Sharpening Your Skills: Social Media

Sharpening Your Skills culls the HBS Working Knowledge archive to deliver insights around important business topics. This week: developing a social media strategy.

Using social media to advance your marketing is a potentially powerful and low-cost tool. But the risk is potentially powerful, too—allowing consumers to co-create your brand is enough to induce night sweats in any marketer. From our archives, these Harvard Business School professors offer up different insights into developing and executing a successful social media strategy.

Brand Manager's Guide to Losing Control

Social media platforms have taken some of the marketing power away from companies and given it to consumers. Jill Avery discusses the landscape of "open source branding," wherein consumers not only discuss and disseminate branded content, they also create it.

Why the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge was a Social Media Blockbuster

Most companies should envy the financial and brand awareness brought about by the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. The campaign's key ingredient, says John Deighton, is that participants enhance their personal capital in performance of a good deed.

Secrets to a Successful Social Media Strategy

Misiek Piskorski explores the secrets of successful social media tactics in his book, A Social Strategy: How We Profit From Social Media.

HBS Cases: Lady Gaga

What goes into creating the world's largest pop star? A case study by Anita Elberse examines the strategic marketing choices that created a global brand.