I am pleased to announce that Centenary College (@Centenary_NJ) has invited me to present as the Gates-Ferry Distinguished Lecturer on February 4, 2013, from 7 to 9 p.m at the Sitnik Theatre in the David and Carol Lackland Center, Hackettstown, NJ. This event is free and open to the public. It has been a great honor over the years to work with Centenary College, who in 2009 awarded me the Joel A. Kobert Distinguished Teaching Award for adjunct faculty. This lecture, titled “Branding from the Inside Out: Are You Ready?” is an excellent opportunity to both continue that relationship and bring the ever-growing @SocialEmployee revolution to the Centenary campus.

The lecture message will expand on the ideas in our Amazon best-selling book The Social Employee, which focuses on the power of creating a new culture of social employees. This is essentially a good news message for companies to learn how to enhance their own brands by empowering their employees as authentic brand ambassadors in the social marketplace. It’s the ultimate win/win. The way I see it, this is a message that should resonate with students, employers, entrepreneurs, and businesspeople of every stripe. The concept centers around companies and businesses gaining competitive advantage by focusing on the basics—chiefly their mission, vision, and values. If you are familiar with the Blue Ocean Strategy, this topic is clearly in the blue ocean range. Today, employees are the brand.

To bring this lecture to life and give these concepts the real-world weight they deserve, I will be drawing from many of the success stories and strategies we use in The Social Employee. The ways in which leading companies like Dell, IBM, Cisco, Adobe, and Southwest Airlines developed, or in some cases reinvigorated, their employee cultures in order to put those dedicated workers on the frontlines of social branding. In every era, communication has been a company’s most essential asset. But in the era of social media, businesses need to double down on building effective communication processes. As we argue in our book, a brand cannot communicate externally unless it first learns to communicate internally. Capture the minds of your employees, and capture the imagination of the world!

All in all, it promises to be a great night and a glimpse into what the future might hold for the ever-changing world of social business! Cheryl Burgess (@ckburgess) is the co-author of The Social Employee and will be in attendance at the lecture on February 4, 2014.

To register for this event ~> CLICK HERE

For a look at a new communication model in the age of empowered social employees, check out our video: “Think of Your Brand as a Planet.”

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