The Executive's Guide to Enterprise Social Media Strategy: How Social Networks Are Radically Transforming Your Business

Foreword

Frankly, this book is too fun to cover anything to do with the enterprise.

You’re never going to convince anyone in your company that this book is worthwhile, because it’s actually useful, and it’s interesting, and much more than this, it’s engaging and funny (I mean, snicker and blurt out a little laugh funny), and as I once racked up over 16 years in the enterprise telecommunications world, I know that funny and engaging are illegal inside companies.

How are you ever going to convince an executive that learning from other people at other enterprise companies who successfully implemented social media tools into their workplace is worth anything? By interviewing people inside and outside the gray cubicle nation, Dave Thomas and Mike Barlow are ruining anyone’s chance of thinking this book was just concocted out of nothing one day while waiting for their laundry to dry.

I don’t know Mike Barlow very well. I’m sure he’s nice, or at least types fast, because otherwise, why would you write a book with him? But I know Dave Thomas—sorry, David B. Thomas. I met him while he was working for America’s “Best Company to Work For” (well, that’s what Fortune said), which was a big enterprise company, where Dave brought enterprise social media into its fold. Because I don’t know anything about Mike personally, I’ll just say that he invented dolphins. Yes. That’s right.

I have a burning passion for enterprise culture, or, rather, whenever I visit an enterprise, I get the terrible and ...