The First Best-Practice Guide to Executing Any Type of Social Computing Project
Organizations today arent 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 dont just manage themselves: 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 youll 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
Muu info
Today, organizations increasingly expect their social computing applications and communities to create meaningful, measurable business value. That wont 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. Youll 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 youre a social computing strategist or in-the-trenches manager, chances are youve been on your own, until now. This book gives you the expert guidance and support you need every step of the way.
| Acknowledgments |
|
xiii | |
| About the Author |
|
xiv | |
|
Social Computing on the Ascent |
|
|
1 | (10) |
|
Reshaping the Way We Work |
|
|
5 | (4) |
|
Integrating into Business Processes and Activities |
|
|
8 | (1) |
|
|
|
9 | (2) |
|
Sharing a Social Experience |
|
|
11 | (14) |
|
Modeling Social Experiences |
|
|
17 | (6) |
|
Different Experiences for a Complex World |
|
|
21 | (2) |
|
|
|
23 | (2) |
|
Leadership in Social Environments |
|
|
25 | (20) |
|
Governance and Leadership Models |
|
|
28 | (1) |
|
A Selection of Leadership Models |
|
|
29 | (8) |
|
|
|
29 | (3) |
|
|
|
32 | (2) |
|
|
|
34 | (1) |
|
|
|
35 | (1) |
|
|
|
36 | (1) |
|
Choosing a Leadership Model |
|
|
37 | (5) |
|
|
|
40 | (2) |
|
|
|
42 | (3) |
|
Social Tasks: Collaborating on Ideas |
|
|
45 | (16) |
|
The Structure of Social Tasks |
|
|
46 | (3) |
|
Identifying Beneficiaries |
|
|
47 | (1) |
|
Describing the Form of Aggregation |
|
|
48 | (1) |
|
Building a Template for a Task |
|
|
49 | (1) |
|
Different Models of Social Tasks |
|
|
49 | (11) |
|
|
|
50 | (3) |
|
|
|
53 | (5) |
|
|
|
58 | (2) |
|
|
|
60 | (1) |
|
Social Tasks: Creating and Managing Information |
|
|
61 | (14) |
|
Recommendations and Reviews |
|
|
61 | (5) |
|
|
|
62 | (1) |
|
Direct Social Recommendations |
|
|
63 | (2) |
|
Derived Social Recommendations |
|
|
65 | (1) |
|
Creating and Categorizing Information |
|
|
66 | (6) |
|
|
|
67 | (1) |
|
Folksonomies and Social Tagging |
|
|
68 | (2) |
|
Direct Social Content Creation |
|
|
70 | (1) |
|
Derived Social Content Generation |
|
|
71 | (1) |
|
|
|
72 | (2) |
|
|
|
73 | (1) |
|
|
|
74 | (1) |
|
Social Ecosystems and Domains |
|
|
75 | (10) |
|
|
|
75 | (2) |
|
|
|
77 | (1) |
|
Grouping Audiences into Domains |
|
|
78 | (5) |
|
Who in the Organization Should Run the Social Environment? |
|
|
81 | (2) |
|
|
|
83 | (2) |
|
Building a Social Culture |
|
|
85 | (16) |
|
Defining a Culture for a Social Environment |
|
|
86 | (8) |
|
|
|
87 | (1) |
|
|
|
88 | (2) |
|
|
|
90 | (2) |
|
|
|
92 | (1) |
|
Culture and Maturity of Social Environments |
|
|
93 | (1) |
|
The Cultural Impact of Social Architecture |
|
|
94 | (5) |
|
How Social Experience Models Impact Culture |
|
|
94 | (3) |
|
How Social Leadership Models Impact Culture |
|
|
97 | (2) |
|
How Social Tasks Impact Cultural Values |
|
|
99 | (1) |
|
|
|
99 | (2) |
|
Engaging and Encouraging Members |
|
|
101 | (18) |
|
|
|
101 | (11) |
|
Creating a Model for Identifying Commitment |
|
|
103 | (5) |
|
Maturing over a Lifecycle |
|
|
108 | (4) |
|
Programs to Grow or Encourage Your Social Group |
|
|
112 | (5) |
|
Membership Reward Programs |
|
|
112 | (2) |
|
Recruiting Evangelists and Advocates |
|
|
114 | (2) |
|
Member Training and Mentoring Programs |
|
|
116 | (1) |
|
|
|
117 | (2) |
|
Community and Social Experience Management |
|
|
119 | (20) |
|
The Value and Characteristics of a Community Manager |
|
|
120 | (9) |
|
Personality Traits and Habits |
|
|
125 | (2) |
|
Where Do Community Managers Fit in an Organization? |
|
|
127 | (2) |
|
Community Manager Tasks and Responsibilities |
|
|
129 | (8) |
|
Member and Relationship Development |
|
|
129 | (3) |
|
Topic and Activity Development |
|
|
132 | (1) |
|
|
|
133 | (2) |
|
Communications and Promotion |
|
|
135 | (1) |
|
|
|
136 | (1) |
|
|
|
137 | (2) |
|
Measuring Social Environments |
|
|
139 | (14) |
|
|
|
140 | (9) |
|
Dimensions of Measurement |
|
|
143 | (1) |
|
|
|
144 | (3) |
|
Metrics and Social Experiences |
|
|
147 | (2) |
|
Measurement Mechanisms and Methods |
|
|
149 | (3) |
|
Quantitative Analytic Measurement Mechanisms |
|
|
149 | (1) |
|
Qualitative Measurement through Surveys and Interviews |
|
|
150 | (2) |
|
|
|
152 | (1) |
|
|
|
153 | (10) |
|
Defining the Structure of a Social Environment |
|
|
154 | (6) |
|
Choosing a Social Experience |
|
|
154 | (2) |
|
Setting a Social Leadership Model |
|
|
156 | (1) |
|
|
|
157 | (2) |
|
Grouping Experiences and Identifying the Audience Domain |
|
|
159 | (1) |
|
Cultural Forces Shaping Social Environments |
|
|
160 | (1) |
|
Social Computing and Business Strategy |
|
|
161 | (2) |
| Index |
|
163 | |
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.
