Social Business Enablement with Lauren Friedman

The Digital Slice Podcast is brought to you by The Friedman Group, LLC

How else can social media be used to maximize its power to market a brand? The concept of social media enablement seems like a novel approach. But at Adobe, employees themselves have been empowered to build their own personal brands while playing a big and active role for Adobe as it integrates social media into every aspect of its business operations.

Apparently, customers have more trust in the average employee when they are active on social media. And, they can be a profound source of expertise for Adobe. Adobe has recognized their employees’ crucial role with clients and is actively training them to represent the brand. In this episode, Adobe’s Lauren Friedman shares how.

Lauren Friedman is foremost a writer, social marketing strategist, and head of Adobe’s Social Business Enablement. Lauren started out with a social marketing company called Context Optional before she landed at Adobe in 2011 after two acquisitions.

At first, she managed Consulting Services and then in 2013 joined the Social Business Center of Excellence. She ensures that social media is infused in every aspect of Adobe’s business and developed the Global Social Media Training Program for its employees. Lauren was recognized in 2015 as iMedia 25’s top marketing innovator and also specializes in content strategy for Fortune 100/500 brands, international business, quantitative and qualitative reporting and analytics, and social network strategy.

In this Episode:

• How Lauren started in a startup social media marketing company and got into Adobe through an acquisition
• How social enablement is defined for Adobe employees in line with its social media business integration
• How customers trust company employees more to represent real product insights that influence their purchase decisions
• How social enablement can be applied as both a B2B and B2C strategy for small and large companies
• The four categories of the social enablement program at Adobe including mindset, tool set, skill set, and habit
• How companies are implementing this concept of social enablement more than traditional advertising
• Guiding principles for use in social media branding
• How to define your purpose and rationale for adapting social enablement as a company and how to start

Quotes From this Episode:

“Social enablement in and of itself is really enabling all of our employees to be active on social media, both personally and professionally on behalf of the Adobe brand.” - Lauren Friedman
“People trust people. People want to interact and hear from other people.” - Lauren Friedman
“Employee advocacy and social enablement, in general, is certainly big in the industry as people are shifting their mentalities toward how they use social media and who they want to hear from.” - Lauren Friedman
“I don’t think that trust is going back to the big companies or back to traditional advertising anytime soon.” - Lauren Friedman
“It really does have to start from the top down and you need to get buy-in from your leadership because if they don’t think that its important, then their teams won’t think that it’s important.” - Lauren Friedman
“You can’t force people to be active on social media personally or professionally.” - Lauren Friedman

Resources:

Lauren Friedman

Twitter: @Lauren_Hannah

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/laurenhfriedman

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurenhfriedman/

Websites: http://theoffbeatreport.com/

www.forbes.com/sites/laurenfriedman/

Edelman Trust Barometer

https://www.edelman.com/trust2017/

Brad Friedman

Twitter:

@BradFriedman

@FriedmanGrp

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thefriedmangroup

LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/bfriedman/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-friedman-group-llc

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/friedmansocialmedia

Website: https://friedmansocialmedia.com

Books
“Brad Friedman on Digital Marketing,” by Brad Friedman
“The Small Business Owner's Guide To Inbound Marketing,” by Brad Friedman

Be sure to sign up for the Brad Bot at TheBradBot.com To get reminders when I go live on Facebook and to receive freebies and other content from The Friedman Group, LLC.ok and to receive freebies and other content from The Friedman Group, LLC.