“I recently caught up with IBM’s Vice President of Social Business Evangelism, Sandy Carter. Her latest book is called Get Bold: Using Social Media to Create a New Type of Social Business.

In this role, she is responsible for helping to set the direction for IBM’s Social Business initiative.

In 2011, Women in Technology inducted Ms. Carter into their Hall of Fame for the impact she had on the social media and Social Business marketplace.

You can read her blog or follow her on Twitter @sandy_carter. In this interview, Sandy talks about what social business is, how to build a social strategy, measuring a successful campaign, and more.”

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GET BOLD! By Sandy Carter coming in September 2011!

Using social media is a requirement in today’s business climate, so as a social business you are probably leveraging social media as much as possible. But are you truly maximizing this competitive advantage in today’s marketplace?

Get Bold offers a systematic approach to creating and implementing an effective and successful social media strategy for your business. Using the author’s “AGENDA” you can boldly take your business forward:

• Attract and engage customers with exceptional brand experiences and personalized interactions across touch points
• Achieve targeted savings and increased revenue
• Improve customer insight
• Outpace your competition and accelerate growth

The author provides lessons on doing it both right and wrong so you gain valuable perspective on techniques using the most critical communication vehicles in social networking. She also provides a shortcut on how to get started, patterning on successes in various companies and case studies.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Ch1 -The AGENDA for Social Business Success
Ch2 – Align Organizational Goals and Culture
Ch3 – Gain “Friends” through Social Trust
Ch4 – Engage through Experiences
Ch5 – Network your Business Processes
Ch6 – Design for Reputation and Risk Management
Ch7 – Analyze your Data
Ch8 – The Bold Agenda is Globally Applicable
Ch9 – Draw up your Agenda

The book is focused on how to help people approach Social Business with a Social Business Agenda.

A  - Aligning your goals and culture to be ready to become more engaging and transparent. Do not underestimate the task ahead of you! Take a look at IBM’s Social Computing Guidelines as a way to get started!

G – “Gain Friends through Social Trust” focuses on finding your fans, friends and followers, and forming best friends from your tippers or most influential clients or outside parties. It dives into what social trust is all about and how you instill it.

E – Engage through experiences focuses on how a company can engage its clients and employees and dives into gaming, virtual gifting, location based, mobile, or other stellar experiences to drive that engagement.

N – Network your processes. Since this is about business, figuring out how to add social to your processes is critical. THink about customer service — adding in Twitter to address your customer’s concerns. Or Crowdsourcing for product innovation, or Communities for incrementing your marketing processes around Loyalty!

D – Design for Reputation and Risk Management! This is the #1 areas of focus for the C level — managing the risk of having your brand online, your employees being your brand advocates, and even your clients becoming your marketing department! I think the value outweighs the risk .. but see how to develop a Disaster Recovery plan as you plan for the worst, and expect the best!

A – Analyze your data! Social analytics are the new black! You need to see the patterns of sentiment, who your tippers are, and listen daily !