The Most Powerful Brand on Earth:

Using digital and social media to empower employees, mobilize advocates, transform teams and integrate partners.

Enabling employees and partners in modern business 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.

Brands that thrive and profit from employee and consumer empowerment generate significantly greater awareness and revenues, while also decreasing costs of marketing, selling and customer service. However, employees must engage in public, real-time conversations. And most people are not professional communicators.

Nearly every industry is affected, and this book provides frameworks, guidelines and case studies for people to navigate the change for their organization.

View more information about The Most Powerful Brand on Earth

The Social Media Management Handbook

Contains 3 chapters by Chris Boudreaux

View a Free Chapter Preview

How do organizations manage social media effectively? Every organization wants to implement social media, but it is difficult to create processes and manage employees to make this happen. Most social media books focus on strategies for communicating with customers, but they fail to address the internal process that takes place within a business before those strategies can be implemented. This book is geared toward helping you manage every step of the process required to use social media for business.

The Social Media Management Handbook provides a complete toolbox for defining and practicing a coherent social media strategy. It is a comprehensive resource for bringing together such disparate areas as IT, customer service, sales, communications, and more to meet social media goals. The book explains policies, procedures, roles and responsibilities, metrics, strategies, incentives, and legal issues that may arise. You will learn how to:

• Empower employees and teams to utilize social media effectively throughout the organization
• Measure the ROI of social media investments and ensure appropriate business value is achieved over time
• Make smarter decisions, make them more quickly, and make them stick

Get the most out of your social media investment and fully leverage its benefits at your company with The Social Media Management Handbook.

Social Media Listening Playbook

Steve Rappaport of the Advertising Research Foundation asked me to write 1,000 words on the topic of “Organizing for Social Media in the Enterprise”, based on my experience helping large brands to achieve business outcomes through social media. This book is a new edition of this comprehensive guide for organizations using social media.

More For Your Practice radio show welcomes guest Chris Boudreaux of Social Media Governance. Chris is an expert in social media strategy and the policies that should guide medical practices (as well as many other corporations) in navigating the legal issues of implementing a social media program. Chris and Rebecca discuss questions such as: Should a medical practice get into social media? If so, what guidelines should they be aware of? What type of social media policy should they have in place?

Accenture Client EventChris Boudreaux spoke with Accenture clients in Dallas, TX on emerging issues and opportunities in social business, for large enterprises. November 15, 2012

JiveWorld 2012Chris Boudreaux will demonstrate new applications of the Jive platform for customer service, and sales, developed by his team at Accenture. He will also discuss the Accenture vision for social business, and expected implications on enterprise sales, marketing and customer service.  View the conference agenda. October 9 – 10, 2012

Dreamforce 2012 Chris Boudreaux spoke with clients and alliance partners regarding opportunities in social business strategy, planning and implementation, including marketing automation, social media monitoring and measurement, customer insight, reporting and analytics, and marketing platform integration. September 18 – 21, 2012

Privacy Piracy Chris Boudreaux was interviewed by Mari Frank, host of the talk radio show and podcast, Privacy Piracy. September 17, 2012

Consulting Magazine Best Practice Webinar on Social Media Chris Boudreaux joins partners from BCG, KPMG, Capgemini and IFS to answer the following questions: How can consultants create a thriving social media practice that generates significant revenue for clients? Which consulting opportunities in social media is your firm missing? How are leading consulting firms capitalizing on social media right now? What is the overall potential for consulting firms in the social media market? What steps should you be taking to position your firm for success in social media? Register for the webinar April 25, 2012

Association for Information and Image Management Chris Boudreaux presented emerging trends, discussed leading practices and answered questions about risks and opportunities in social media governance and policies.

March 13, 2012

Forrester Marketing and Strategy Forum EMEA 2011 Chris Boudreaux and Neil Beam discussed how brands like AT&T, IBM and Walmart achieve Marketing ROI from Social Media. They showed how those brands engineer measurement into their strategies from the beginning. In particular, they showed how repeatable and consistent results require proven process and technologies that help marketers to answer the following questions: What is my integrated marketing measurement plan? What results I am achieving from each component of that plan, including Social Media? What should I do different for my next project and in the future? How do I allocate resources and set targets for the future?

November 16, 2011

Creating Organizational Frameworks To Scale Social Intelligence Chris Boudreaux discussed his contribution to Steve Rappaport’s recently published book entitled Listen First: Turning Social Media Conversations Into Business Advantage.

May 9, 2011

WOMMA School of WOM Chris Boudreaux joins Susan Emerick, Bill Chamberlain and Amy Laine of IBM to discuss lessons from IBM in Enabling the Social Workforce.

May 9, 2011 , 2:45 – 3:30pm

iMedia Connection Brand Summit Chris Boudreaux and Susan Emerick of IBM will presented the following session: Most organizations feel challenged when determining how to mobilize employees in social media on behalf of their brand, but IBM has found a way. In fact, IBM has successfully and consistently enabled thousands of experts around the globe to build and maintain a presence in social media that grows the professional influence of the individual while advancing the goals of the business. In this session, Susan Emerick of IBM and Chris Boudreaux discuss the fundamentals of enabling a workforce for social engagement, including tools that participants can use at your brand, and lessons from IBM that you can use to grow your brand’s ability to achieve business outcomes through social media.

March 7, 2011

Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) Summit Establishing Social Media Capabilities Across an Enterprise

Most large organizations have multiple teams involved in social media with each team operating independently. As a result, most organizations are running redundant and disconnected social media activities. This case study explained how one large technology company established a clear, cross-functional operating strategy for optimizing it’s enterprise-wide social media efforts. At the Paris Hotel in Las Vegas

November 19, 2010

Social Media Forum at the Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland Chris Boudreaux will present a session entitled “Integrating Social Media Into CRM”. October 1, 2010

23rd Annual E Source Forum On September 21, Chris will discuss opportunities for utilities to manage social media as a source of business value across the enterprise.

Sept. 19 – 23, 2010

Social Media Insider Summit Chris presented a Social Media Makeover for Sprint, as part of the following session: While many brands, like Pepsi, have used social media to completely energize their brands, others have failed miserably, or failed by not having a social media presence at all. These brands need help! In this game show style format, three social media experts offer it, saying how they would fix a brand that isn’t making the grade in social media, The audience will grade their solutions.

Sept. 1, 2010

Exploring New Territories: A CRM Executive Breakfast Chris Boudreaux presented strategies needed to effectively navigate and thrive in the world of social media, including new service models, trends, technologies and actions for improving customer and partner experiences. This event was hosted by Accenture for invited CRM leaders.

May 20, 2010

NewComm Forum Chris Boudreaux presented frameworks and data that help organizations manage their social media efforts more effectively, including frameworks for improving Social Media Governance across the organization

April 22, 2010

E Source Chris Boudreaux delivered a webinar to attendees from U.S. and Canadian utilities on the topic of social media management, including emerging software tools that can help companies in highly regulated industries to utilize social media at scale, while ensuring compliance with regulations

March 31, 2010

Healthcare Human Resources Management Association of California Chris Boudreaux presented trends, insights and best practices for companies using social media at scale to a forum of human resources leaders from California hospitals

Feb. 11, 2010

iMedia Connection Brand Summit Chris Boudreaux taught a Master Class on Social Media Governance and creating social media policies, 2:30 – 3:30pm

Feb. 8, 2010

Clarabridge Customer Connections Chris participated in a panel on the topic of using different social media as a customer feedback channel in Voice-of-the-Customer and Customer Experience Management programs

Jan. 26, 2010

Silicon Valley Chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) Chris Boudreaux spoke about Social Media Governance and brand management Register to attend

Dec. 10, 2009

Webinar with Filtrbox Chris Boudreaux gave tips for taking Social Media Governance from strategy to execution View the slides Nov. 19, 2009

Forrester Forrester asked Chris to advise 30 Interactive Marketing leaders on trends and best practices in social media management. The session was recorded, and is available to Forrester clients.

Oct. 8, 2009

Listening in on Online Conversations: Measuring Brand Sentiment with Social Media Published with Professor Wendy Moe of the University of Maryland, and Professor David Schweidel of the University of Wisconsin

With the proliferation of social media, questions have begun to emerge about its role in firms’ marketing research programs. In this research, we investigate the potential to “listen in” on social media conversations as a means of inferring brand sentiment or customer satisfaction. Our analysis employs data collected from multiple website domains, spanning a variety of online venue formats to which social media comments may be contributed. We demonstrate how factors relating to the focus of social media comments and the venue to which they have been contributed can be explicitly modeled in an effort to derive a measure of online brand sentiment. Our proposed approach provides an adjusted brand sentiment metric that is highly correlated with the results of an offline brand tracking survey. This is in stark contrast to the virtually non-existent correlation between an average sentiment measure derived by aggregating across all social media comments and the same offline tracking survey. We discuss the implications of our findings for practitioners considering social media as a potential research tool.

June 29, 2011

When Can You Say, “We Have a Social Media Strategy!” A checklist for leaders when defining or assessing their social media strategy. Read the full description and download the white paper.

2011

Leveraging Social Intelligence to Drive Business Results (Listening 2.0) My team at Converseon published this white paper to explain how the limitations of existing social listening tools make it difficult for enterprises to pursue business objectives in social media, and then we explain how new solutions are emerging to help large organizations overcome those challenges. Read the full description and download the white paper.

November 17, 2010

Achieving High Performance in Insurance Through Social Media More than any other industry, insurance built its roots through networking and reputation. As a result, the potential value of social media to insurers should be quite extraordinary. On the other hand, social media are still maturing, and the risks to insurers are more significant than they are to many other industries.

This paper examines the trends in social media that insurers seeking high performance should consider within their customer, channel and workforce strategies, then describes a comprehensive approach for insurers to thoughtfully and reliably utilize social media to enable the next generation of those strategies in marketing, sales, services and recruiting.

Download “Achieving High Performance in Insurance Through Social Media

2010

Social Media Policies That Make a Difference The IABC published an article by Chris Boudreaux in their CW Bulletin online newsletter, explaining how organizations can create social media policies that make a difference.

October 12, 2010

Business Week, MSN, TheStreet.com, Social Media Biz, Money Central Chris Boudreaux and Joe Hughes of Accenture published an article describing the technologies that organizations can use to effectively monitor social media and integrate their listening into customer service and support — at scale

March 25, 2010

Discovering the Social Network’s $2 Billion Opportunity – WEBINAR In a continuation of the popular article about challenges and opportunities in social media for consultancies, Consulting magazine will host an open webinar with three thought leaders in social business consulting, including Chris Boudreaux and partners from BCG, KPMG, Capgemini and IFS. Register for the webinar.

April 25, 2012: 1-2pmET

Who Owns Your Followers? Time To Revise Your Social Media Policy Read Write Web featured a list of actions that brands should take to avoid court battles with employees over ownership of social media accounts, since on a recent court decision in the U.S., and based on client experience from Chris Boudreaux. View the article.

December 2011

Discovering the Social Network’s $2 Billion Opportunity When Consulting Magazine studied the opportunities and challenges in social media for consultancies, they included perspectives from Chris and other executives at leading consultancies, including Accenture, BCG, Deloitte, and IBM. View the article.

December 2011

Crafting the Right Social Media Policy (print edition) Chris described best practices for crafting and managing social media policies. November 2011

Aligning Your Social Media Policy to Your Business Model Chris Boudreaux was interviewed by Enrico Schaefer of Traverse Legal about leading practices in social media policy development. In particular, they discuss the stages of social media policy evolution in large organizations, and considerations for ensuring that your social media policy supports your business model. Listen to the recording, or read the transcript.

November 3, 2011

Social Media Measurement Proxies That Work Forrester analyst Nate Elliott discussed research by Chris Boudreaux, Dr. Wendy Moe and Dr. David Wenshel that determined a model for measuring customer satisfaction through online conversation mining. Get Nate’s Report.

October 2011

On the Record Online – Podcast #8 Chris Boudreaux was the guest panelist on this podcast by Paul Gillin and Eric Schwartzman, where in they discussed whether organizations should discipline employees over their comments in social media. They discuss an incident reported by the New York Times involving Reuters reprimanding an employee for criticizing the newswire’s management style via Twitter. According to the National Labor Relations Board, a federal government agency, that may be unconstitutional. Should you update your corporate social meida policy as a result? Listen to find out.

April 11, 2011

The Most Underestimated Social Media Asset Chris Boudreaux and Susan Emerick of IBM were interviewed by iMedia about lessons for brands empowering their employees in social media. Chris and Susan will co-present a session entitled “Enabling the Social Workforce” at the March 6-9 iMedia Brand Summit in Austin, TX.

February 22, 2011

Social Media Sticker Shock Chris Boudreaux was quoted in an article about the true costs of social media in business.

February 14, 2011

Protect Your Company From Social Media Disaster: How to Create Bulletproof Corporate Social Media Policies Chris Boudreaux joined Adam Christensen, Program Director of Digital Strategy and Development at IBM, Tom Hoehn, Director of Interactive Marketing and Convergence Media at Eastman Kodak Company, and Holly Potter, Vice President of Public Relations at Kaiser Permanente to discuss leading practices and lessons in developing and managing corporate social media policies.

December 2, 2010

Media Transformation: Engaging IT Decision Makers in Our “Anytime, Anywhere” World Chris Boudreaux spoke as a panelist for the IDG webcast, Media Transformation: Engaging IT Decision Makers in Our “Anytime, Anywhere” World, wherein Chris described challenges that large organizations are encountering in using social media for marketing, and a few ways that Chris has helped clients to overcome those challenges.

Listen to the webcast

September 2010

Gartner podcast: How to Govern Social Media (audio) Research Director, Richard Fouts, interviewed Chris Boudreaux regarding the findings of his survey of how leading companies are applying governance to social media to protect the brand, the company and the message.

February 5, 2010

On the Record Online (audio) Paul Gillin and Eric Schwartzman interviewed Chris Boudreaux regarding social media policy lessons and best practices.

April 19, 2010

The Business of Valuation – Quarterly Newsletter John Borrowman interviewed Chris Boudreaux for tips on managing social media in small and medium size Business Valuation consultancies.

August 2010

“The Debate Over Social Media at the Office”, Entrepreneur magazine Chris Boudreaux was quoted in an article discussing policies that companies use to control, influence or empower employee use of social media at work.

March 2010

“Free–Yes, Free!–Marketing Resources”, Entrepreneur magazine SocialMediaGovernance.com was featured in a list of free resources for marketers to use on setting their marketing strategies.

March 22, 2010

Entrepreneur magazine Chris Boudreaux was quoted by in the March print edition of Entrepreneur magazine, in a story about employee use of social technologies in the workplace

March 2010

The American Society of Business Publication Editors

quoted Chris in an article about social media policies

Jan. 11, 2010

Reuters

quoted Chris in an article about social media policies

Oct. 21, 2009

Physorg quoted Chris in an article about social media policies

Oct. 8, 2009

The Charlotte Observer quoted Chris in an article about social media policies

Oct. 8, 2009

“Chris Boudreaux was a compelling keynote speaker for the Social Media Forum held by the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland. Chris provided an insightful and integrative presentation on the role of social media in customer relationship management. The frameworks and issues he presented were so thought provoking that speakers and attendees alike continued to reference his presentation throughout the day, a true testament to the impact and value he had on the event.”

Wendy Moe

Associate Professor of Marketing, Department of Marketing Robert H. Smith School of Business

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“Chris Boudreaux gave us a high value, very insightful look at emerging and necessary governance practices that will help today’s corporations tap into the potential of social media marketing. Chris offers a new framework for empowerment with accountability to strengthen brand perception in this fast evolving medium where old rules no longer apply.”

Kathy Stershic

President, Silicon Valley Chapter International Association of Business Communicators

“Chris provided both practical guidance on how to structure and govern social media within organizations, as well as thought provoking insights into the evolving communications landscape and the complex integration and compliance challenges ahead.”

Matthew Burks

Senior Manager E Source