COMMENTS
personal branding is a huge asset for a company - think Martha Stewart; Dave Thomas (Wendy's); Col. Sanders (KFC)
The use of social media in the workplace is a tricky subject. There's obviously some pros and cons to using it and people are finding ways to get around their company's policy. So why not have a system in place that blocks parts of social media and leave some pieces accessible? Here's a link to a few whitepapers Palo Alto Networks has created about managing and protecting social media: http://bit.ly/d2NZRp http://bit.ly/brno0T Enjoy!
Hi Caroline, Thank you for expressing your personal take on this. I agree with you that it's important for companies or "brands" to have a human face with authenticity and candor. Diversity is so important to showing the real "life" of an organization and because of this I think it's critical for companies to encourage their employees who want to participate in social media to express themselves. On either end of the spectrum are traps: blocking social sites from employees on one side and requiring employees participation in social media on the other. Let those who desire to get involved to speak freely but with common sense and I think everybody wins.
my humble opinion: a personal brand is critical to success. here are a few reasons why:
1. britney spears and "britney." britney spears is rather well known for her follies in the public eye, but on stage, britney takes over, and she is an indominable artist. this is the same for her albums, music videos, and her avatar or persona. britney on stage is flawless, hyper-produced and impeccably-rehearsed - a completely different different person. no matter what she does in her personal life, her britney persona will never be as tarnished as her ms spears'.
2. selling yourself without selling yourself. a person may not market her/himself very well, but give yourself a personal brand, and you can sell the hell out of that brand, without being as self-conscious about your personal image. paul chu is but one man, paul chu, inc. is an effing army.
3. old dogs and tricks. it's much easier to change the direction of your brand than to change the direction of your personality. a leopard never changes its spots, but its brand can easily change its logotype, trademark, and objectives.
i agree with your statement that people don't want to deal with a corporation and would rather deal with a face. but there are reasons why large consulting companies have their big reputation and equally large fees. i believe this is why so many companies spend so much of their marketing budget on letting people know that they are a large company with a personal touch. but even as a small, one-person company, people appreciate that they can go to you as well as your company. but the key, i believe, is separating yourself from your brand. even madonna takes off her cone-shaped bustier when she gets off the stage and goes home to fill out adoption papers.
tl;dr version: your personal brand should be all business and separate from your personal life. then, they are able to support each other, rather than be a crutch for one another.
If your personal brand is about what you do for an employer, how you make your team better, etc, then yes, it is good for a company. If your personal brand is all about ME, this is what I do, how good I am, etc, then no. Jeremiah Owyang's post on nearly the same topic had a decent amount of discussion in the comments: http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2010/06/03/personal-vs-career-brands-its-all-in-the-mindset/
Your personal brand is separate from the company and can define the company. Companies come and go, your person does not. Spend time building your own brand, because people do business with other people, not companies.
Ryan Malone
SmartBug Media
An
inbound marketing agency and Hubspot Partner
@RyanMalone
In my business, personal branding was a large part of our growth in the beginning. People gravitate to a perona very quickly, especially when it can represent and identify with them. But, as a company grows, I feel that it is better to gradually move clients from loyalty to a personal brand to loyalty to a company or product specific brand. You can still be the celebrity behind it. but, just remember that there is more at stake. Something like telling people to hold the phone a different way can dramatically hurt your compny brand when you are the person people are looking to for answers.
IMHO
When people think about my company I get the impression it's impossible for them to separate PullnotPush from Dan Ronken. Now that there's 8 of us I'm curious to see how our brand as a whole will evolve. Some members are a bit more involved with personal branding than others, but as a team each one of us brings something different to the table.
I don't think the question is really about having a personal brand or not, but rather about the promotion of the personal brand.
Everyone (individual and corporations) has a brand. The key is do you proactively develop, manage and promote your brand or do you allow it to develop randomly based on your audience's filtered experiences.
I understand that the real question is do we support the marketing of personal brands. For me, the answer is a resounding yes. If we're not comfortable promoting the individuals who collectively make us who we are, then we need some new individuals.
Great post Caroline...I agree with you that there is no magic bullet. However, I am a fan of personal branding (if it is done with care). Today's market is eager to meet the "people" behind the company!
I think personal branding is phenomenal in the small business space. It is the most authentic way to promote what your company can do for people and it attracts the best customers while weeding out or turning away customers that would have been a bad fit in the first place.
I don't know enough about personal branding in big business/corporate to comment but having worked in the corporate world in the past, I could have probably been more successful in my sales career with a personal brand, blog and social presence.
I too believe there is no magic bullet, but I think there are many advantages to a personal brand because of the change in the way we do business these days. Great article and definitely food for thought.
How about this? Two of the most widely known brands right now - Old Spice and Dos Equis - are having gangbuster success with personal branding, but neither brand associates a name with these personae. Is it personal branding when it's not a real person, or when the person doesn't have a name?
Interesting question-- I think that "personal brand" is in the eye of the beholder, but to me it means that it's associated with a real person as opposed to a made up persona or actor. They are having amazing success with their campaigns though-- which is another blog post in and of itself! I think it's in part because people like story and characters, and in the case of Old Spice, of course comedy.
Have u reversed the qs and looked into whether a company brand can be good or bad for your personal brand? All depends on what co u work for hey...
Great point James. Associating yourself too closely with a company brand can "take over" your personal brand, and to Paul's point, cross the line between personal life and personal brand. When I think of people whose personal brands I like or think are strong, they are almost never associated with a company. I know where they work, yes, but they aren't always talking about their workplace. Personally, I try to walk the line between talking about cool things going on in my company and talking about things that are individual.
This is a great article because I just changed my Facebook account to help with my personal branding. Now my Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook page all have the same URL associated with them.
From an agency standpoint, you are personal brand. Sure you have the company name behind you,
you are selling the company's services.
Your clients talk to
you not everyone at the company.
Personal branding also helps with business relationships and trust.
Personal branding does make a difference.
Great post! I do think about this alot, especially when maintaining multiple websites or multiple company identities.
At the end of the day I believe that people want to deal with people, especially now with so many automated and faceless transactions. I think a strong personal brand even inside the corporate umbrella brings accountabilty and personality to your voice and contribution.
Well written, there are also alot of great comments. This is one of those subjects that is "a matter of opinion." I think that personal branding varies according to your situation. I think that is ONE of the reasons why dig companies monitor or ever do not allow access to social networks. I have heard of people loosing their jobs to posts or pics that have surfaces on their social pages. I have also read that your social profiles and business profiles need to be separated due to the possibility of offence. I think that personal branding requires a certain amount of disipline if you are linking your business to your personal pages. Thanks for the post Caroline.
If this question even comes it then there is some concern that individuals are going to put forth a different brand image from what the company stands for.
I'd say that there's probably a face to the company, and the more personal you make that face the better, but everyone must represent it.
For small businesses, the personal face fo the owner is more powerful than just the company. But he IS the company.
For businesses where there are many people out there in the world, it's still the personal vision of the CEO, owner, board, or whatever, and amke that personal, and everyone represents it.
Because ours is a free social networking and dating site, and a certain percentage of our member base may develop, shall we say, unhealthy attachments to individual employees responding to customer service questions and signing them, we do reply and post on the website anonymously.
However, we break away from the clinical, vanilla approach many of our competitors have by offering personalized service and banter. Our aim is to present ourselves in a playful, quirky, confident way that puts us on the members' side.
For example, this morning I responded to an e-mail from someone who had difficulty uploading his picture to his profile. It was the wrong format and he didn't know how to save it in a different format; I had him e-mail it directly and handled the conversion and upload for him. After I was done, I e-mailed him back, "Now, I don't do this for everyone - just the cute ones ;)" Now, wasn't that better than, "We have completed your request. Please contact us is we can be of further assistance." ...yawn
For us, personal branding extends beyond using a name or a face; it's more about the connection we try to develop. I don't care if "Mary Sue" signed a cookie cutter e-mail when I submitted a question to the power company. TALK to me.
We think about this often at Aisle7 where we offer customized health & wellness programs/software for retailers. Many of us are passionate about what we do (the wellness stuff) & how we do it (the tech stuff) which is very beneficial to our business. Our latest campaign talks about how our new products allow retailers to Tell Your Wellness Story Your Way. We wanted to tell our collective wellness story so we reached out to our community and featured these stories on our site.
Our Aisle7 mission for social media has always been to share our collective thought leadership, opinions and perspectives which make up Aisle7. We took it one more step with this campaign and hope to add customer's perspectives on wellness soon as well.
People want to know that there are people, humanity, behind a company name. When there's also passion, that's the cream.
Personal branding can favor a business especially if the company wants to be known for it's services, but of course we can't please everybody. So we have to be prepared to receive all kinds of comments.
Iconic personal branding has to be constructed carefully. Think of all the fallen sports heroes who have had their contracts yanked after it was revealed they performed satanic rituals with chickens, or whatever.