Social Media Book Review: Winning Work with LinkedIn by Adam Gordon

Adam Gordon is well known in certain business sectors in Glasgow and London and in this concise read he distills a lot of his advice into a handy-to-read PDF that business types can dip into on their iPhones, iPads and other devices.

But is it any good? Will you win at the Social Buzz Awards with it?

It's certainly a brief read, coming in at 33 pages (58 pages on the Kindle version) with two of them full of blurb and quotes telling you how good the book is. That doesn't mean the other 31 pages are lightweight mind you. A bit like Blanchard's book, there's only so much Gordon can teach, nudging people to do it for themselves online.

To that end, the book succeeds as it is packed with useful tips and advice, from why you should wait two days before responding to a connection request to the best days and times to be on LinkedIn.

It's all presented with a very nice human, personalised touch with enough sector-specific examples of how it can be used for businesses to expand. Even better, unlike so many American books in this area, there's no nicking other people's work and passing it off as his own. Everything here - all of the successes - appear to have been carried out by Gordon.

But before you part with your £13 (it's cheaper to buy from Gordon's own site than Amazon) it's worth considering that the book isn't perfect. The screengrab images are of poor quality and hard to see what Gordon is referring to in them, the formatting in the PDF is also a little off with the main text running over the patterns that adorn the bottom of every page.

While there are case studies, they could do with a bit more depth and meat on the bones. It would be even better if the companies involved were named so that readers could go and see how it is done and more advice was given on LinkedIn Today and how companies can boost their profile by having their articles in it.

So is it worth £13, bearing in mind that the much-longer works of Blanchard, Brogan, Clapperton, Solis and others are available for less and contain hundreds of more pages? Yes, it is. It's quite a tight read without fluff and there's no doubt that the book lives up to its title (if nothing else, it will certainly have won work for Gordon) if the advice in it is followed through.

And besides, as it's all about LinkedIn, the odds are most people who buy this will claim it back on company expenses.

The Social Buzz Awards 2012 are open for entries until August 1 2012. Click here to enter.