With “free” access to millions of prospects and the ability to target your audience according to any number of demographic criteria, multi-channel marketing should be easier than ever. However, the reality is that electronic media and digital convergence have moved brand identity initiatives from a centralized, top-down function (read “communications”) to decentralized, collaborative, often deregulated efforts (read “conversations”).This new reality presents altogether anew set of challenges.

Certainly, the CEO and CMO still set their agenda for desired brand identity. But more businesses are finding it difficult to ensure that the brand personality trickles down to the extended enterprise: employees around the globe, partner firms and resellers, brand advocates and, ultimately, customers. Without careful planning, it’s easy for brands to become diluted.

I can’t help but wonder what fictional 1960s creative director Don Draper of Mad Men fame would think of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and the range of social listening and marketing automation tools he’d have to use today. How would he feel about the risk that an angry, but enterprising, teenager from rural America with an internet connection and notebook computer could potentially have more influence on his client’s brand than he does? Probably the same way that many CMOs feel today — worried!

Companies, can, should and usually do participate in conversations about their brand online. But brand personality is no longer controlled by the company or a handful of people in the marketing department, but by multiple, geographically dispersed social media teams and the online public. So does bottom-up messaging mean that your brand is doomed to suffer multiple personality disorder?

Inconsistent messaging via multiple channels by your various stake holder scan dilute even the most well-known brands. Here are five tips to help unify the voice of your staff while embracing the new reality of bottom-up messaging.

#1. Educate employees on vision and values: Before your staff members can agree, disagree, or plead indifference to the vision, mission, and values of your company, they need to know what they are and more difficult, how to apply them in their work and daily lives. Create a concerted internal marketing campaign to educate staff on corporate values. This will require an ongoing effort as it will take multiple exposures before the communication is really received. Consider multi-channel communication through video and podcasts, rather than the written word.

#2. Create a team of brand advocates: It’s difficult to get five people in a room to agree about anything, so in the case of large companies with thousands of employees, is it realistic to expect everyone to toe the company line and embrace values set out by “corporate”? Probably not. Find a small team of advocates among your employees with an interest in digital marketing who believe enough in the corporate values to spread the word in social media.

#3. Listen to stake holders with the goal of setting an authentic brand: We all know of companies that position their brands as the socially responsible choice advocating care and respect for the environment, the community and their clients. It sounds great until large groups of disgruntled employees start whistle blowing on Facebook about unethical practices and poor treatment or consumers start venting about poor customer service or product quality. What happens to the brand then? Make sure that your vision and values are authentic and that you really are practicing what you preach. If you’re not, you’ll need to work at changing corporate culture, or adopt a different value—one that you and your employees can genuinely live.

#4. Segregate brands: Branding becomes even more complicated when a business has multiple brands and different audiences. It may be cumbersome, but it’s necessary to segment in order to direct the right messages at the right touch points to the right people. When your messaging lacks specific relevance you lose good opportunities to engage your audience.

#5. Be imperfect: Don’t be afraid to take risks with your branding. Striving for perfection can come dangerously close to being boring. How interesting is a person whose main concern is being perfect? Probably not very. Weaving and integrating many heterogeneous voices can add depth, texture and interest to your brand personality. While incorporating the voice of a larger “uncontrollable” group is challenging, the end result can make your brand more real and therefore more enduring in the long term.

Clamoring for attention in the era of multi-channel marketing can be exhausting. But when brands switch gears from a “look at me!” to a “how can I help?” mentality, engagement happens, differentiation is experiential and brand personality flourishes!

The increasing adoption of content marketing (i.e., regular blogs, e-books, info graphics, and video), which leverages the voices of many, often means a multitude of voices and multidirectional conversations. Ideally, a content marketing strategy seeks first to understand customer needs and then creates dialog around addressing these needs to drive a desired customer experience, all the while communicating the values of the brand through multiple voices.

To get it right, an engagement strategy is a must. Marketers must balance “owned” media (e.g., websites controlled by the company) with “earned” media (e.g., customer and employee created communities). When employees are engaged with and passionate about the brand, their enthusiasm inevitably reaches your customers and a positive brand experience is born. This requires a fundamental paradigm shift —from the centralization of brand management to an “open source” and by necessity, more authentic, brand engagement model.