4 Must-Read Customer Community Books for Social Business Pros

Posted by Joshua Paul on August 25, 2011

1 comments | 1244 reads

With all of the online reading that marketers and customer management professionals do, it is sometimes refreshing to read or listen to an entire book on a topic that covers all the angles, is full of comprehensive tips, and offers practical examples and success stories.

While there are an array of books (many of them are very good) about using social media to build reach and develop a personal brand, many social media books don’t cover why and how to build a successful and sustainable online customer community. There is agreement among most public social media professionals on best practices to grow your business. However, most marketing strategy books don’t offer in-the-trenches advice for planning and launching an online communities since organizations have wide-ranging customer engagement goals.

To help you plan your social business strategy, here are 4 books that every marketing, customer care, and IT professional should read (in order from newest to oldest):

	Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions by Guy Kawasaki Guy Kawasaki really makes the modern case, and outlines a plan, for creating experiences where your organization provide the products, information, and community to create long term likability and trustworthiness by your target audience. More information on Enchantment.

	Empowered by Josh Bernoff and Ted Schadler Learn how organizations of all sized have used technology to empower their employees, customers, and partners to create an active community to promote, support, and provide continuous feedback on your company, products, and services. More information on Empowered.

	Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us by Seth Godin Building a successful online community involves identifying those in your community who others will follow. See how leadership by your organization, and facilitated by your organization, empowers those who are enthusiastic about your business or association to engage the community and lead. More information on Tribes.

	Raving Fans: A Revolutionary Approach To Customer Service by Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles This is a classic worth revisiting in the age of social networks. Read this book with private online customer or member communities in mind and you will come away with dozens of ideas to use technology to create passionate advocates in your community and market. More information on Raving Fans.

Which books have you found useful in developing your social business or member engagement strategy? Add your recommendations in the comments below.

Republished with author's permission from original post by Joshua Paul.

Joshua Paul

Joshua Paul is the Director of Marketing and Strategy at Socious, a provider of enterprise customer community software that helps large and mid-sized companies bring together customers, employees, and partners to increase customer retention, sales, and customer satisfaction. With over 13 years of experience running product management and marketing for SaaS companies, Joshua Paul is a popular blogger and speaker on customer management, inbound marketing, and social technology. He blogs at http://blog.socious.com.

About Joshua Paul |
Connect:

Categories:

Social Business

1244 reads
Print
Email

1 comments »

Michael Lowenstein

August 26, 2011

Customer.Community

One of the earliest, and most informative and comprehensive, books on this subject was Customer.Community (2002), by Drew Banks and Kim Daus. The Foreword was written by Scott Cook, co-founder of Intuit; and among many endorsements, one was from Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist. I wrote the Afterword for this book, as well as setting up several sections; so I have an appreciation for the guidance this book offers.

Post new comment

Your name: *

E-mail: *

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.

Homepage:

Subject:

Comment: *

Input format

Filtered HTML

Allowed HTML tags: <a> <img> <hr> <table> <tr> <td> <th><ul> <ol> <li> </li><blockquote> <colspan> <rowspan><object>
Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
Images can be added to this post.

Post

Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
Images can be added to this post.

More information about formatting options

Notify me when new comments are posted

All comments

Replies to my comment

CAPTCHA

This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.

What code is in the image?: *

Enter the characters shown in the image.

MarketPlace

Global Customer Experience Management (CEM) Certification Program

[May 30-31, Frankfurt; July 25-26, Hong Kong] An internationally recognized program with proven track record of success - being run for 34 times in 13 cities with attendees from 50 countries, the program is developed based on the U.S. patent-pending Branded CEM Method which aims to drive customer loyalty and brand differentiation with quantifiable business results. Limited offer: USD300 early bird discount.

Join us on May 29th in New York City. Stuart Ryder, SVP, Mobile Research Lead for Ipsos IOTX & Roxana Strohmenger, a leading Forrester analyst, will be in attendance to share best practices and new trends in mobile market research.

[June 12, Sir Francis Drake Hotel] Gregson Siu, Vice President, Ariba Business Operations, Ariba and Bob Thompson, CustomerThink, will be in attendance to share best practices, new trends and latest research to help you develop your customer experience program.

Social Networking and sCRM International Congress in Colombia

[June 25-26, Bogota] Thirteen international thought leaders will present, from different perspectives, the trends, the uses, and the magic - as well as the reality - of Social Networking and how it impacts the way customers are doing/will do business.

Driving ROI With VoC

Walker has identified multiple ways to measure ROI – there is not a one-size-fits-all solution. This paper will address each and conclude with some recommendations to help B-to-B practitioners evaluate which ROI approach will work best for their particular business need.