What are social networks, and how do they apply to you and your business? Juliette Powell answers these questions in her book 33 Million People in the Room: How to Create, Influence, and Run a Successful Business with Social Networking. Social networks existed long before the Internet did, but online social networking offers new ways in which we can communicate. When people at a restaurant pull out their smart phones, there might just be two people physically present, but there are many more people in the conversation.
Online social networks are not a great substitute for face-to-face interactions, but they do provide tools which allow you to control the flow of information between you and the people in your network. For most businesses, social networks provide opportunities for improved communication (both internally and externally), improved dissemination of messages, and receiving feedback which allows the business to improve its products or services.
The book contains many stories about the ways in which various companies and individuals have benefitted from using social networking, but at the end of the book I was still wondering the extent to which the different tools would be useful in my own context. It seems difficult to make a sound cost/benefit analysis because the costs and benefits are difficult to define. Nonetheless, it is an interesting book, which I found easy to read.