Social Nation: How to Harness the Power of Social Media to Attract Customers, Motivate Employees, and Grow Your Business [Hardcover]

Barry Libert (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 10, 2010

It's time to join Social Nation and prosper! This book will show you, as an employee, customer or partner, how to use new social technologies, make yourself heard, and produce better products and services. As a leader and manager, you'll find out how to use these tools to harness social interactions to improve your business and to create your own social nation. The book provides a social assessment for leaders, managers and employees to scientifically evaluate your individual social skills and competencies. This book relies on well-known case studies about businesses that illustrate how social principles and strategies can help organizations to:

• Integrate social skills into existing managerial and leadership practices
• Overcome some of the common risks and objections that are often cited as obstacles to becoming a successful social enterprise
• Adopt new forms of social leadership across the entire organization
• Attain social intelligence by listening, understanding, and measuring outcomes of your investment in relationships with customers, employees and partners
• Realize tangible economic benefits and ROI from new product and service offerings Social Nation provides readers with an opportunity to join the Social Nation community and share experiences with other leaders and social individuals.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Praise for SOCIAL NATION

"Barry Libert is showing us all how to win by getting from me to we in our social world."
—John Kosner, Senior Vice President and General Manager, ESPN Digital Media

"Social Nation is a must-read for business leaders striving to reset the rules of the game."
—Dwayne H. Spradlin, President and Chief Executive Officer, InnoCentive, Inc.

"Barry Libert is a collaboration pioneer, not just as a thinker but as a practitioner who is curating some of the most significant communities in business. Read Social Nation for his wisdom about how today's companies can use social media for success."
—Don Tapscott, author of fourteen books including (with Anthony Williams)MacroWikinomics: Rebooting Business and the World

Harness social media connectedness andmake your business personal. Join the social revolution at socialnationbook.com.

The future of business is about building communities for customers, employees, and partners. Social Nation demonstrates just how important emotional and social connections are to attracting and keeping customers, motivating employees, and growing a more profitable, viable business. To build your own Social Nation, this book gives you a complete toolbox, including seven principles for creating a successful social strategy, as well as an assessment that helps you apply your skills and talents to today's networked world.

Pick up Social Nation and embrace this new revolution, its innovative technologies, and the fresh revenue sources that will transform your organization.

About the Author

BARRY LIBERT is the founder and CEO of Mzinga, a company that provides social software that manages two billion conversations a month for 15,000 communities on behalf of 300 well-known companies. He has coauthored four popular business books on information and social networks.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (September 10, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 047059926X
• ISBN-13: 978-0470599266
• Product Dimensions: 5.9 x 0.9 x 8.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (46 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,103,038 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Barry Libert is a board member, social, mobile and big data technology investor, and strategic advisor to boards and their leaders seeking to create value using today's technologies. His portfolio companies (past and present) manage more than 15,000 corporate social networks (customer and employee), 350,000 experts, and 2 billion monthly interactions. He has also advised companies such as Microsoft, GE Healthcare, SunLife, Deloitte, ESPN and the US Army on how to use social and mobile technologies to drive growth and innovation.

Barry has authored five (5) books and more than a dozen (12) e-books on the value of social networking and crowdsourcing. He has co-authored more than 1100 articles that have appeared in the WSJ, Barrons, Businessweek, NYT, Institutional Investor, Financial Times and other leading periodicals. He has also been on CNBC, CNN and Bloomberg TV. He has spoken at over 400 events to more than 30,000 people.

He is graduate of Tufts (BA) and Columbia Universities (MBA). He is happily married with two grown sons he adores.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Putting Social to Work September 30, 2010

By Rocklobster

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Starting with a real-life and enlightening exchange with is wife, Barry Libert begins to open our eyes to how we must take advantage of everything our new Social Nation has to offer. Libert seems to have written Social Nation so that we all can save the many good things about being in charge of a small company, of being an employee of a Fortune 500 company, of being a customer of the hardware store down the street.

Libert, has managed to write a business book which is truly for any adult, be they an employer, employee, or customer. The book has an excitement to it, due to how Mr. Libert has written at a pace which makes me and others feel that this is the time to fix some of the many things that were so great about American capitalism.

Today, if we did an impromptu interview out on the street, I would bet it would be hard to find customers who felt that the places they shopped actually even knew if they were a customer; and men and women who work in all sorts of buildings and industries would tell us that they have never had a real discussion with their manager or his manager together with other employees. Many would tell us that the "suggestion box," now seen only in movies before the 1970's, has been broken and out of service for the entire time they have worked at their job.

It is true that there have been "scares" about us losing how to really communicate with each other. Think of the television, then the cell phone, and ..... Libert spins no scare tactics in Social Nation. He has the facts. He cuts to the truth. For a number of decades businesses have cared more about assets and cash on hand, "than they did people and their relationships...." Well, now, with the Internet and the Web, companies, employees and their clients can regain what made capitalism in the United States so great, we were all part of it. We can be again. Companies can offer clients their own Web sites which would contain information about the products they have purchased, and, the company would offer specials directly to the customer and not through a blaring commercial. This would all be done on an opt in basis, no push advertising. The customer receives a genuine invitation to be a part of that business.

Better yet, as Social Nation points out, employees and employers can start rebuilding, or for most of us, start from scratch, the building of trust, commitment, and loyalty. Social Nation illustrates that what our kids take as just part of life, business can use to listen to employees and what they have to say, the good, the bad, the great suggestion which may be a company's best selling product the next year. All of it is possible. Just as important, the employees will feel part of something, because they are part of something. Something that Libert's Social Nation makes many of us yearn for, only now, it can be revived and made even better. That is how American business works.

At a time when many of us are looking for things to be hopeful about, Barry Libert bring us a gift of hope and of success, in Social Nation. Read more ›

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Power of a Social Virtual Community...A Must Read October 10, 2010

By Donna Karlin

Format:Hardcover

Social Nation: The title is powerful, the contents even more so. It's not about the number of people you rack up in your social networking world, it's about the relationships you forge behind each person you connect with. Barry speaks of a nation. It is a nation, one that goes beyond borders and organizations. We have power with people. This is a heads up reality checker to remind us to pay attention to relationships and to people as they're the ones who will bring you prosperity, continuous learning, growth, and help you make possibilities into reality.

I interviewed Barry for my book 'Leaders: Their Stories, Their Words' (launching end 2010) because he is a human-based 'Level Five' leader, one who pays attention to the people he's connecting in the world of social media. He brings people and technology together to strengthen relationships, not replace the first with the latter. He reminds us about humanity, connection and global sustainability. Buy this book. Read it once, and read it a few more times until you 'get it'. Then spread the word. Talk with people not at them. This is important.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars There is nothing new in this book. March 2, 2012

By sirois

Format:Hardcover

Social Nation, by Barry Libert, purports to be a cutting-edge guide to a philosophy that, if not embraced, could be the tragic downfall of your corporation. The philosophy is that Social Media is a fast-growing space where your customers will express their needs, wants and complaints, with or without you. The author claims that businesses that build "Social Nations" and get in front of this trend have better customer (and employee) loyalty and higher profitability than those that don't or won't.

Unfortunately, this book has many problems. First and most glaring are the grammatical errors (lots of run-on sentences), typos, and typesetting errors in every chapter. On the very first page of the Preface, while the author is discussing realizations he had from his wife's job at Harvard, "faculty" is spelled "faciulty." It's hard to criticize Harvard for being a closed institution when you can't spell faculty right. In Chapter 1, there are almost as many run-on sentences as there are paragraphs. Perhaps in an attempt to compensate for this, there are also quite a few extraneous commas. This and the large, "easy-read" print made the book feel amateur at best. I would like to believe that the author is an expert in his field; unfortunately, Social Nation is a treatise that is also a marketing piece for his own marketing (social software) company; one which helps other companies build "social nations." The typos and formatting errors made it difficult for me to accept an "expert" opinion since a true professional / publisher would at least have better proofreading and editing. Just because social media can be informal - the English language isn't, and I expect much more from a hardcover book than I do a blog.... Perhaps extremely ironically, the author has a section called "Don't Ignore Spelling and Grammar" in the chapter on etiquette, on p. 119. He states that what you write is a reflection of who you are, that you should use correct punctuation and spelling, and watch your grammar. By this point, I was starting to think book was written by a ghost writer who actually has a sense of humor.

The second, and most obvious problem are the various statistics and opinions cited that simply are not backed up. Tying data about companies' Social Media marketing efforts to their profitability seems like a circular argument. Companies with a smart online presence could also simply be the same companies who are already profitable and can afford PR departments with staff who monitor Twitter and create online content day in and day out. It would have been more compelling to show data that tied specific social media programs with profits that turned around, excluding all other factors (like new products, downsizing, acquisitions, or any other number of ways companies increase shareholder value). Given that isolating these variables would be difficult to do, it seemed like the author could have at least tried.

I grew even more skeptical when I read that the workplace is becoming more social because there are more women in the workplace, and women sure are social. While it's great to leverage relationship-building skills of any employee, that seemed like quite a leap. In my experience, the workplace is becoming less and less social as we battle a challenging economy, and employers demand productivity because honestly, there's someone else who wants your job. Water cooler conversations are almost a dinosaur concept and even salaried employees are micromanaged. There's almost no time for personal at work. So when the author made a leap from a Time magazine survey stating that 40 percept of women are the primary earners in their homes and that women are "on the verge" of outnumbering men, to a few paragraphs later stating that women "nearly dominate the workplace," he immediately undermined his own credibility. Women dominate the workplace, how? By the time he states that women's "personal values" (read: social skills?) are coming to work with them, implying that all that hype about Twitter is really because women love to chat and share things, I was more than a little irritated. In Part 2, Avon is cited as a company that, women and connection-driven, grows even during recessions. It is stated that while people postpone major purchases in a bad economy, women do not cut back on cosmetics. Really? Maybe it's because if you do want to spend money on cosmetics, a decision is made to support your friend or sister who has products at better prices than the chain drugstore? While I respect Avon's CEO, whose motto is "It's nice to be important, but it's far more important to be nice," and the fact that that social leadership is a key success driver for all businesses, I find that repeatedly, the author fails to explore every aspect needed to really earn credibility, and is in fact somewhat condescending.

In the chapter about "Why Social Skills Matter," I felt as though I was reading a Human Resources 101 guide to giving annual performance reviews. He outlines 4 major areas of organizational strength: Physical, Informational, Emotional, and Social. In a nutshell, that's: Hard work, Smart work, Making Connections, and knowing how to Listen. Enough said. Next there is a chapter on testing your own Social Quotient: are you an Adaptor? An Architect? A Collaborator? A Connector? A Creative thinker? Am I Transparent, a Risk Taker, or a Visionary? How about: Am I at a leadership seminar with bad buffet food? Every "type" is explored with pros and cautions listed. OK, great. What if someone is more than one type? What if I've overstaffed with too many Architects, and not enough Creatives? He doesn't even get into that.

But the book's not all bad. In fact, there are several major concepts that have a lot of potential, if the author would have carried them through with a little more care. One is that businesses need to find the social leaders in their organizations to create change and put others first. Makes sense, but this is only outlined with anecdotes and sections like "Business is Personal," where you're encouraged to bring your real personality to work. Unfortunately there is no data on why someone's ability to "manage communities" translates into bottom line value. Another solid set of concepts is that businesses should listen to their customers, take risks, create meaningful interactions, ask people what they really want, and give up control. Oh and mind your manners! Have good etiquette (because everyone is watching) and, if you can manage, some charisma (again, is this new?) and definitely don't forget to say please and thank you. If the author were to carry this concept through, he would have outlined how bad manners and poor etiquette drive away sales. There are just too many anecdotes on obvious topics that don't get fully developed, that I wonder if this book was published just to get a book published - not to say anything new.

Possibly the most solid concept is that it doesn't matter what business you are in, and that the manner in which you build a "Social Nation" can be very specific to your field. You don't have to blog or create Facebook promotions. Perhaps if you are in software publishing, open source software is the way to build your community and leverage ideas. Or take the example of corporations who gave employees their own social networks to share knowledge and ideas for efficiency, nurturing solid working relationships and a sense of community in the process. But again, there's nothing revolutionary about the fact that giving your employees and customers a voice, and hearing it, is a valuable process that can be converted into valuable assets: it's just that a lot of companies are late to the party.

It does seem obvious that businesses that hear their customers, respond quickly to complaints, and generate rapport by having executives blog regularly will increase customer confidence and loyalty. But that's just it - it's obvious. We have new tools through which companies must present a more transparent set of content and methods for customer care, and (gasp) actually trust their employees and customers to use these tools in a positive manner. I agree with the author that these tools must be leveraged. To make this book really matter as anything other than a poorly edited brochure, I would have liked to see real data about systems that created results, not situational anecdotes that sound compelling.

When the reader finally gets to the meat of things - the "how" to build your social nation, part 3 - it's a whopping 23 pages long, starting on page 187. By now you get the concept that if you have developed and nurtured friends and followers, they will create products and services for you. To get started, you need to deliver customer support via your online community (obvious). Then you build your brand through them (where's the new idea here?) Next, you do market research via this community (shouldn't that have been chapter 1?) Next, you leverage peers to train your people (sounds like a cost-saving measure), and finally you let others generate and develop your new products (while you bankroll all this value your community has generated). What? Where's the concern about intellectual property laws? Why do you own your customer's ideas - I missed that? Their suggestions, maybe, can be acted upon, but more than once in the book, the author discusses how absolutely genius it is to have people you are not paying, do your work for you. Oh and be sure to blog, enable comments, have discussion boards, take polls, and let your social nation members rate and review stuff. Then, they will become fanatics. There are also 10 pitfalls you should avoid, which includes neglecting your employees, partners, investors or customers in this process, under-investing in this process, or relying on a "build it and they will come" mentality. By this point in the book, there was so little that was compelling about building a Social Nation in the first place, that a reader wouldn't really be worried about the pitfalls, because there is almost nothing of value in this entire book to worry about falling from.

Finally, this book presents information as though creating and building relationships with your employees, vendors and customers is some kind of new concept. There is no business in the world, current or past, who didn't already know this. If they did it badly - regardless of the era, or the tools available - they floundered and possibly failed, while their competitors who were better at it, fared better. Insurance and all kinds of sales are fields where customer loyalty and "high-touch" interactions are cornerstones of success. Perhaps in recent decades of corporate greed, some businesses appeared cold and unapproachable, as the author contends. But it wasn't that long ago that my mother's generation used to be able to write letters to corporate headquarters of any business, and those letters would be read and replied to, often with promotions to make up for complaints - or thank you notes for the accolades. So none of these concepts are new, they were just perhaps set aside for a while when it became trendy to outsource call centers to other countries, implement auto-replies to email inquiries, or downsize to the point that support lines would be clogged for hours, guaranteeing your customers would hang up. More open, transparent methods of communication have made it so that companies cannot hide from customers and therefore must proactively address and even prevent runaway, negative recommendations from disgruntled employees.

It's just necessary. It's not new. And I am certain that if businesses find an easier way to impact the bottom line, they'll embrace that just as readily, especially when they look back at "expert" books like this and have absolutely no numbers or measurements to show senior management why the Social Nation was valuable in the first place.

(This review was written for a Business course in Social Media Marketing, and we were asked to post it on Amazon. This is not a disclaimer - I am not a young student, I have 20 years of experience in business leadership, and I was thoroughly unimpressed with this publication.) Read more ›

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Superb Guide to Social Media March 6, 2011

By william Jenkins

Format:Hardcover

While some commentators and practitioners of the old economy are wondering where everything went wrong and, more importantly, where their customers have gone, the companies who offer exceptional products and exemplary and collaborative customer care - Zappos, threadless, groupon, Four Seasons, 37 Signals, Mzinga - are enjoying significant growth in a reasonably short period of time, even enjoying cult status with their users.

The 2 broad things that these companies appear to have in common is that they offer products and services that actually work!! And just as importantly they listen, collaborate with and care about their customers in a way that anyone who has spent 20mins on hold while being told that "You're call is important" can appreciate, and those who think that holding their customers up for 20 minutes will never understand.

For those who want a practical guide to find out how companies can make the transition from "corporate" to "community", you definitely want this book on your shelf...and might want to get a couple for your marketing departments too. Also anyone that is a fan of Seth Godin should find this a complementary read.