Social networking for business : choosing the right tools and resources to fit your needs

Today, organizations increasingly expect their social computing applications and communities to create meaningful, measurable business value. That won't happen by itself: it requires careful planning and active, intelligent management. In Social Networking for Business , Rawn Shah brings together business social computing patterns and best practices drawn from his extensive experience running online communities at IBM. He systematically covers all four key aspects of successful planning and management: people, place, purpose , and production . Drawing on many real-world examples, he identifies key success factors associated with launching online communities that meet their goals, and guides you through managing the crucial "micro-challenges" businesses face in keeping them vibrant. You'll discover how to successfully architect social environments and experiences; build participation, trust and reputation; empower participants without creating anarchy; identify the right social functions for your communities; use social computing to collaborate and create valuable new information; build a social culture; staff online communities cost-effectively; avoid pitfalls that lead to failure; even measure social capital and link it to financial results. Whether you're a social computing strategist or in-the-trenches manager, chances are you've been on your own, until now. This book gives you the expert guidance and support you need every step of the way.

Author Notes

Rawn Shah is best practices lead in the Social Software Enablement team in IBM Software Group, helping to bring the worldwide population of more than 350,000 IBMers closer together and to improve their productivity through social software. His job involves investigating the wide range of social computing technologies, collecting best practices, measuring the usage and behavior of social software as it impacts productivity, and advising on implementation, governance, and operations.

In his prior job as community program manager for IBM developerWorks, he led a team of operations and development staff covering the worldwide network of thousands of communities, blogs, wikis, and social computing environments supported by IBM. He also led the creation of the developerWorks spaces software tool, a multitenant system to allow individuals and teams to bring many social tools together into their own focused social environments.

An avid software gamer, he has been involved in the online gaming world since 1990, both as a player, a guild leader, and hosting massively multiplayer games. He has witnessed how these social environments have grown from underground curiosities to the billion-dollar businesses of today, with the nature of social grouping and collaboration evolving hand in hand with every new offering.

He has previously served as network administrator, systems programmer, Web project manager, entrepreneur, author, technology writer, and editor in different business environments: as a sole proprietor, in a small startup, and in a Fortune 50 company. He has contributed to six other books, the most recent being the category-leading Service Oriented Architecture Compass, which since has been translated into four languages. His nearly 300 article contributions to technical periodicals such as JavaWorld, LinuxWorld, CNN.com, SunWorld, Advanced Systems, and Windows NT World Japan, covered a wide range of topics from software development to network environments to consumer electronics.

Reviews 2

Choice Review

Shah (IBM) aims to help readers understand social computing and social networking tools, but his work is vitiated by limited coverage of key social networking platforms such as LinkedIn and Twitter. One intriguing example presented is Amazon's "plogs" (product blogs), in which authors write about their products and doings. Other examples are interesting, though some perhaps are not useful to most readers. These include IBM's InnovationJam (150,000 business partner online event), Amazon's inclusion of customer reviews as a burgeoning collaborative community, and even Disney's Club Penguin. Shah discusses technological developments such as cloud computing, though their applicability to social networking is not adequately considered. He also examines Wikipedia's dynamic quality control process and covers collaborative approaches such as social brainstorming, "crowdsourcing" (doing a project through a large group), relationship mapping and mining, and location-centered social interactions. Informative chapters describe what is involved in creating information socially and mapping the engagement activities of social group members, including a model for identifying commitment as a lens to examine a social group's formation and evolution over a life cycle. A more useful overview of this topic for students is The Social Media Bible by Lon Safko and David K. Brake (CH, Sep'09, 47-0374). Summing Up: Optional. Most appropriate for practitioners. C. Wankel St. John's University, New York

Library Journal Review

For companies looking to increase exposure and revenues in today's online environment, leveraging social technologies is serious business. Any project or venture using social technologies requires a strategy, an oversight structure, and mechanisms to measure the outcome. Shah (social software enablement, IBM Software Group) here documents these best practices and identifies patterns and metrics as well. Do not let the slim size of this text fool you; this is quite a dense read and is extremely granular in nature. Furthermore, the book has a strong emphasis on IBM solutions, which might make it more difficult for smaller businesses to embrace the advice. VERDICT While the advice offered here on macro- and micro-level activities is technically applicable to any social project or initiative, readers may not always be able to relate to the content or the examples. In the end, this is a scholarly text appropriate for only the most serious-minded and is potentially an excellent resource for MBA programs.-Judy Brink-Drescher, Molloy Coll. Lib., Rockville Centre, NY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Acknowledgments	p. xiii
About the Author	p. xiv
Chapter 1 Social Computing on the Ascent	p. 1
Reshaping the Way We Work	p. 5
Integrating into Business Processes and Activities	p. 8
Summary	p. 9
Chapter 2 Sharing a Social Experience	p. 11
Modeling Social Experiences	p. 17
Different Experiences for a Complex World	p. 21
Summary	p. 23
Chapter 3 Leadership in Social Environments	p. 25
Governance and Leadership Models	p. 28
A Selection of Leadership Models	p. 29
The Centralized Models	p. 29
The Delegated Model	p. 39
The Representative Model	p. 34
The Starfish Model	p. 35
The Swarm Model	p. 35
Choosing a Leadership Model	p. 37
Leaders and Influences	p. 40
Summary	p. 49
Chapter 4 Social Tasks: Collaborating on Ideas	p. 45
The Structure of Social Tasks	p. 46
Identifying Beneficiaries	p. 47
Describing the Form of Aggregation	p. 48
Building a Template for a Task	p. 49
Different Models of Social Tasks	p. 49
Idea Generation	p. 50
Codevelopment	p. 53
Finding People	p. 58
Summary	p. 60
Chapter 5 Social Tasks: Creating and Managing
Information	p. 61
Recommendations and Reviews	p. 61
Reviews	p. 62
Direct Social Recommendations	p. 63
Derived Social Recommendations	p. 65
Creating and Categorizing Information	p. 66
Sharing Collections	p. 67
Folksonomies and Social Tagging	p. 68
Direct Social Content Creation	p. 70
Derived Social Content Generation	p. 71
Filtering Information	p. 72
Social Q&A Systems	p. 73
Summary	p. 74
Chapter 6 Social Ecosystems and Domains	p. 75
Grouping Instances	p. 75
Grouping Tools	p. 77
Grouping Audiences into Domains	p. 78
Who in the Organization Should Run the Social Environment?	p. 81
Summary	p. 83
Chapter 7 Building a Social Culture	p. 85
Defining a Culture for a Social Environment	p. 86
Ideology and Values	p. 87
Behavior and Rituals	p. 88
Imagery	p. 90
Storytelling	p. 92
Culture and Maturity of Social Environments	p. 93
The Cultural Impact of Social Architecture	p. 94
How Social Experience Models Impact Culture	p. 94
How Social Leadership Models Impact Culture	p. 97
How Social Tasks Impact Cultural Values	p. 99
Summary	p. 99
Chapter 8 Engaging and Encouraging Members	p. 101
Belonging and Commitment	p. 101
Creating a Model for Identifying Commitment	p. 103
Maturing over a Lifecycle	p. 108
Programs to Grow or Encourage Your Social Group	p. 112
Membership Reward Programs	p. 112
Recruiting Evangelists and Advocates	p. 114
Member Training and Mentoring Programs	p. 116
Summary	p. 117
Chapter 9 Community and Social Experience Management	p. 119
The Value and Characteristics of a Community Manager	p. 120
Personality Traits and Habits	p. 125
Where Do Community Managers Fit in an Organization?	p. 127
Community Manager Tasks and Responsibilities	p. 1.29
Member and Relationship Development	p. 129
Topic and Activity Development	p. 132
Administrative Tasks	p. 133
Communications and Promotion	p. 135
Business Development	p. 136
Summary	p. 137
Chapter 10 Measuring Social Environments	p. 139
What Can You Measure?	p. 140
Dimensions of Measurement	p. 143
Types of Metrics	p. 144
Metrics and Social Experiences	p. 147
Measurement Mechanisms and Methods	p. 149
Quantitative Analytic Measurement Mechanisms	p. 149
Qualitative Measurement through Surveys and Interviews	p. 150
Summary	p. 152
Chapter 11 Social Computing Value	p. 153
Defining the Structure of a Social Environment	p. 154
Choosing a Social Experience	p. 154
Setting a Social Leadership Model	p. 156
Defining a Social Task	p. 157
Grouping Experiences and Identifying the Audience Domain	p. 159
Cultural Forces Shaping Social Environments	p. 160
Social Computing and Business Strategy	p. 161
Index	p. 163

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