Get Bold by Sandy Carter - Book review

Get Bold

Using Social Media to Create a New Type of Social Business

By: Sandy Carter

Published: September 21, 2011
Format: Paperback, 288 pages
ISBN-10: 0132618311
ISBN-13: 978-0132618311
Publisher: IBM Press

"It is imperative that you have a bold agenda to engage your clients, your partners, and your employees. The Social Business AGENDA is the connection to outperforming in the marketplace", writes IBM Vice President, Social Business Evangelism, Sandy Carter in her business results oriented and strategy based book Get Bold: Using Social Media to Create a New Type of Social Business. The author describes the benefits of making the transition to a social business, and provides the blueprint for completing that transformation.

Sandy Carter presents a best practices adoption model for applying the principles and benefits of social media to any organization. The author recognizes the value of social media for creating and developing trust, authenticity, and transparency for the company's customers and for employees. For Sandy Carter, the social business integrates the concepts of social into every internal and external aspect of the organization. The benefits of the two way contact, enveloped in social media, achieve the company's goals more effectively for every department. The author points out that people have a deep desire to be social, and the concept of the social business leverages that very human trait for the benefit of the entire organization, including its more engaged employees, and its new form of social customers.

Sandy Carter (photo left) understands that social business has changed companies and their relationships with their employees and their customers in very fundamental ways. The role of the employee is altered in a social business and is more engaged with customers, and with each other, than ever before. The company's processes are more transparent and easily understood by all stakeholders, and the actions taken by social businesses regarding their customers are much faster and more responsive than in non-social businesses. At the same time, social businesses are more profitable as a result of their more fully engaged employees and relationship based customers.

To guide companies in the process of establishing an effective social business, Sandy Carter shares her AGENDA principle. The AGENDA concept is an acronym consisting of the following factors:

* Aligning organizational goals and culture
* Gaining loyal trust
* Engaging through experiences
* Networking the business processes
* Designing for reputation and risk management
* Analyzing the data

For me, the power of the book is how Sandy Carter combines the reasons for establishing a social business with the road map needed to achieve that goal. The author provides many real world examples of successful social businesses, and shares the techniques used to develop those effective social businesses. Filled with screen captures, helpful graphics, and well set apart case studies, the book offers practical detail that enriches the theoretical concepts, and further illustrates the overall AGENDA strategy. Overall, this book is an excellent guide book for companies seeking the business and cultural transformation opportunity presented by becoming a social business.

I highly recommend the very hands on and stakeholder engagement building book Get Bold: Using Social Media to Create a New Type of Social Business by Sandy Carter, to any business leaders, executives, managers, or owners seeking to take the next step in their company's evolution and become a complete social business. This book provides the proven strategies that will turn any company from the ordinary to the extraordinary and very profitable realm of social business.