If you’ve ever wanted to hear the opinions of 100 leaders in the social media space crystallize their thoughts into 400 words and donate to cancer research, here’s your big chance.

Connect: Marketing in the Social Media Era does all of that, and more: You’re bound to find a number of perspectives and insights into your own marketing you haven’t yet considered. Think of the cost savings alone. After shipping, it’s about $25. That’s like getting each essay for a quarter. Best of all, 100% of the proceeds are donated to the Susan Komen for the Cure foundation.

The book is filled with marketing heavyweights I truly respect and admire, like Adam Kmiec, Alan Wolk, Brandie Feuer, Adam Broitman, Ann Handley, Dave Knox, Brian Morrisey, not to mention 93 other vibrant perspectives on social media marketing. As I flip through the book, I’m also being introduced to a ton of great minds I never knew before.

Tremendous thanks again to Jeff Caswell, who conceived the idea and is the organizing force behind the entire Project100.

Go ahead: buy your copy right now.

Still need more convincing? You can find my 400 words after the jump:

Social Media: The Marketer’s Burden

Marketers are responsible for developing the infrastructure that will lead the modern word into an era of ubiquitous computing.

Over the course of history inventors were responsible for creating technology. Marketers help finance that channel’s maturity by selling space strategically.The reality of social media is more than a strategy for getting the word out: it is code for trying to understand how ubiquitous computing will unfold.

Ubiquitous computing is abstract and unwieldy at best. We know it will mean an interface and technological infrastructure that connects us all: people and objects.

In the past, objects grew independently of each other, and always within the same core uses. The Icebox became the refrigerator. The oven matured through the toaster oven, to the microwave. Completely integrated computing is almost impossible for most people to comprehend or visualize.

To handle this change, society has framed technological ubiquity as Social Media. We’ve settled on marketers as the agency of change for this exciting era in human communications. Marketers: take a deep breath. Here are two basics to help guide the way and lessen the burden.

Create change through identifying similarities

The only way to create effective consensus is to disregard differences. Focus on what technologies have in common. Look at the technologies of the past to guide stakeholders into the future.

For instance, if your brand buys TV, adopt the same sponsorship models for programming and development as those that drove the golden age. Brands that play in social media do best when they facilitate the entertainment or utility: not by interrupting it.

Include everyone

Knowing that social media is a channel like the phone is important. It should be the domain of your operations department. Since it’s not, education has also become the marketers’ job: to get individuals, and eventually the entire company involved in the channel. Understand that ubiquitous computing is coming, and you’re the sparkplug. For now: keep educating, and help people see what’s possible on their own terms. Let patience, persistence and creativity lead.

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