From MSU Today on Impact Radio: MSU alumnus Erik Qualman is the author of Socialnomics: How social media transforms the way we live and do business. Socialnomics made Amazon’s #1 Best Selling List after only three weeks of publication and has been in the Top 100 Best Selling Business Books List consistently since its launch in August.

“Most people are familiar with word of mouth; I’m talking about world of mouth,” Qualman says. “Word of mouth has been a pretty efficient way to get marketing out cheaply.

“But with world of mouth when you think about posting something on Twitter that immediately goes to a hundred million folks and the communication doesn’t get changed over time like in a kids’ game of telephone, in a social media world those messages are passed along digitally and are less likely to have their meaning changed.

Qualman says the main message of Socialnomics is that we should all have fun and common sense and that we should have plenty of both in the social media world.

“In social media you need to do rather than deliberate,” says Qualman. “You need to fail forward, fail fast and fail better. You’re not going to get it right the first time so make sure you get out there and just learn better and fail better.”

Hosted by Russ White.

Hear the Conversation 16:57 – 9.7 mb mp3