
My primer on the productive business uses of social media and social networking within and between companies is Social Collaboration for Dummies (Wiley, October 2013).
The book is the result of several years of covering the evolution of social business and social technologies for InformationWeek, plus a lot of research done specifically for the book on how to manage online employee communities and what you can accomplish with them. Because social business has so many constituencies, I created chapters specifically directed at the CEO and executive management, CIO, HR, community managers, and every employee’s strategies for working the network. I also cover all the basics of how social collaboration networks are the same only different compared with public social networks, borrowing from the conventions of Facebook and Twitter (for example, the “like” button and sharing) but tailored to support confidential business discussions.
I wrote the book to be useful to organizations just beginning to explore social collaboration networks, but I also hope it will be useful as an educational tool for organizations with more well developed social intranets who are striving for broader adoption and more effective use.
Let me know if you find it useful: david@carrcommunications.com.