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A ������ý���� professor and his wife and business partner have joined the hundreds of industry experts who serve as instructors for the online education company lynda.com. The new course by College of Business Administration adjunct professor Mark Burgess and Cheryl Burgess, “Social Employees: The New Marketing Channel,” is now available to view with a subscription to the website. 

Recently purchased by LinkedIn for $1.5 billion, Lynda offers users a library of more than 4,000 instructional videos in exchange for a monthly fee. The company’s broad range of videos includes topics that cover technical skills, creative techniques, business strategies and more. The website has been a leading company for independent learners who wish to supplement their traditional education by learning new skills. “We’re all in pursuit of lifelong learning goals,” Mark says. “Today there’s no excuse not to find the information to help accomplish those goals.”

The course, which consists of about 25 different videos lasting about five to seven minutes each, builds on The Social Employee, the Burgess’ 2014 book that describes how employees can serve as a brand’s most authentic connection to consumers in the social media sphere. The book draws on success stories from Southwest, IBM, Dell and other companies to provide real-life examples of how companies empower employees to become brand ambassadors through social media.

Following the publication of the book, Mark says that he and his wife often feel like they coined a phrase that started a revolution. They’ve remained busy promoting, and building on, the concepts of the social employee. Mark has given and frequently presents lectures around the country for the American Marketing Association. The pair has also contributed to a project at Wharton called the Wharton Future of Advertising project, which resulted in a book called Beyond Advertising (Wiley, 2016).  

The Lynda course grew out of a meeting they had with LinkedIn executives in New York. “When we originally talked about this concept of the social employee in our book, brands needed to know what was important about it and why they needed to do it,” Mark says. “Now we’re communicating the ‘how.’ We often hear that brands love the idea but need help in how to do it.” 

He estimates that by 2020, when more millennials have joined the workforce, 75% of employees will be engaged in social media around — at least in part — the brand of their employers. “We see this kind of usage as part of people's persona and who they are,” he says. 

There’s a growing movement for executives to display leadership on social media for their employees to emulate, the Burgesses say. “In the very early stages of becoming social employees, people can be hesitant, but as they progress and move forward, there has to be leadership for there to be effective social employees,” Cheryl says. 

Mark compares the process of scripting a Lynda course to writing a book. He and his wife made an elaborate outline that was shaped into chapters and eventually whittled into a script. The pair already had a catalog of graphics they wanted to include; Lynda accepted them but “rendered them in their style,” Mark says, adding that he and Cheryl had to pass a screen test before they inked the final deal. “Fortunately, we were approved.”

In January, the couple flew to California to film the course in Lynda’s Carpinteria, Calif., studio. ������ý���� a half-hour from Santa Barbara and a mere 10 minutes from the beach, Lynda’s Silicon Valley-type corporate campus is replete with free bicycles and refueling stations for hybrid cars. “We were told that the production studios are the largest outside of Hollywood,” Mark says. 

Mark and Cheryl shot for three days against a green screen and, once filming was complete, a team integrated the graphics and finalized the production. In total, the turnover time from the first day of shooting to the course going live was about two months, Mark says. 

Now, they are in the midst of writing their second book on the topic of social employees, as well as beginning to develop multiple courses for Lynda in integrated marketing and employee engagement. At this pace, the social employee revolution is set to continue for a long while. 

“We’re excited to be a part of this,” Cheryl says.   

������ý���� faculty and staff can access lynda.com using the University subscription to view Social Employees: The New Marketing Channel with Mark Burgess and Cheryl Burgess, as well as the rest of Lynda's library of videos. If you have  questions or need help accessing lynda.com, please contact the OIT Help Desk at 609-219-3000 or email helpdesk@rider.edu.​