What’s happened is that Empire Avenue , a gamified approach to measuring social influence, has sparked off some friendly rivalry as we work out just how much social capital we hold. Basically, it measures your activity on certain social networks, and is not dissimilar from other influencer measuring tools such as Klout and Peer Index. If you or your company are already active on social media, now may well be the time to think about “investing&# in Empire Avenue. …It’s not as bad as it sounds! MORE >>

As marketers, our ultimate goal is to influence others – to develop affinity for our products, to act in support of our values, and to choose our brand over those of our competitors. Leveraging influence is the single most effective and enduring asset we have in our marketing arsenal. In our new e-book, 3 Keys to Influence: Understanding and Leveraging Social Capital , we explore the ways to harness influence to grow a brand’s social capital and positively impact critical business drivers such as sales. We want to hear from you, marketers! MORE >>

These values are denominated in social currencies. Working for Social Currency. Market Capitalism has deftly turned social currencies into consumption verticals.  People are “working” for social currencies denominated in dollars. Influence Peddling. The reason is clear – these people have the ability to influence the opinions and interactions of their community. However, if the sponsor has a terrible product, that same influence can turn against the brand and the influencer in an amplified manner. Printing Social Currency. MORE >>

With 90 percent of purchases subject to social influence, it’s no surprise that savvy marketers are looking to leverage social influencers to increase sales and awareness. Influence is the single most effective and most enduring marketing asset. To help shed some light on the subject, our latest white paper, the 3 Keys to Influence: Understanding and Leveraging Social Capital gives marketers a framework for maximizing their social influence strategy by specifically, outlining steps to leverage both internal and external brand advocates. MORE >>

What you rarely see is an examination of how mismanagement of intangible capital led to these problems, what these cuts do to the intangible capital balance sheet and what this means to the company’s ability to grow and succeed in the future. So we’ll ask the questions: How did mismanagement of intangible capital contribute to this problem? For me, this means that HSBC didn’t have the right Human Capital needed to build the right Strategic Capital. What do these cuts do to the intangible capital balance sheet? Well, it’s not that simple. Really? MORE >>