Deploying IMC Troops and Internal Marketing Armies

This past week, Fast Company (a favorite of mine since their launch in 1995) featured an excellent article on how organizations can leverage one of their most powerful marketing resources, internal staff. 

Too often organizations become so focused on their external audiences that they lose opportunities to leverage valuable internal audiences for integrated marketing communication (IMC) efforts.  In this article (which was reprinted from BrianSolis.com), Jay Baer and Amber Naslund, share inspirations from their new book, The NOW Revolution: 7 Shifts to Make Your Business Faster, Smarter, and More Social.

The authors explain, “No one person in your company knows everything. Whether you’re a small organization or a multinational corporation, there are successes and failures, special moments, and stories occurring and being created every minute of every day. Powering your external engagement efforts with an internal social media program helps you collect and distribute as much of that information as possible.”

The article encourages soliciting daily updates such as account wins and client stories from across the organization.  The authors share several recommendations to jumpstart internal marketing efforts to include establishing a central communications channel and developing a “message of the day” that can be shared via Twitter and other social media tools. 

So … how strong are your IMC troops?  I welcome your comments below.