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Imagine this: You're a marketing vp at a Fortune 500 company and you find out from your PR department that a product marketer just out of college has a personal blog with thousands of subscribers that's been written up in Fast Company and many other popular publications.
What do you do?
Do you worry about conflicts of interest and distractions -- or do you embrace his work?
That's exactly the question somebody at EMC Corporation faced when they found out about Dan Schawbel, a blogger and author of the upcoming book, Me 2.0.
EMC decided to embrace Dan's work.
They hired him to be their first "social media expert" and have been benefiting from his writing and speaking about personal branding ever since.
Dan stopped by HubSpot last week to explain why he thinks companies should encourage their employees to develop their personal brands the way he did.
A video recording of my conversation with Dan is posted below. Here are a few highlights:
Why It Makes Sense to Have Employees With Strong Personal Brands
"Visibility creates opportunities ... what would you rather have? A company that has no one on social networks or any blogs, or a company that has at least a hundred people on? You'd want the hundred people because those people will help you market for free."
On How to Be Successful in Social Media
"The key is that you need commitment ... you can't blog once or tweet once every six month and think you're going to get results."