It’s true in most enterprises that marketing leads social web communications efforts. This doesn’t mean everyone else is off the hook.  For digital branding efforts to be truly successful, each person in the enterprise needs to play their part.   

Seed, lead and spread

Marketing managers create the digital brand and then seed dissemination of brand messages and digital assets.  But they also need to socialize content beyond corporate managed web properties.  As digital brand creators and curators, marketing managers need to issue a call-to-action asking leaders, employees and other influencers to link, comment, and promote on the social channels they personally own. 

I like to think of three digital brand management roles – creator, leader and evangelist. Yes, overlapping roles, but with some distinct responsibilities:    

Marketing managers are digital brand creators

• They act as facilitator and curator of digital assets.
• They plan, integrate and lead dissemination of digital assets.
• They seed the online conversation.  

Managers are digital brand leaders

• They inspire their teams to use social media.
• They issue calls to action on new content.
• They lead the online conversation. 

Employees are digital brand evangelists

• They participate in social media.
• They link to, comment on and share content.
• They spread the conversation.      

How does your organization handle digital brand management? Are you getting people involved outside of marketing?

Explore more about social media marketing at Chris Koch’s B2B Marketing Blog , Forrester’s Interactive Marketing Blog and SEOmoz’s Social Media Markting Guide.