After a few hours (and more than a few dollars) with my sleek, shiny new Kindle, I was converted and quickly became a Kindle brand ambassador. I’m pretty sure that everyone at The Ocean Agency is tired of hearing me say “if you had a Kindle…”, but it really is pretty much made of awesome if you’re a book geek/English degree holder like me. Here’s why:

• Volume – I like to have lots of reading options at hand, and with the Kindle I can carry them all around with me. For instance, I have the complete collections of Mark Twain, Ayn Rand, Kurt Vonnegut, and more on my Kindle, along useful-for-work books like Groundswell, Trust Agents, and others.
• Instant gratification – instant downloads vs. waiting for Amazon to ship or going to the bookstore and hoping they have what you want in stock. No contest here.
• Price – books are usually cheaper, and sometimes much cheaper or even free. Plus its probably better for the environment since no trees died to bring you your Kindle.
• Search – instead of using tabs, bookmarks, highlighters or other methods of marking key pages and quotes, you can just use the search function.
• Stealth – don’t want people on public transportation or in the coffee to see that you’re reading say, the Sookie Stackhouse novels? With the Kindle what you are reading is your business.
• Shareability – maybe not everyone is enough of a book geek to have Kindle buddies, but I am and sharing books between friends is easier than ever. Also, you don’t have to worry about your friend losing/writing in your actual books, if that concerns you (I always figure books belong to the universe and if my copy gets gone, I’ll just get another one, but to each on their own).

So here are my reasons why the Kindle is awesome. Any fellow Kindle owners? Please share the love in the comments – links to your favorite Kindle books are highly appreciated!

“Right now, your customers are writing about your products on blogs and recutting your commercials on YouTube. They’re defining you on Wikipedia and ganging up on you in social networking sites like Facebook. These are all elements of a social phenomenon — the groundswell — that has created a permanent, long-lasting shift in the way the world works. Most companies see it as a threat.

You can see it as an opportunity.”

Written by Forrester analysts Charlene Li and and Josh Bernhoff, Groundswell is divided into three sections – understanding the groundswell, tapping the groundswell, and the groundswell transforms.  It has a nice balance of case studies and theory (we’ve all read books that fall too far on one side of the line or the other) and is a quality selection for any business owner who wants an overview of the social web.

One of the key things I took away from Groundswell was the importance of defining what you and/or your company want to accomplish with social media before you just start doing it.  Furthermore, you need to listen to the conversation and figure out how best to reach your audience online – and the best way to do that is by listening and lurking for a while before you just jump right in and start communicating.

While there was nothing in Groundswell that would surprise anyone with social media experience, it is full of valuable statistics and case studies – perfect for agencies or individuals to show how their work is relevant and adds value for various brands and industries.  In fact, we often give out copies to new clients – it is a great primer for those new to the social web.