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Teach Social Media now on Kindle Unlimited

Welcome back! We have arrived at the spring 2022 semester.

To kick off the semester, I am excited to announce that my book, Teach Social Media: A Plan for Creating a Course Your Students Will Love, is now available on Kindle Unlimited. This means that if you have Kindle Unlimited you can read the entire Kindle book at no additional cost beyond the price of Kindle Unlimited membership.  The book remains available for purchase in paperback and on Kindle.  I hope that this enables more people to get access to the book so that they can take advantage of its contents in preparing their social media class.

What I learned From Writing Teach Social Media

I cannot believe that Teach Social Media was published nearly 2 and a half years ago in August 2019.

There are no plans in the works to write an updated version of the book at this time. While some of the content is a few years old in an ever-changing landscape, I often still receive emails from educators expressing to me how much the book has helped them or asking me questions about the book.

Truth be told, I would not have guessed 2.5 years ago that this book would still be generating a positive impact within the community. I did not anticipate that it would be as warmly received as it has been. After all, the book is highly niche. It is independently published. This blog and a few ads are the only organized publicity it has.

The primary reason this book exists is simply because so many people have been so supportive of me and this blog.  It is so inspiring to me how many public relations educators are kindhearted, supportive people who bolster one another.  Each one of you are a testament to my favorite saying these days: “kindness counts.” It truly does. You do not know the magnitude of the impact you have on others through your encouragement and kindness.

The secondary reason this book exists is the story behind it:

I was frustrated. I wanted to become a better professor but I was stuck. I knew I wanted to learn about buying and optimizing targeted ads (I ended up learning and applying Facebook advertising and the Amazon ad platform), learn a bit more about entrepreneurial affiliate marketing via a blog, and up my SEO and web analytics skills. I thought, how am I going to talk about these things in my classes if I haven’t directly done them myself? Where is my ‘case study’?

But, to do that, I needed a product. What could an academic possibly sell? Well, people kept telling me to write a book.

I figured that a short book could be a fun little side project. More practically, I figured 1) I could learn a lot , 2) that this was a way to share more knowledge than I could fit into this blog, and 3) if the book helped a few professors, then, I would consider it a success.

Well, my first mistake was thinking ‘short’ and ‘little’ project. Initially, my plan was to write something brief, independently publish it, and hopefully sell some copies over the course of a year. I figured it would take a month to write. How naive I was!

The completed book took way more time and effort than I anticipated, was 216 pages and sold more units in the first month than I hoped to sell in a year. Over its lifetime, Teach Social Media has sold internationally, including in Great Britain, Australia, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Brazil, and India. I am also very proud and humbled that it received a positive review by Natalie Tindall in the Journal of Public Relations Education. (Thank you Dr. Tindall!)

I hope that this book has helped people save time developing a social media class they are excited to teach. I hope that its availability on Kindle Unlimited is welcome news and helps more people take advantage of the assignments and materials provided in the text. Thank you again for your encouragement, kindness, and support by reading this blog.

I wish you and your family the very best in 2022. I know that it has been a challenging few years. But you’ve got this!

In an upcoming post, I’ll share my newly-revised public relations course syllabi and some edits I made to the course now that we are using Dr. Freberg’s new PR textbook.

– Be well!
Matt