Book

The Social Business Cookbook

Robert Nash's book on becoming a social business: how to work with your stakeholders, choose your tools and prove the return. 46 pages, free.

Inside

What it covers

The Social Business Cookbook helps organisations create social activity that is sustainable, profitable or purposeful, matched to the needs of the business and of the audience it wants to reach.

Many organisations invested heavily in social engagement on community platforms of their own, and many of those experiments failed expensively, leaving 'social' as marketing on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. Success takes more than choosing a technical partner and the latest widgets: it takes a new way of thinking about your audience, and about yourself as a business.

So the book covers both halves of making social work: the business culture and processes, and the technology to support them. This is the second edition, published by 4 Roads.

What is a social business?
Networks and community
Social business and internal communications
Your business culture
Planning the menu: the ingredients, and your audience's motivations
Recipes: mixing primary and secondary motivations
Tools, and choosing yours
Content and community management
Governance, roles and responsibilities
The proof is in the ROI pudding: communities of purpose, circumstance, practice and interest
Results and analytics
Appendices: the business case, and an A to Z of tools