I’ve encountered a lot of people recently who are just beginning to take their core message to the digital space. Their intentions are to take the conversations they’ve created in traditional spaces and translate them into an online environment.

They intuitively sense this is the direction consumers are moving. (Hey…everyone moves at their own pace. I’m OK with that.) What I uncover is that many of them aren’t just new to taking their message to the digital space but new to social media completely.

In an effort to help solve this knowledge gap while we work on the experience gap, I recommend five books that are instrumental in getting the basics about the new rules of conversation:

I know that these aren’t the only books available on the subject. There are countless numbers of them which can be overwhelming for people trying to learn a new discipline, vocabulary, etc. And you may disagree that this combination is the right one. These books are the ones I keep going back to. (Even Groundswell which was published in 2008 is still an excellent starting point.)

What books do you recommend to newbies to the digital space?

Ben Stroup is a content activist in a post-paragraph world. He is chief broker of opportunity at Ben Stroup Enterprises. Connect with Ben via email, Twitter, and Google+. Subscribe via email to learn how to use content to move people to action.

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