Synopses & Reviews
Enabling employees and partners in modern business requires new skills, business processes, governance, measurement, and infrastructure. In addition, leaders must learn new ways of managing risk, while helping employees build and manage external relationships in real time. Nearly every industry is affected, and this book provides frameworks, guidelines, and case studies for people to navigate the change for their organization.
How This Book is Organized
Chapter 1 explains why a brand should consider empowering employees and partners in social media. We provide data from a wide range of sources to explain how (1) permanent changes in human communication are making online advocacy a critical priority; (2) people trust people, now more than ever; and (3) your brand’s official communicators can not do it alone.
Chapter 2 explains how to help your people create relationships and engagement that create business value. Specifically, we show how to plan the roles and skills you will need, then attract, onboard, support, and measure the people whom you empower in social media.
Chapter 3 gives you a framework for measuring (1) business outcomes; (2) the performance of your people; and (3) the performance of your social empowerment program.
Chapter 4 explains (1) how the nature of online influence is often misunderstood; (2) how influence works online; and (3) reasonable expectations for how a brand can create and leverage online influence.
Chapter 5 provides a proven framework to plan, execute, manage, and measure the development and optimization of relationships with online influencers, through employees and partners.
Chapter 6 describes the security, privacy, and regulatory issues that brands must resolve to ensure that employees, the brand, and other stakeholders are safe and secure when employees and partners engage in social media on behalf of the brand.
Chapter 7 details the team that you will need in order to run a program that delivers business value through employees and partners in social media.
Chapter 8 explains how to get the support you will need from leaders, program participants, and other stakeholders in your organization. The chapter includes (1) how to build a business case for this kind of program; (2) how to align your program to the goals of the executives who will fund or support you; (3) how to use pilots to prove the concept and build support; and (4) how to use early adopters.
Chapter 9 explains the role of culture in this kind of program, and how you can structure your strategy and your program to succeed within your organization’s culture. The chapter also provides a proven framework for managing the change journey that your organization and your people will undergo.
Finally, Chapter 10 examines emerging or slowly evolving trends that will affect social empowerment programs five to ten years in the future.
Review
“Social business is a complex undertaking that can overwhelm even the most seasoned executive. By focusing on people and processes, Chris and Susan get to the core of what social business is: people connecting with people in an organized way.”
—Scott Monty, Global Head of Social Media, Ford Motor Company
“We are fortunate to be living through the most important communications revolution in human history. The ramifications of real-time communications—instantly connecting every human on earth with every other human on earth—are even more important than the invention of moveable type and the printing press more than 500 years ago. However, most organizations aren’t set up to communicate in the ways that buyers demand. In their book, Chris and Susan share how you can reach people with the valuable information people want to consume and are eager to share—and how that will brand your organization as one worthy of doing business with.”
—David Meerman Scott, marketing strategist and bestselling author of Th e New Rules of Marketing and PR
“While creating fans and advocates is the goal for many brands, you can’t get there without having engaged employees who understand the value of your fans and how to build relationships with your most passionate customers. The Most Powerful Brand on Earth shows you exactly how to do this. Susan and Chris give you the exact blueprint and steps necessary to create a more engaged and socially active employee base. This is critical for cultivating fans and advocates online, and this book shows you exactly how it’s done.”
—Mack Collier, author of Think Like a Rock Star: How to Create Social Media and Marketing Strategies That Turn Customers Into Fans
“Business has changed. And change is hard. This book helps you create an authentically social brand in the wake of huge shifts in business.”
—Ann Handley, coauthor of Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks, Webinars (and More) That Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business
“Social business and enterprise social networks now play a key role in changing how we work, where we work, when we work, and even why we work. Chris and Susan’s book shows how these trends change the workforce and chronicles the impact to brands. This step-by-step guide tells you how to take your organization to the next level.”
—R. “Ray” Wang, Principal Analyst and CEO, Constellation Research, Inc.
“Fundamental to moving from ‘doing social’ to ‘being social’ for a brand is recognizing that people are the channel. Susan and Chris clearly put their deep, real-world experience to work and articulate how to empower the people behind the brand—your employees and partners—on social media. This book covers the why, what, and how with clear examples and actionable next steps. Must read!
—Ragy Thomas, CEO of Sprinklr
“Today’s true leaders are not just the ones who create the best products, but also the ones who breed new generations of leaders, unleash the power of their employees, and empower organic advocacy. In the social era, advocacy is where the influence is. Pick up this book and learn how to become the most powerful brand on earth.”
—Ekaterina Walter, cofounder and CMO of BRANDERATI, Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Th ink Like Zuck: The Five Business Secrets of Facebook’s Improbably Brilliant CEO Mark Zuckerberg
“Social media are not just a collection of digital marketing tactics. They are the way a growing percentage of clients and prospects find the information they need to solve their business problems. Connecting your best experts to the clients and prospects with whom you want to develop a relationship is not optional. You either do it well or get left behind by competitors who do it better than you. If you really want to learn how to do it well, read this book.”
—James Mathewson, author of Audience, Relevance, and Search: Targeting Web Audiences with Relevant Content and the forthcoming Outside-In Marketing: Using Big Data to Drive Content Marketing
“The Most Powerful Brand on Earth offers communicators, marketers, and executives a thoughtful and complete understanding of the implications for their companies when it comes to activating and enabling a social workforce.”
—Ethan McCarty, Director, Enterprise Social Strategy and Programs, IBM
“I’ve had the pleasure of working with both Susan and Chris for years, and have always considered them two of the real leaders in social media—read this book to find out why. Every company wants to unlock the formula of unleashing their employees and customers in social media on behalf of its brand. Unless you’ve figured it out yourself, you need this book.”
—Mike Moran, author of Do It Wrong Quickly
“Brand influence has reached a nexus of Darwinian change, and The Most Powerful Brand on Earth is the guide for the evolved to succeed and thrive as a new species in the global business ecosystem, thanks to Ms. Emerick and Mr. Boudreaux.”
—Rawn Shah, author of Social Networking for Business; Forbes.com blogger: Connected Business column
Synopsis
Pioneering businesses have shown that a more social workforce can dramatically improve brand awareness and customer service, increase revenue, and drive greater value and performance from marketing and sales. For this to work, however, employees must engage in public, real-time conversations, even if they aren’t professional communicators. This requires new skills, business processes, governance, measurement, and infrastructure, as well as new ways of managing risk. In The Most Powerful Brand on Earth, social business pioneers Chris Boudreaux and Susan Emerick present comprehensive frameworks, proven guidelines, and new case studies for managing these changes within your business. They help you:
- Empower employees in companies of any size to use social media to achieve large-scale business goals
- Segment your workforce and customize plans accordingly
- Manage the risks of allowing employees to build real-time external relationships
- Determine performance metrics and incentives for employees and teams
- Monetize word-of-mouth marketing
- Gather and distribute intelligence at scale, and use it to increase the value of employee engagement in achieving business goals
The authors support their techniques with compelling examples from leaders including IBM, Michelin, Walmart, Siemens, DeVry, 3M, Ford, Univision, Red Cross, Novo Nordisk, and Applegate Farms. They also provide cutting-edge tools for making social workforce enablement work, including:
- A complete Employee Enablement Architecture checklist outlining all the capabilities an organization must consider when using social media at scale
- A proven Measurement Framework, including recommendations on linking employee measurement with marketing, sales, customer service, and HR metrics
- New research on key success/failure factors
Synopsis
Brands that thrive and profit from employee and customer empowerment generate significantly greater awareness and revenues, while also decreasing the costs of marketing, selling, and customer service. However, employees must engage in public, real-time conversations. And most people are not professional communicators.
Achieving those outcomes requires new skills, business processes, governance, measurement, and infrastructure. In addition, leaders must learn new ways of managing risk, while helping employees build and manage external relationships in real time. Now, in The Most Powerful Brand on Earth, social business pioneers Chris Boudreaux and Susan Emerick help you successfully manage all these changes. Drawing on their experience leading social media transformations at IBM and other top companies, they present frameworks and case studies from key innovators that show how to
-Leverage the surprising dynamics of online influence
-Plan, execute, and manage the development of key relationships
-Measure outcomes and performance in effective and useful ways
-Resolve crucial security, privacy, and regulatory issues that arise when others represent you online
-Gain crucial support from leaders, participants, and other stakeholders
-Empower the people and teams you attract, hire, and support
-Navigate cultural and process changes that will make or break your program
-Preview trends that will shape your social empowerment programs in coming years
About the Author
Chris Boudreaux helps large brands transform their business operations for ROI through social and digital media. He also led development of social media offerings and served as a solution architect for social media solutions at a global management and technology consultancy. In past years, he led online product and market strategy efforts at multiple global technology brands. Chris began blogging for business in 2005. In 2008, he developed his first Facebook app and created SocialMediaGovernance.com to help organizations get the most from their social media efforts. In 2011, he coauthored The Social Media Management Handbook (Wiley & Sons), and his studies of social media have been referenced by corporations, governments, industry analysts, and nonprofit organizations around the world. He also led business development and marketing at two online start-ups, including a digital advertising start-up acquired by Glam Media. Prior to his career in digital and social media, Chris was an officer in the U.S. Navy, where he flew helicopters and led the anti-submarine warfare division aboard USS Yorktown. Chris holds an M.B.A. and an M.S. in computer science from the University of Chicago, a master of aeronautical science from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, and a B.S. in management from Tulane University.
Susan F. Emerick leads global enterprise social business programs for IBM, a company with more than 430,000 employees. A passionate marketer, adjunct professor, and speaker, Susan enjoys navigating the redefinition of marketing “as we know it” driven by emerging technology and big data. She consults with marketers globally about applying social and digital media to foster long-term, high-value relationships with clients, prospects, partners, colleagues, and communities. Beginning in 2008, Susan helped to establish the social insights practice at IBM to continuously apply social listening insights to marketing planning and social engagement strategies. As a result, IBM was awarded the 2010 SAMMY award for Best Socialized Business. In 2011, Susan was named to the elite iMedia Top 25 Internet Marketing Leaders and Innovators, an annual list of cutting-edge creative professionals, strategists, and technology innovators. As an active member of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association Research and Measurement Council, Susan uses her expertise and creative curiosity to influence the standards and principles of word-of-mouth research and measurement.
Table of Contents
Preface xiii Acknowledgments xv
About the Authors xvii
Chapter 1: Web of Trust: The Case for the Social Work Force 1
The Source of Brand Power Today 4
Your Brand’s Official Communicators Cannot Do It Alone 12
Your Next Steps 17
Chapter 2: Help Your People Do Well 19
Why You Must Help Your People 20
How to Help Your Social Employees 28
How Social Brands Tend to Evolve 56
Your Next Steps 58
Chapter 3: Influence: It’s Complicated 59
Coauthored by Constantin Basturea
The Nature of Online Influence Is Often Misunderstood 60
How Social Employees Empower Brands 64
Your Next Steps 70
Chapter 4: The Power to Sway: Helping Employees Build Advocacy Online 71
Coauthored by Constantin Basturea
Permission Is Not Enough 72
Prepare 73
Perform 89
Your Next Steps 93
Chapter 5: You Will Measure New Things in New Ways 95
How to Begin Measuring 97
Outcomes: Measuring Business Impact 115
Summary 124
Your Next Steps 124
Chapter 6: Safety and Security 127
Protecting Information and Privacy 128
Complying with Disclosure Requirements 140
Preventing Competitive Poaching 146
Your Next Steps 148
Chapter 7: How to Begin 149
The Business Case 150
Get Some Seed Money: Selling to Internal Stakeholders 152
Leverage Early Adopters 155
Build a Pilot 155
Case Study: The IBM Select Social Eminence Program 158
Your Next Steps 160
Chapter 8: Build Your Team 161
Program Leadership 163
Program Team 166
Program Participants 169
Extended Team 169
Business Unit Leaders and Functional Leaders 170
PR or Corporate Communications 170
Human Resources 172
External Influencers 173
Information Technology 173
Time Commitments 175
Your Next Steps 175
Chapter 9: Manage the Journey 177
Culture and Change Management Will Make or Break Your Program 178
Learning from the Past 182
Change Management Is New to Many Leaders 184
An Approach for Managing the Journey 184
Be the Change You Wish to See 191
Your Next Steps 192
Chapter 10: The Future of the Social Work Force 193
People Will Change 194
Technology Will Change 196
Increasing Automation 198
Organizations Will Change 201
Results for Workers and Leaders 203
Your Next Steps 208
Index 209