Companies have internal cultures that either have the capacity to support their use of social media or they don’t. What they need to realize is that to build brand communities that support their business goals, they must look at how they develop the strategic direction for the organization and the cultural fluency with their people to support a multi-directional dialog among customers, employees, and other stakeholders. David Armano points out that it is a people issue not just a technology issue.

We couldn’t agree more. Becoming, what we call, a social brand is the lifeboat for this sea change in communication that the web enabled. We will be talking more about social branding in subsequent posts, but briefly, it means building a shared promise among all your constituents (bringing together how your employees, customers, partners and stakeholders value the brand) so they can influence and shape the brand community in a way that provides value to all. People are key to this, and the way your culture is shaped is key to success in this new paradigm.

–Jen Travis

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