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WHAT IS SOCIAL BUSINESS?
The Elements of Social Business (Continued)
Communities and Forums
Built around a cause, lifestyle, passion, or similar attraction, communities and forums encourage
social interaction between participants. These community and similar platforms create natural
conversational space—controlled by the community participants— that can be simultaneously
useful to a business or organization. Chapter 10, “Social Objects,” and Chapter 11, “The Social
Graph,” provide insights and cases supporting the development of strong online communities
and forums.
Social Applications
Social applications are the components of a social business implementation that connect partici-
pants within existing communities—think Twitter, Facebook or Orkut—to which they belong.
Social applications deliver on a specific need or utility that exists within the community but is not
directly provided by it—for example, a Facebook application such as Super Wall or the SocialVibe
cause-supportive application delivered through Facebook. Social applications can be used to
express the brand and/or deliver a brand-related value—like being able to trigger or direct a
contribution to a selected cause—without leaving the larger community in which the applica-
tion is deployed. Chapter 12, “Social Applications,” provides a deeper dive into social applications
and how to plan your use of them.
So what is it that drives organic growth and sets the social technology-powered
business on a road of its own? It comes back to the initial assertion that organic
growth occurs around lifestyles, passions, causes, specifi c task-based utilities, and simi-
lar participant-centric activities and interests rather than brand-, product-, or service-
centered attributes. The primary challenge is therefore to align or connect the fi rm or
organization to an existing community or to build one around an existing lifestyle,
passion, or cause that connects to the core business.
In Figure 3.5, the fundamental relationship between experiences that are talked
about (word of mouth), community participation, and the function of the brand out-
post is shown. Unlike social media marketing, the application of the Social Web to the
business itself views the participants as an integral component of the business, rather
than simply participants in a campaign. In this context, the naturally occurring (non-
paid) activities of participants are the most valuable. The design of the social business
components is powered by the activities that are sustained through participant-driven
interest.
The Elements of Social Business (Continued)