The Facebook Era: Tapping Online Social Networks to Market, Sell, and Innovate

Before social media became a routine part of business planning, Clara Shih was already asking what online networks could mean for customer relationships, marketing, sales, and innovation. The Facebook Era offers a second-edition, early-2010s view of that shift, with Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn at the center of its business landscape.

Rather than treating social networking as a marketing add-on, Shih considers how it could affect work across an organization—from customer service and recruiting to product development and collaboration. The result is both a practical guide to the period’s tools and a useful snapshot of how businesses began thinking strategically about the social Web.

Social networks as business relationships

The opening sections explore the changing social customer, differences among major networks, identity and sharing online, and the role of relationships and social capital. The emphasis is on understanding how online connections can influence communication and business interactions—not simply on collecting followers.

Across the organization: sales, service, and marketing

Shih applies social networking to several core business functions. Chapters address the sales cycle, customer service, marketing, and the ways businesses might engage customers and encourage word of mouth. The book also considers customer service as a broader experience, rather than a single exchange.

From customer input to organizational change

Innovation and collaboration receive their own treatment, alongside recruiting and employer reputation. Taken together, these topics present social networks as potential channels for listening, connecting, and working with people beyond a company’s immediate teams.

A practical strategy for the era

The step-by-step sections cover setting objectives and metrics, organizing a team, managing professional relationships, engaging customers through Facebook Pages, and planning advertising and promotion. The contents also include dedicated advice for small businesses.

This is a historically grounded read for business professionals, students, and readers tracing the development of social media strategy. Its platform-specific examples belong to the period in which the book was written; its central subject is how organizations approached the emerging business uses of online social networks.