Personal Branding Within The Corporate Workplace
03/20/2012
Do you remember Tom Peters’ innovative Fast Company article The Brand Called You?
Back in the ‘90’s Peters presented what for the time was an unusual concept: employees could position themselves, within their organizations, as though they were a brand. His idea was employees were more than cogs in a corporate wheel. By taking a lesson from how marketers branded products people could successful manage and grow their careers.
There have been volumes written about how to create a “personal brand” including right here on Diva Marketing posted in 2009. However, social media and social networks have added an interesting dimension.
What if ..
- your employer helped you develop your personal brand to the benefit of both you and them?
What if ..
- then you both leveraged the credibility, visibilty and goodwill of each to create a an earned halo effect that supports and aligns your values and the company's brand promise?
Answer: You have an Employee Personal Branding Strategy.
Enterprises which place a value on encouraging employee branding, experience multiple benefits. For instance it strengthens corporate branding both internally and externally. When an organization helps its employees create their brand for mutual value, from the company’s point of view, many positives can occur from decreasing business costs to increasing market awareness.
Six Benefits of Employee Personal Branding
1. Industry knowledge transfer which may decrease training costs
2. Trend identification which may present new product development and sales opportunities
3. Stronger collaboration with subject matter experts which may increase logistic efficiencies
4. Increased leadership development which may decrease recruitment acquisition costs
5. Employees can serve as brand champions increasing visibility within the industry and building important relationships with customers, prospects, influencers and thought leaders.
6. Improved corporate brand perception which can positively affect not only marketing goals, but improve recruiting top people to the organization by becoming a more desirable place to work. This is the ultimate “halo effect.”
Employee personal branding is a aspect of social business that I believe will become increasingly critical as employees take for granted using social networks, like LinkedIn, to cultivate relationship building opportunities.
On the flip side, organizations are neglecting low cost ways to increase brand awareness, credibility and goodwill through the people who know their brand the best .. their employees.
I am excited to be working with Bernie Borges to create an important training workshop sponsored by the American Marketing Association: Personal Branding within in the Corporation. Please enjoy this podcast where Bernie and I take you on a deeper dive of this exciting concept.
Update: After my conversation with John Cass, I'm adding one more
What if ..
- the "halo influence" of employer/employee continues even after you leave an organization. Why not work together to create a mutual beneficial employee digital presence .. for the present and the future?
Graphic credit: ymajestic / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
