All employees are marketers in the age of Social Media

June 7, 2009

This post is triggered by uber blogger and PR thought leader Steve Rubel’s talk which have been summarised here and here .

The main thrust of Steve’s argument is the following:

People don’t trust advertising as much as they used to
People’s trust in corporate press releases are low too
People trust people whom they ‘know’ on social media (or Participatory media) as much as possible
Employees (and not just ‘external’ facing employees) are becoming the people whom prospective customers trust a lot more.

So what does that mean for HR and Marketing?

If you and your Human Resources department do not realise the power that your employees have on the external branding of your firm, then it’s time to take a crash course in social media, or nominate a CXO to look after social media , understand the risks , create a cultural change to achieve Distributed Influence . Understand the objectives and that social media is a tool .

I could come and talk to you too