I attended Deltina Hay’s book signing at BookPeople in Austin last week. Her talk brought home the power of  social media once again.  Optimizing your presence on  a ring of social media sites has the potential of pushing you to the top of search rankings.  Your Web site’s natural search may not get you where you want to be, but the consistent tagging of content on Facebook, Twitter, deli.cio.us, your blog, Flickr and YouTube – all combined can make the difference.

For many, the stumbling block is how to get started.  They lament that they just don’t know how to use the tools of social media.  Where does one get educated on this stuff?

I am proud to say that our client, Deltina Hay, has the answers for small to mid-sized businesses.  Many theoretical books about social media leave the the reader in a fog as how to set up and use particular social media tools.  What a relief that Deltina took on the larger task of creating a book that actually empowers the reader step-by-step on how to use open source tools for promoting themselves online.  Her pragmatic,  book complete with print screen images and resource CD provides the tools to make it happen.

She aptly named it “A Survival Guide to Social Media and Web 2.0 Optimization“.  You don’t have to buy it … but a professor teaching social media to her students at a local college told me that she will be using it as her textbook next Fall.