In Building Belief we put forth a Page Model for creating advocacy among an organization’s key stakeholders. Its centerpiece involves defining and activating corporate character and ensuring that it permeates the enterprise. Employees should embody this character, business policies and practices should be consistent with it, and the brand should represent it from top to bottom.

A well-defined corporate character makes possible the second aspect of the Page Model: forging shared belief through authentic engagement with stakeholders so they may become advocates. In today’s social-media-driven environment, this shared belief is established more and more via effective social engagement strategies that touch all stakeholders – customers, employees, investors, citizens, etc. – and enable them to share ideas, ask and answer questions, offer advice and inspire them to advocate on behalf of the organization.

In Social Engagement: Trends, Cases & The New Model in Action, we examine how organizations are using social tools to engage their employees and their external stakeholders, how best to “listen” through social to divine actionable intelligence, and how to measure progress and outcomes. Along the way we offer eight case studies to illustrate each part of the report.

• Part One: The Evolution of Social Media as a Business Tool (Case Study: USAA)
• Part Two: Employee Engagement (Case Studies: General Electric & IBM)
• Part Three: Current Trends in External Engagement (Case Studies: Southwest Airlines & Kaiser Permanente)
• Part Four: Listening & Monitoring (Case Studies: Chevron & MasterCard)
• Part Five: Social Media Performance Metrics (Case Study: AT&T)