Mark your calendars for Tuesday, January 21! The Conference Board (@ConferenceBoard) has invited Blue Focus Marketing President Mark Burgess (@MNBurgess) and myself (@CKBurgess) to join their January “Book Discussion” webcast, scheduled to start at 11 a.m. EST. In the discussion, we will delve into the content of our Amazon best-selling book, The Social Employee (McGraw-Hill, 2013). Topics covered will include our reasons for writing the book, why we think cultures of social employees are so important in today’s workplace, strategies for building sustainable social business practices, and an examination of the many success stories covered in the book—featuring brands such as IBM, Dell, Adobe, Southwest Airlines, and Cisco.
This talk is the latest virtual stop in the never-ending journey of the S-Train, which is bringing the message of social employee-powered business to boardrooms, conference halls, and computer screens one stop at a time. After the Conference Board talk, the S-Train will proceed to IBM’s Connect Conference (Jan. 26-30), where I have been invited to speak, followed by a guest lecture at Centenary College by Blue Focus Marketing President Mark Burgess (@MNBurgess) on Tuesday, February 4. With every stop, the S-Train keeps gaining more momentum. Our message is simple, but its power is undeniable: a brand cannot communicate externally unless it first learns to communicate internally!
Leading the discussion for the Conference Board will be Donna McNamara, who always brings a high degree of polish and pedigree anything with which she is involved. McNamara has a proven track record of success at the highest levels of business in her career, having served as vice president of global education and training at Colgate-Palmolive Company and a human resources, education, and strategic planning executive at AT&T prior to that. Currently, she works as a consultant for a variety of organizations, focusing on building real results through learning, leadership, and organizational development.
The Conference Board, founded in 1916, works to provide organizations with the practical knowledge necessary to improve performance and thereby better serve society. By providing objective data, research, and best practices, the Conference Board is arming businesses and thought leaders with the knowledge they need not only to succeed today, but also to sustain that success into the future. In the current social business climate, where the only constant in a changing world appears to be change itself, the Board’s mission is certainly no small task!
Blue Focus Marketing™ offers a variety of consulting options to organizations interested in bringing the @SocialEmployee revolution to their workplace. Contact us today and tell us about your business’s needs!
The Social Employee offers an unparalleled behind-the-scenes look at the social business success stories of some of the biggest brand names in the business world, including IBM, AT&T, Dell, Adobe, Southwest Airlines, Cisco, Acxiom, and Domo. These cutting-edge brands have all come to the same realization: the path to social business lies through empowering the social employee.
The brands that leverage their employee base in order to engage customers and prospects through social media are the ones destined to win the marketing wars. This book not only details the astronomical rise of the social employee, but also outlines the innovative methods that leading companies have employed to foster cultures of enthusiastic and engaged workers.
FOREWORD by David C. Edelman, Global Co-Leader, Digital Marketing & Sales Practice, McKinsey & Company
AFTERWORD by Kevin Randall, Vice President of Brand Strategy and Research at Movéo Integrated Branding, and journalist for Fast Company and The Economist