Social Networking for Business: Choosing the Right Tools and Resources to Fit Your Needs

by Rawn Shah

The First Best-Practice Guide to Executing Any Type of Social Computing Project   Organizations today aren’t just participating in social networking, collaborative computing, and online communities--they are depending on those communities to play crucially important roles in their business. But these collaborative environments don’t just manage To succeed, they must be guided and nurtured carefully, actively, and intelligently.   In Social Networking for Business , Rawn Shah brings together patterns and best practices drawn from his extensive experience managing worldwide online communities at IBM and participating in social networking on the Internet. Drawing on multiple real-world examples, Shah identifies key success factors associated with launching social networking projects to meet business objectives and guides you through managing the crucial “micro-challenges” you’ll face in keeping them vibrant.   •   From mega-trends to micro-issues     Mastering both high-level strategy and day-to-day, ground-level management   •   Defining the social experience you want to provide to your community     Clarifying how members can join together and collaborate on collective tasks   •   Focusing on the crucial human factors     Building a culture of engagement in deeper collaborative relationships   •   Promoting effective leadership and governance     Setting ground rules that work appropriately for the situation, without “oppression”   •   Building the skills to manage and measure your collaborative project     Discovering the skills necessary to effectively lead computing projects  

Genres: Business, Nonfiction

171 pages, Hardcover

First published December 24, 2009

Reviews

[Nascha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good book on the role of social networking in business. The author, Rawn Shah, really breaks down the different types of social networking software, websites and communities. He does a really good job of pointing out the familiar sites (Facebook, Twitter and Amazon) and how they fit into these categories. He also points out the social roles, environments and etiquette on social networking sites. For business owners, or those looking to start their own business, he points out the roles and expectations of management and customer service.

Caveat: This book is very technical and reads like a business textbook, which I think it is. It isn't "Social Networking for Dummies." I didn't have a problem with that as I was an Economics major, but just be forewarned.

[Jj Kwashnak · Rating 3 out of 5]

Of the buzzwords that plague managers today one of the most prominent is social networking. Mention social networking to many and the immediate reaction is to think of prominent social media such as Facebook, Twitter or MySpace. In his book, Shaw addresses the networking that goes on in a business setting that is manifest through these and other social media tools. Social networking today is simply an expansion of meetings and water cooler conversations that business has seen for decades expanded to include more people and to be free of physical constraints for interaction to take place. What once took place around a table can take place at any hour online, with a strong centralized command and control structure or with a more open participant democracy. We tend to think of social networking as an online phenomenon but at the heart of it is the internetworking of individuals regardless of the medium. This slim volume is a detailed study of the styles of social networking, including the variety of networks, command and control, structure and metrics. The author draws upon real life examples (for instance right here with the interaction of readers posting reviews on Amazon is the social task of creating and managing information) to speak generally about some of these networking structures in action. Shah works with the Social Software Enablement team at IBM and cites IBM's social networking extensively as examples of the topic he is discussing, which is fine but also represents tools that few readers will have any experience with. For readers with experience in social media, a number of the points made by the author will seem obvious. Shah also loves to create charts showing differing types of structures which, unfortunately given the nature of many network structure and models, are less illuminating and more charts of repetitive data and overlapping functions. There is some good information in the book, especially regarding management and control structures for networks that reflect the nature of the task and goals of the network. Overall, though, the volume is more of a recitation of facts than an examination of the resources of social networking for business and the result is a volume far better suited for academics and study than for the practical implementation in a business environment.

[Bojan Tunguz · Rating 1 out of 5]

I love social networking tools. I am continuously logged into Facebook, and I use Twitter more or less regularly to promote some of my professional websites. I thought that a book on social networking for business would help me use these tools more effectively, and perhaps improve the visibility and accessibility of my professional websites. However, from the information that I've gathered about this book it seems to be geared more towards large businesses which want to utilize social networking tools to manage their personnel and projects. Or so I assume based on the author's background as some sort of social networking guru at IBM. The fact is, this book is so atrociously badly written that I will never know for sure. Poor choice of words, awkward phrasing, sentences in different paragraphs that allude to each other are just some of the problems with writing that I encountered already on the first couple of pages. I found myself reading and rereading several passages in order to understand what was going on. I can't believe that a reputable publishing house would publish something like this. This book is in a need of a LOT of editing, but I fear that even with some heroic editing effort it still might be unsalvageable.

[Pat · Rating 2 out of 5]

More of a research paper than a how-to guide, Shah examines the ecosystem of the Social Network. I appreciated how he established a framework and sticks to the framework throughout the book.

Well researched, this book can serve as a manual for low big companies need to be thinking about Social Networking.

[Em · Rating 1 out of 5]

A quick read because I skipped a lot of paragraphs. It's a combination of really basic information that everyone should already know, mixed with super in-depth information that no one ever needs to know. Not really a useful read.