This article is a guest post by Dan Schawbel, the author of
Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success
(Kaplan, April 09), and owner of the award-winning
Personal Branding Blog
.
Any intelligent company understands that employees are their greatest asset.
That's particularlly true now. The Bureau of Labor Statistics just announced that the unemployment rate is now 8.5% and that there are 13.2 million unemployed individuals in the US (16% of the population).
Companies are cutting back, and they have to make the resources they do have go further.
So, if you're running a small business or a team of marketers, how do you do that?
One way is to encourage your employees to embrace and develop their personal brands. That means encouraging them to build their own followers and voice on blogs, social networks and content sharing sites.
That may sound like a waste of time to traditionalists, but there are at least five cold, hard business reasons that it makes sense:
1. Free marketing -- With marketing budgets depleting day-by-day, companies are going to have to figure out how to do more with less. As you all know from reading this blog, social media is a time expense, not a monetary one.
Employee brands already have networking accounted for and they are visible online. You can see how many Facebook friends, LinkedIn contacts and Twitter followers an employee has and tap that network to spread your messages for free. This doesn't cost you any more money and you're already paying these employees to work for your company anyways.
Also, if they take pride in your company and truly like your product, they will market it anyways, without you asking them to.
2. Public relations -- Many large companies have spokespeople who handle interviews with journalists. Every single employee at your company has a brand and the chance to make a positive difference for you. Your intern might have a successful podcast series that was in The New York Times and has a title next to his or her name "Intern at [Your Company] company."
Since all employees are associated with your brand, whether they like it or not, they all have to be treated like brand ambassadors and should speak in the best interests of the company. They can extend your public relations department and get you good PR.
3. Sales - Employees who have powerful brands not only get a lot of attention, but also have network bases that can support corporate sales. As long as the employee admits that he is selling products or services for a company he or she works for, then this method does prove to be successful.
By treating every employee as a salesperson, in addition to marketer and PR person, you can generate revenue, without even having to pay your employees more. During these tough times, this might be a good method for meeting your sales numbers.
4. Thought leadership -
Many of your employees might have some bright ideas that can make your company appear forward thinking and innovative. This thought leadership can attract great press or top talent that you can recruit.
Of course, your blog should be corporate sponsored before you start speaking on behalf of your company. To get these ideas out there is smart for link building on your corporate site as well.
5. Branding:
If you're a startup company, it's going to be very challenging to break through the clutter that is mass media and stand out. Strong personal brands can be leveraged to consistently and repeatedly get your brand name out there, even if you have no budget.
Large companies, who seem to be divesting in marketing, have a great opportunity to use the thousands of employees to spread the word. Personal branding supports corporate branding.
Does your company support personal brands? If so, what do you think the effect is? Let's discuss in the comments below.
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Victoria 9:37 AM on April 10, 2009
This is great info as I feel alot of people I know in the industry are having the problem of personal branding as not part of what should one do during work hours.
Paul Roetzer 9:47 AM on April 10, 2009
Nice post, Dan.
Couldn't agree more. Too many organizations fear giving up control, and while the traditionalists will fight it, the potential reward is greater than the risk.
Chris Butler 10:12 AM on April 10, 2009
Dan,
Great points, especially the one about thought leadership. I just posted a link to this article on a blog post by Phil Johnson, title Why I Want to Give Out Big Raises at My Agency, which touches on similar themes. A key quote that points to the idea of an employees influence from within:
"You are guaranteed success if you can break through the status quo and help create change within the agency; if you can practice craftsmanship at the highest level; and if you've got the operational genius to help people get the work done and still make it home for dinner."
- Chris
Mary Lee Shalvoy 11:42 AM on April 10, 2009
Thanks for writing this. We are a small sales consultancy trying to both build the company brand and the individual brand of each of the client principals. It works both ways. Initially, it is a bit of a challenge to convince each consultant that personal branding is key to overall success, but once they get a taste of it, they contribute in ways that the marketing person (me) could not have imagined.
Steve Smailes 12:10 PM on April 10, 2009
Dan,
Great post. I've had several conversations with people in the mortgage business who are not allowed access to sites like facebook, linkedin, twitter etc. At some point you have to trust the people you've hired and let them be themselves, otherwise don't hire them. What companies clearly aren't getting is that their employees are representing them now- with bad customer service, lack of work ethic, etc. This shines through in every customer interaction anyway and on top of that the employee goes home and hops on these networks to build their relationships. All the company does is increase the lack of trust that exists between itself and their employees. This will drive the best employees and their relationships away to the competition or they will become the competition.
Steve
Stuart Foster 6:30 PM on April 10, 2009
An interesting side effect of personal branding is that it sometimes creates a personality that comes to represent the entire company as a whole. That person becomes the defacto voice in SM. As more and more people develop their personal brands...it's going to be interesting to see how this plays out.
jobucks 12:25 PM on April 11, 2009
thanks for a great tips,
Dave - SpreadIMPACT 12:50 PM on April 11, 2009
Good article. I think building brands for employees is a great idea for startups or small companies. For larger organizations I feel it could be dangerous and there is also the fear that their professional work profile might become associated with their personal social networking profile
Rob Hahn 1:35 PM on April 13, 2009
(Ooops, HTML typo; pls delete first one.)
Couldn't agree more.
It's 2009 now... business managers have got to read Cluetrain Manifesto if they haven't already. It's time.
In fact, a modern business manager who doesn't know what Cluetrain means probably needs to be let go in short order....
-rsh
Carol Mather 3:09 PM on April 14, 2009
HOW do you find out what your prospecitve customers use for social media when you are prospecting them? Would be awkward for what we are doing. Can you search somehow?
Rick Burnes 4:36 PM on April 14, 2009
Carol, I agree. It is hard. I think the best is to do a few search -- Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.
Sandra Nickel 3:31 PM on April 27, 2009
I sell real estate and last Saturday showed a small multi-family to a local investor. The tenant on one side told us she had moved to our market as a transferee with Costco. Then spent about 5 minutes telling us what a great place it was to work and that she'd move again if they asked. Investor, who'd never been in a Costco store, was blown away and can hardly wait to visit and spend.
Christina Tierney 4:02 PM on April 27, 2009
This was just the article/post I needed! Been refining my personal brand for over 2 years now...have taken the plunge with my own site.
Again...great validation...thanks.
Tom 7:34 AM on April 28, 2009
Seriously, was this even proofread?
"there are 13.2 million PEOPLE unemployed individuals"
"...a WAIST of time to traditionalists"
"cold-hard business reasons"
"what do you think the AFFECT is?"