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Chapter 8 Social Media Information Systems
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According to Nan Lin, social capital is the investment in social relations with the expecta-
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tion of returns in the marketplace. You can see social capital at work in your personal life. You
strengthen your social relationships when you help someone get a job, set a friend up on a date,
or introduce a friend to someone famous. You weaken the strength of your social relationships by
continually freeloading, declining requests for help, and failing to spend time with friends.
In your professional life, you are investing in your social capital when you attend a business
function for the purpose of meeting people and reinforcing relationships. Similarly, you can use
social media to increase your social capital by recommending or endorsing someone on LinkedIn,
liking a picture on Facebook, retweeting a tweet, or commenting on an Instagram picture.

What Is the Value of Social Capital?
According to Lin, social capital adds value in four ways:

• Information
• Influence
• Social credentials
• Personal reinforcement
First, relationships in social networks can provide information about opportunities, alternatives,
problems, and other factors important to business professionals. On a personal level, this could come
in the form of a friend telling you about a new job posting or the best teacher to take for Business
Law. As a business professional, this could be a friend introducing you to a potential new supplier or
letting you know about the opening of a new sales territory.
Second, relationships provide an opportunity to influence decision makers at your employer or
in other organizations who are critical to your success. For example, playing golf every Saturday
with the CEO of the company you work for could increase your chances of being promoted. Such
influence cuts across formal organizational structures, such as reporting relationships.
Third, being linked to a network of highly regarded contacts is a form of social credential. You can
bask in the glory of those with whom you are related. Others will be more inclined to work with you if
they believe critical personnel are standing with you and may provide resources to support you.
Finally, being linked into social networks reinforces a professional’s identity, image, and position
in an organization or industry. It reinforces the way you define yourself to the world (and to your-
self). For example, being friends with bankers, financial planners, and investors may reinforce your
identity as a financial professional.
As mentioned, a social network is a network of social relationships among individuals with a
common interest. Each social network differs in value. The social network you maintain with your
high school friends probably has less value than the network you have with your business associates,
but not necessarily so. According to Henk Flap, the value of social capital is determined by the num-
ber of relationships in a social network, by the strength of those relationships, and by the resources
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controlled by those related. If your high school friends happened to have been Mark Zuckerberg or
Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and if you maintain strong relations with them via your high school
network, then the value of that social network far exceeds any you’ll have at work. For most of us,
however, the network of our current professional contacts provides the most social capital.
So, when you use social networking professionally, consider these three factors. You gain
social capital by adding more friends and by strengthening the relationships you have with existing
friends. Further, you gain more social capital by adding friends and strengthening relationships
with people who control resources that are important to you. Such calculations may seem cold,
impersonal, and possibly even phony. When applied to the recreational use of social networking,
they may be. But when you use social networking for professional purposes, keep them in mind.
When it comes to social capital, one tool you might find particularly useful is Klout.com. This
site searches social media activity on Facebook, Twitter, and other sites and creates what it calls a
Klout score, which is a measure of an individual’s social capital. Klout scores vary from 0 to 100;
the more that others respond to your content, the higher your score. Also, responses from people
who seldom respond are valued more than responses from those who respond frequently. 13