Facebook Era : Tapping Online Social Networks to Build Better Products, Reach New Audiences, and Sell More Stuff

by Shih, Clara

• ISBN13: 9780137152223
• ISBN10: 0137152221
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-01-01
• Publisher: Prentice Hall

Summary

Through case studies, examples, and a practical how-to guide, Shih, one of the world's top business social networking thought leaders and practitioners, helps individuals, companies, and organizations understand and take advantage of social networks to transform customer relationships for sales and marketing.

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xii
About the Author	p. xiv
Introduction	p. 1
Why You're Reading This Book	p. 2
Welcome to the Facebook Era	p. 3
How to Use This Book	p. 5
A Brief History of Social Media
The Fourth Revolution	p. 11
Mainframe Computing	p. 12
The PC	p. 14
The World Wide Web	p. 15
The Online Social Graph	p. 17
Empowering the End User	p. 22
The Evolution of Digital Media	p. 25
Storage and Creation	p. 26
Media Distribution	p. 26
The Future: Social Filtering	p. 29
Why Facebook Is Different	p. 34
Social Network Ecosystems	p. 36
What the Social Graph Means for Digital Media	p. 42
Social Capital from Networking Online	p. 43
Establishing a New Category of Relationships	p. 44
Online Interactions Supplement Offline Networking	p. 50
Flattening Effect	p. 52
Creating New Value from Network Effects	p. 52
Blurring the Lines	p. 57
Transforming the Way We Do Business
Social Sales	p. 61
Transforming the Sales Cycle	p. 62
The Need for Multiple Network Structures	p. 79
CRM-The First Social Network?	p. 80
Social Network Marketing	p. 81
Hypertargeting	p. 82
Loyalty and Engagement	p. 89
Social Distribution	p. 96
Challenges and Limitations	p. 103
Social Innovation	p. 107
Concept Generation	p. 108
Prototyping	p. 115
Commercial Implementation	p. 117
Continual Iteration	p. 120
Social Recruiting	p. 123
The Best Social Networks for Recruiting	p. 124
Sourcing Candidates	p. 126
Candidate References	p. 134
Employer and Recruiter Reputation	p. 135
Keeping in Touch	p. 137
Advice for Candidates	p. 141
Employee Poaching	p. 141
Your Step-By-Step Guide to Using Facebook for Business
Engage Your Customers	p. 145
Start with Strategy and Objectives	p. 146
Find Your Unsanctioned Communities	p. 148
Define and Establish Your Presence	p. 155
Get Your Message Across	p. 163
Hypersegment Your Audience	p. 164
Choose Your Media Strategy	p. 167
Build and Manage Your Relationships	p. 181
Setting Up Your Facebook Account	p. 181
Interacting on Facebook	p. 187
Asking for and Providing Introductions	p. 193
Corporate Governance and Strategy	p. 195
Choosing the Right Network Model	p. 196
Identify Key Risk Areas	p. 198
Partner with Legal, IT, and PR	p. 200
The Future of Social Business	p. 203
The Innovator's Dilemma	p. 204
The ROI of Social	p. 205
Social Trends	p. 205
What the Future Means for Doing Business	p. 206
Final Remarks	p. 211
Snapshot of Top Social Networking Sites, March 2009	p. 213
Index	p. 223
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

Introduction Introduction "I am a firm believer in the people." Abraham LincolnIt was the spring of 2007. Smoking indoors hadn't yet been outlawed, though this place might not have cared either way. These two older men, clearly regulars, sat in the back corner, bare, lanky arms hanging out of their wifebeaters, cigarette dangling out one side of their mouth and a toothpick out the other. They were gesturing animatedly, laughing, eating, smoking, chattering away in loud Cantonese about this and that.I tuned them out to focus on my steaming bowl of wonton soup. Just then, out of the corner of my ear, I heard them just barely: "...blah blah blah Facebook." I instantly sat up to listen. I had not been mistakenthese two men slurping down their congee at an anonymous diner tucked away in a corner of Hong Kong where foreigners never go, and probably don't know about, were talking about Facebook . Their children who were in college abroad got them into it, and now they were hooked. I was floored. It was the moment I realized that if Facebook was not already mainstream, that it would become so very, very soon.I flew back to San Francisco the following week and attended the first f8, Facebook's developer conference. There, they unveiled a new platform that would allow third-party developers and software vendors to build applications that Facebook users could add to their Facebook pages, such as their profile. The keynote presentation and product demonstrations were novel and interestingnew Facebook applications such as iLike for sharing music and concerts with friends, Slide for sharing photos and videos, and so on and so forth.Still, I felt like something was missing. Games and SuperPoking are fun, but where were the business applications? I was working (and still work) at an enterprise computing company, salesforce.com, which made its name developing customer relationship management (CRM) applications. But wasn't relationship management at the core of what Facebook was offering, albeit in a more fun and casual and modern way?That night, I went home and sketched out an idea for bringing Facebook to business. As a product marketer, I had been spending a lot of time on sales calls and saw that the most successful reps established immediate rapport with their prospects and had the strongest personal relationships with their customers. Meanwhile in my personal life, I saw Facebook help establish faster and better rapport with people I had just met, and help me maintain closer relationships with my friends. So I decided to bring Facebook to CRM.With my friend Todd Perry's help, I developed Faceconnector (originally called Faceforce), which pulls Facebook profile and friend information into Salesforce CRM. Instead of anonymous cold calling, sales reps and other business professionals could get to know the person behind the name and title, and even ask for warm introductions from mutual friends.Fortunately, Todd and I weren't alone. Enterprise start-up companies like WorkLight, InsideView, and Appirio evolved their products to include Facebook and other traditionally "consumer" social media. New companies emerged, like Mzinga, Socialcast, and Small World Labs, to build enterprise social technol