Tapping Into Your Social Capital

A common mistake that companies make is to think that corporate branding – the logo, tagline, and chosen color palette—constitutes their brand. Sure, these things play a role in branding, but they are just one small facet of the overall brand.

Companies spend seemingly countless hours and endless budgets on perfecting their logos, websites, and brochures in an effort to establish and build ‘brand awareness’. However, more than any design element, it is your company culture and the reputation of your front-line employees that define your company brand. This is why it’s essential for you to understand who in your company is influential outside company walls.

The challenge, however, is that most companies do not understand who the influencers are within their companies or across their customer communities. They also struggle to tailor their messages to those influencers. Even more elusive than a strategy for external influencers is a plan for internal influencers.

In an era of social media, companies need to understand the value of influence—and how to extend their social capital. Leveraging internal influence and identifying and targeting external influence is a key aspect of creating social capital. And it should, therefore, be a major factor in your marketing mix. 

In Tap Into Social Capital to Build Your Brand (fiftyfiveandfive), we explore the topic of internal and external influencers, how influence creates social capital, and how you can leverage influence and social capital -- whether your own, your team members, or external influencers -- to tell your brand story across your many different networks. 

Download the free eBook Tap Into Social Capital to Build Your Brand to learn more!

Christian Buckley is the Founder & CEO of CollabTalk, an independent research and technical marketing services company based in Salt lake City. A globally-recognized CMO, author, speaker and collaboration expert, Christian is a 6-time Microsoft MVP and Top 10 SharePoint and Office 365 Influencer. He was also part of the Microsoft team that launched SharePoint Online (now part of Office 365) and worked with some of the world's largest technology companies to build and deploy social, collaboration, and supply chain solutions. Christian can be found online at www.buckleyplanet.com and on Twitter at @buckleyplanet.