Beyond the Brand Mask: Unleashing the Social Employee
The revolution is internal, and if you look around the boardroom today, the panic is palpable. Marketing departments are scrambling to figure out the Facebook strategy. PR firms are trying to go viral on command. Management is terrified that one disgruntled tweet from a bored intern will tank the stock price. We live in an era when everyone is obsessed with the outward face of social media, but we miss the heartbeat behind the screen.
I have been diving into a book that effectively flips the script on this anxiety-ridden landscape: The Social Employee: How Great Companies Make Social Media Work by Cheryl Burgess and Mark Burgess.
If you think this is just another dry manual on how to schedule tweets or optimize your LinkedIn profile, you are looking at the wrong map. This is not a book about tools; it is a book about culture. It is about the fact that the barrier between the company and the public has not just been thinned, it has been vaporized.
The Death of the Corporate Mask
For decades, companies operated behind a polished, static mask. We had brand guidelines and corporate communications that filtered every single word before it hit the light of day. But as the Burgess duo points out, social media has rendered the mask obsolete. Customers do not want to talk to a logo; they want to talk to a person.
The core premise currently rattling my brain is this: A social brand is a byproduct of a social culture. You cannot have a dynamic, engaging presence on social media if your internal culture is rigid and siloed, where employees are afraid to speak up. The social employee is not just someone who has a Twitter handle; they are the frontline ambassadors who humanize the giant, cold machine of the corporation.
Why Adobe and IBM Are Winning
One of the most fascinating aspects of reading this is seeing the blueprints from companies that actually get it. The authors take us behind the scenes at giants like Adobe, IBM, Dell, and Cisco.
Take Adobe, for example. Instead of locking down social media with thou-shalt-not policies, they have empowered their people to be thought leaders. They realized that when an engineer shares their passion for a new piece of code, it carries infinitely more weight than a glossy ad campaign.
IBM is another standout. They have pioneered the concept of social business from the inside out. They understand that social tools are not just for marketing; they are for collaboration. When employees can connect across continents to solve a problem in real time using social platforms, the company becomes faster, smarter, and, crucially, more authentic.
The Blue Elephant in the Room
Cheryl and Mark Burgess introduce a concept that every CEO needs to understand: The Blue Elephant. It represents the massive, undeniable truth that social media is a fundamental shift in how humans communicate, not a passing fad for teenagers.
The blue refers to IBM’s influence on the concept, but the elephant is the sheer scale of the change. You cannot ignore it, and you certainly cannot control it. The only way to survive is to engage with it. The book argues that many leaders are still stuck in the 1. In the social era, you do not control the message; you contribute to the conversation.
The Anatomy of a Social Employee
What does a social employee actually look like? According to the Burgess research, they share a few DNA markers:
- Engaged: They do not just post; they listen and respond.
- Transparent: They are honest about who they are and who they work for.
- Collaborative: They look to break down silos within their own company.
- Content Creators: They share knowledge, not just PR fluff.
The book makes a compelling case that the most valuable asset a company has today is not its intellectual property, but the social capital of its workforce. If your employees are excited, empowered, and equipped to share their expertise, your brand grows organically.
From Social Media to Social Business
This is where the book gets really deep. It moves past the media part and focuses on the business part. A Social Business is an organization that uses social technologies and mindsets to optimize every part of the value chain.
Think about HR. A social employee makes recruiting easier by constantly showcasing the company culture to their network. Think about R&D. Social tools allow for crowdsourcing ideas from across the entire company, not just the designated creative team.
The authors argue that we are moving toward an era of the human brand. In this world, the distinction between internal and external communication disappears. Everything is external. Every internal email could be a blog post; every internal discussion could lead to a public innovation.
The Fear Factor
I will admit, as I read through these chapters, I can see why this is terrifying for some. It requires a massive amount of trust. You have to trust that your employees are smart, professional, and aligned with your values.
But as The Social Employee points out, if you do not trust your employees to talk about your company on the internet, you probably have a hiring problem or a culture problem, not a social media problem. The social employee is essentially a mirror. If your company is great, the mirror reflects greatness. If your company is toxic, social media will reveal that toxicity whether you allow it or not.
A Roadmap for the Future
We are standing at a crossroads. We can continue to treat social media as a channel handled by a small team in the basement, or we can embrace it as the new operating system for business.
The authors do not just give us the why; they give us the how. They talk about the social employee pilot program and how to build a social center of excellence. They provide the vocabulary we need to explain to the 1 relationships are.
Reading this feels like being handed a secret decoder ring for the modern economy. It is a reminder that even though we are using high-tech tools, the goal is something very old-fashioned: human connection. We are returning to the marketplace era, when you knew your grocer and your blacksmith by name. Now, we just happen to know our software engineers and our brand managers by their Twitter handles.
Why You Need This on Your Desk
There is a shift happening right now that is bigger than the invention of the television. It is the democratization of influence. No longer is the 1 reserved for the CEO or a high-priced spokesperson. The company’s voice is the collective roar of every person on the payroll.
If you want to understand how to harness that roar and turn your workforce into a powerhouse of brand advocacy and innovation, you need to stop reading my ramblings and go straight to the source.
The era of the faceless corporation is over, and the era of the social employee has begun.
To truly understand how to bridge the gap between your brand and your people in this digital age, buy The Social Employee by Cheryl and Mark Burgess immediately.
