Corporate social media accounts can strengthen brand and reputation. Now some companies are realizing it is the personal social media accounts of employees that have even more branding power than corporate accounts.
By Joshua Ferdinand

Social media might have begun as a medium for connecting friends and family, but it is now embedded in businesses as a strategy to strengthen corporate brand and reputation. The primary focus has been on using social media for marketing, with the company controlling the message and who delivered the message.

In the last few years, there has been a shift in recognition of the fact that employees have even more power through social media than the corporate branded social media for driving brand perceptions. In companies like Adobe, social media has evolved from being a marketing tool to being embedded across the organization to create a truly social business. The evolution has taken social media from a technology use...