This book is based on the highly acclaimed and sought after class, Power of Social Technology (PoST), at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.The dragonfly symbolizes happiness, new beginnings, and change across cultures and each section of the book is appropriately broken into wings based on four elements: Focus, Grab Attention, Engage, and TakeAction or Focus + GET. The book begins by showing the power of what can be done with free online resources. Sameer Bhatia and Vinay Chakravarthy suf...

Read this one in a single day. Very short and easy to read. A good guide for anyone looking to actually *do* something with social media (as opposed to just using it because that is the cool thing to do these days).

The book in general is excellent to start with social media communication. The dragonfly is the only insect that can move steadily in every direction which cannot be done unless with good coordination between the body and the four wings. The book starts with identifying the four wings to start the dragonfly effect. These four are: Focus, grab attention, engage and take action (Focus + GET). The first wing: Focus on a single goal to achieve it and followed by 5 design principles: Humanistic, acti...

This book helps the reader think through how social media can be used to further a cause. There are helpful ideas in this book. The first sections about focus and get attention offer sound advice. Unfortunately the tone of the next two sections, engage and take action, seems manipulative since the authors include for-profit companies in their examples. Still, by being a bit more selective in implementing the ideas from these chapters, one can still benefit from the authors' ideas and research.

The Dragonfly Effect: Quick, Effective, and Powerful Ways To Use Social Media to Drive Social Change by Jennifer Aaker and Andy Smith has been sitting on my reading shelf for over nine years. I don’t have a good reason why I did not read it before now. But I am glad that I did. I would also have to say that the lessons in the book are as relevant now as when the book first came out. The purpose of the book is to explain how one can use social media for social good. While business owners can

I enjoyed reading the dragonfly effect, the framework that was provided was clear and effective for social media and can be applicable to other settings. I found the most valuable lesson from the book is that it showed the power of words and how impactful a tailored well thought of message can do, the example they provided about the email sent to over 500 of Sameer’s friends and family asking for donors compelled people to participate and they achieved the statistically impossible. The dragonfly...

I read this book along with 3 others for my nonprofit marketing course, and this was by far my favorite and the most useful. It was a quick, engaging read and provided many tools and templates I felt I could use right away for the nonprofits I work with. Even if you're looking for general marketing strategies and engagement strategies for your organization, the resources this book details can be applied in many different realms. I also thought that it was telling how well thought out the strateg...

This book emphasizes the power of social networks and explains detailed steps on how to take the technology development for granted using metaphor of a dragonfly's wings which create great stability and high load-bearing capacity during flapping flight. 4 main points are mentioned in this book:1. Focus2. Grab the attention3. Engage4. Take action

The book ties in very well with the 'design thinking' taught at Stanford and practiced by IDEO. There is a good collection of organizations and groups who've used social media to make changes in the world. Easy, interesting read. Well researched.

Confession -- I actually finished this in January but never got around to reviewing it even though we've discussed it at work.  Unlike fiction, I don't think the distance matters in a review and in some ways, it's probably more telling what I do recall -- if I've learned the lessons this book offered!The subtitle -- Quick, Effective, and Powerful Ways To Use Social Media to Drive Social Change -- effectively explains the purpose of this book.  The dragonfly mentioned in the title is the motif t...

Good ideas for social media in non profit world

This book has many helpful information on how to craft social media strategies to promote positive social change. I would like to say that the lessons in the book are as relevant now giving the fact that the book was published way earlier.The Book mentioned an excellent demonstration of Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign which achieved blockbuster success using the then-new social media to promote his cause therefore ,Using existing social networking vehicles such as Twitter and Facebook....

If feel as though this might have been best to read a few years ago, now it’s just old hat.

Within the Introduction, the following statement stood out like a flashing red light when I read it: "To be successful, you must translate your passion into a powerful story and tell it in a way that generates "contagious energy," so that your audience reflects on your tweet, blog post, or email, long after they leave their computers." This, right here, is where many SMBs struggle.What follows is excellent commentary as to the effect of this cause. "By doing this, you generate participation, net...

What I especially liked about the book was the sense that both authors are passionate about not only social media and its ability to effect change, but more importantly teaching the reader how to "know what they know" to orchestrate their own social media success story. They created a story-driven playbook to inspire people to see the possibilities open to them without getting lost chasing pointless metrics. The thing that made the book interesting for me is that it is not limited to social netw...

This book had a lot of useful information. I feel like I left it knowing more, which is the goal I have for every book I read.

A few weeks ago the director at my library sent out an email to managers gauging what the interest would be in participating in the Florida Library Association’s One Book, One State book discussion for 2013. The response was positive, so I placed a hold for the library’s digital copy and was able to read The Dragonfly Effect this past week.Storytelling is the “in” thing right now in the nonprofit world– and libraries are no different. The Dragonfly Effect takes this a bit further and describes a...

Jennifer Aaker and Andy Smith are clear that their goal in writing The Dragonfly Effect was to help the reader harness social technology to meet their goals. While the use of animal-themed literary devices to make business points could be worn out after penguins, mice, beavers and hedgehogs; that is not the case with this well-written and useful social media guide.The Dragonfly in this case has a body (to keep it and your social media goals airborne) and four wings: wing 1 is focus, wing 2 is gr...

Quick and helpful readThe book is well written and keeps you interested throughout. A lot of helpful information on using social media to get things done.

How does one do effective marketing of a social cause in our contemporary world with its ubiquitous internet, email, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and online blogs? Jennifer Aaker and Andy Smith show how to harness the power of contemporary social media in The Dragonfly Effect. Their research led to developing a model of how to “Focus + GET” success. Jennifer is a social psychologist and professor of marketing at Stanford Business School; Andy, her husband, is a marketing consultant.The Dragonfly