The Most Powerful Brand on Earth: How to Transform Teams, Empower Employees, Integrate Partners, and Mobilize Customers to Beat the Competition in Digital and Social Media

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

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.