Yesterday I had a brief conversation via email with Dan Zarella (You can check out his impressive bio here). His blog is one I frequent often, it offers valuable insight and metrics on new media and marketing.

He is the author of “The Social Media Marketing Book.” This book is great start for anyone getting started in social media or any expert looking to get back to the basics.  Here is Dan’s post  introducing his book.

He was kind enough to answer the following questions I posed to him in light of the launch of his book.

(dh) What are two things you learned while writing your book that changed your philosophy or mindset regarding social media or new media marketing?

(dz) “That there is a ton to be learned from revisiting the basics of social media best practices. I spend a lot of time working on fairly deep and advanced stuff, and the book was fun because it forced me to look back to how someone would learn from step one.”

(dz) “Not all social media platforms or technologies are right for every business need. A marketer needs to understand enough about all the possibilities to understand what not to do.”

(dh) Wayne Gretzky said what separated him from others was he knew where the puck was going. Where do you see the “puck ” going for social media?

(dz)”Augmented reality, everything from the virtual reality type stuff to more mundane tweetups and Foursquare type of applications. The puck is moving in a direction that will make the real world important to social media again.”