The nature of communications between a business entity and the people who buy its’ products and services are changing rapidly.  Where web 1.0 was primarily about information giving, web 2.0 has consolidated a channel for 2 way communication beyond sales.  The reason this is happening is because web 2.0 makes it easier to find people who share the same interests as you – both professionally and personally.

Web 2.0 social networks allow a new dimension to communication making brand advocacy at an employee level critical.  It’s the people adding the real value to the service and products being offered that will make an impact through social networking.  They are the people in innovation, technical support, consultancy, operations or account management, not those in sales.  These people are the ones who have enough interest in the company’s brand values to want advocate them publicly, thus finding others in a given network who share their interest. 

Let’s take Google as an easy example – we all have an idea of who they are.  For Google, advocacy doesn’t mean “I work for Google, they are cool” it’s more about Google employee’s being interested in what Google stands for and does: Google’s people are interested in “usable web”, “mapping solutions” or “mobile shopping services”.  Those are the things the Google people will connect with others about because they are innately interested in them.  This isn’t new of course, people have been networking for ever more – it’s just so much easier and accessible because of social networking.

With that in mind, the motives of people outside of sales are very important.  They represent the value of the company and their job is to fulfill orders created by sales, not to create the sale itself.  Yet with web 2.0 these people are increasingle able to influence the creation of orders, rather than purely fulfilling them.  They support the brand through the pursuit of their own professional interests.

You could say that web 2.0 makes business value visible.  Which means the people who create the value must have the skills, knowledge and motivation to support the brand they work for.  That requires greater mutual co-dependence in the goals of the business and those of the individuals working for that business. 

It’s for these reasons that HR must recruit the kind of people who are drawn to the value’s of the brand – it needs to be a brand they really want to advocate and one that gives them the chance to pursue their own professional interests within the brand itself.  The fragmentation of communications between corporate entity and the people buying into the brand places greater emphasis on individuals.  With individuals more responsible than ever for advocating the brand’s value in a market, HR’s responsibility for finding and keeping the people who can naturally advocate the brand is crystallised.

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Another article I found has some interesting ideas that support the thrust of this article, so here it is: HR, the new Brand Guardians http://mjbraide.com/mjblog/move-over-marketing-hr-is-the-new-brand-guardian/