task so creativity can flow freely.
18. New Rules of Marketing and PR
Author: David Meerman Scott
There are a lot of marketing and PR strategies out there. How do you choose the right one? David Meerman teaches different modern aspects of marketing including social media, apps, videos and advertising books. It contains different case studies to help you gain insights into what works and what doesn’t.
19. Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook
Author: Gary Vaynerchuk
Gary Vee preaches the art of being a dedicated customer helper before selling your product. It teaches you the tactics to keep your customer happy all the time so they always choose you over the competition. The book then talks about popping the question of sale at the right time. It prepares you to be patient and lead the customer to a lean landing – or landing page.
20. Social Media ROI
Author: Olivier Blanchard
Creating content on social media is one thing, but how do you measure the ROI? Olivier Blanchard provides you with a strategy to achieve your financial goals by creating content on social media. It’s all about monetization and optimization of your content so you reek the maximum benefits.
21. Digital Marketing Growth Hack
Author: Jamie Turner
Jamie Turner is famous for helping brands like Coca-Cola tackle hefty marketing problems. Digital Marketing Growth Hack is second in line with his famous edition, ‘ how to make money with social media?’. It covers the concept of online growth hacking and talks about selling your product ruthlessly online.
22. Pre-Suasion
Author: Robert Cialdini
This book preaches the idea of grabbing your customer’s attention before approaching them for sale. It talks about the importance of the ‘right time’ to communicate your ideas. Robert Cialdini urges brands to maintain a sense of mystery in marketing campaigns to achieve better results.
23. The Power of Habit
Author: Charles Duhigg
Marketing is all about consistency. Charles Duhigg talks about the importance of building habits so that you can be consistent in your efforts. This book is not only for marketers but for anyone who’s struggling to reach his/her full potential due to a lack of strong habits.
24. The Art of Client Service
Author: Robert Solomon
This book compiles 58 concepts on how to ace client service to sell more. Marketing your product is one thing but being there for your clients is what retains them in the long run. The book contains insights on drafting a great proposal, handling backlashes and being explicit in your communication.
25. Building a Storybrand
Author: Donald Miller
Donald Miller argues that customers don’t always understand what your brand is about. That’s why you must always lead with a story. The book has seven elements to create a powerful story that helps you build a connection with your audience. It also teaches you how to create an impactful brand message.
26. Start with Why
Author: Simon Sinek
Simon Sinek is a renowned author and public speaker who popularized the concept of ‘why’. In his book, he shares his idea that customers relate to the reason why a brand does what it does. He also shares examples of successful companies that use the concept of ‘why’ in their marketing campaigns and make a substantial impact with it. As per Sinek, what a brand does comes secondary to why it does it.
27. Chaos Monkey
Author: Antonio Garcia Martinez
The Chaos Monkey is an autobiography of Antonia Garcia Martinez that takes a deep dive into tech and social media culture. He shares his real-life experiences and inside stories that occur in all industries. It talks about how large tech companies are funded and how things work at big Silicon Valley firms.
28. Deep Work
Author: Cal Newport
The author talks about the importance of deep work and how it’s rare these days. He provides tips and tricks to master the art of deep work and believes that anybody can have a competitive advantage if he/she masters the art of deep work.
29. Atomic Habits
Author: James Clear
Atomic Habits was the number 1 New York Times bestseller in 2020. In his book, James Clear provides strategies and tools to transform your habits. The book contains stories of Olympic medalists, successful entrepreneurs and talented, lifesaving physicians who mastered their craft by building sustainable habits. It shares methods to overcome the lack of motivation and design powerful environments to enhance focus.
30. Marketing Team of the Future
Author: Vlad Callus
Marketing Team of the Future is a free e-book that teaches you how to excel at content marketing. Vlad Calus shares patterns and workflows of high-performing marketing teams that drive results for years to come. You can download this free social media marketing book’s pdf online.
31. The 10X Rule
Author: Grant Cardone
The 10x Rule talks about the 4th degree of action taking called the massive action that allows you to blast through your business goals. It shares strategies on where to start, how to proceed, and how to follow up on previous actions. Grant suggests that all these steps combined unlock massive action that leads to massive success.
32. Participation Marketing
Author: Michael Brito
Micheal Brito has worked with several Fortune 500 companies to create successful digital marketing campaigns that have driven millions in revenue. In his book, he shares the strategy that combines audience intelligence, creative content and paid media to achieve massive business success.
33. Maximize your Social
Author: Neal Schaffer
Neal Schaffer’s book is famous for effective insights on content strategy creation, implementation and optimization. This book is a one-stop shop for a kickass social media strategy that gathers engagement and increases sales. It’s easy to grasp which makes it very helpful for social media marketing dummies.
34. The End of Marketing: Humanizing Your Brand in the Age of Social Media and AI
Author: Carlos Gill
The End of Marketing busts the old-time marketing strategies. It talks about modern ways to sell online with digital marketing and building a personal connection with your audience through social media. It promotes the idea of using AI in marketing to automate mundane tasks, so you can be fully creative in your approach.
35. Brand Storytelling: Put Customers at the Heart of Your Brand Story
Author: Miri Rodriguez
Brand Storytelling compiles use cases from big companies like Google and Macdonalds to teach you the art of storytelling. It highlights the importance of creating a brand story so your target audience can build a personal connection with your brand. It dismisses the idea of AI doing all-around marketing and stresses evoking human emotion by assessing and building your brand story.
36. Run with Foxes: Make Better Marketing Decisions
Author: Paul Dervan
Paul Dervan, the author of this book, says up front that this is not, “a book of all answers”. This book contains several marketing lessons that come from years of experience that he gathers while being Global Brand Director at Indeed. It talks about marketing being an art, and how you can shape this artform into strong sale-oriented strategies.
37. Digital Trust: Social Media Strategies to Increase Trust and Engage Customers
Author: Barry Connelly
People buy from brands they trust. Digital trust teaches you to build effective strategies to gain trust from your target audience. Vanity metrics may come and go but if your customers engage with your content, it means they trust you and will choose your brand over the competition. It shifts your focus from the follower count to building a strong community of fans on social media
38. Faster, Smarter, Louder: Master Attention in a Noisy Digital Market
Author: Aaron Agius and Gian Clancey
Everyone is loud and braggy on social media. You can’t survive by keeping achievements to yourself. The book teaches you how to apply proven industry strategies and gather maximum attention to your brand. It guides you to go beyond generic SEO tactics and build a distinct authentic image.
One book teaches you more than a hundred social media posts.
Books make you better thinkers, writers and thus, marketers. Tell us your favorite book and we will add it to this list.
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