Author: Scott Klososky
Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group Press. 279 pages
Book Review by Nano Khilnani
The authors of this book really practice what they preach. The latest social technology tool is called “crowdsourcing.” It is like outsourcing but the people involved collaborated and communicated with one another in producing this unique work.
Look at the back cover and you notice that this book was “written by the crowd.” It was jointly written by eleven people, ranging in age from twenty-seven to eighty. They are from diverse backgrounds and from all over the world.
Scott Klososky, who decided this book will be written by a number of people rather than just himself, calls himself the “aggregator.”
Corey Travis was the project manager for this book. While several other books have been produced using some of the elements of crowd sourcing, this is the first one “to crowdsource a project in its entirety,” she says. We use quotes because we do not fully understand what crowdsourcing entails.
Travis, Klososky and the others involved in this project decided to compile material on the subject of social technology from various sources so that it would be “richer in content and insight” than if it had been written by a single person or an editor getting content from a number of contributors.
Klososky controlled the main message of the book to be written and coordinated the various topics to be covered in the book. He asked the contributors to relate their personal experiences on social technology and relate interesting case studies.
Using this method, the end result is an excellent book that is an actual product using crowdsourcing, which is part of social technology.
Bringing in new revenue and profits by using social technology tools such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other means is no longer just a “let me think about it” idea or option for businesses, large an small. These tools are already being used widely. There are already more than 800 million users of Facebook.
“This book is a how-to manual that will teach you a process for implementing social technology in its most powerful form,” writes Klosoky in the Introduction.
The most useful part of this book is the 12-step process of harnessing social technology for companies to grow and become more profitable. There is a whole chapter on each step, from “Setting Social Tech Goals” (Chapter 1) to “Integrating Social Tech Tools into the Sales Process” (Chapter 6) to “Security and Regulations (Chapter 12) and other useful chapters in between.
Companies that embraced and widely used new technologies – the Internet, e-commerce, and Web-based social networks like Facebook and others have grown at a rapid pace in sales and income. Just three good examples are Amazon, Apple and eBay.
Amazon started with just being an online book seller. Today it has a myriad of product lines – much more than just books – that people and companies buy and sell on this e-commerce platform. EBay began as an online place for just auctions of all sorts of “stuff.” With its business model being charging transaction fees and commissions based on the price the item was sold for. Today it has grown from an online auction site to a large marketplace place where people not only bid for, but buy and sell a large range of goods and services.
With such huge successes achieved using the Internet it is no longer just an option for companies to consider the use the Web to grow their base of customers to increase sales. And companies that are beginning to use the latest technologies like crowdsourcing are going to win big and leap ahead of the competition.
Here is a succinct statement by Klososky on why companies should adopt social technology and use its various tools:
“When you implement a powerful tool before your competition, you can win market share, create wealth and even generate social good….this book will help you put together a game plan that will deliver serious results. Not just an introduction to social technology but an in-depth explanation of its relevance, Enterprise Social Technology is intended for the whole spectrum of leaders – from the nanotechnology person to the tech expert”
