When your Prime Minister declares that he’s hiring a personal brand manager, you know that “personal branding” is no longer just a buzz term.
Whether you want to be in the spotlight or not, if you run a company in 2023, you absolutely need to think about your own personal brand.
Social media can be incredibly overwhelming, so we’re going to concentrate this article on how to build a presence on LinkedIn, but personal branding can include your website, Instagram, Twitter or even TikTok.
Why is Personal Branding Important?
70% of consumers say they feel more connected with brands who have CEOs that are active on social media. That’s an absolutely whopping number.
The same report states that 91% of people believe in the power of social media when it comes to connecting people.
Another report shows that 82% of consumers want to shop with brands that align with their own values.
While brands can post content to show their values and who they are, consumers always prefer the human element and being able to connect with someone.
Personal branding allows companies to build meaningful relationships, rather than being a faceless corporation.
Authenticity and Trust
Personal branding allows CEOs to show who they really are. By sharing personal stories and insights, CEOs can help to humanise their company’s brand and build an emotional connection with customers and stakeholders.
We’re living in an extremely sceptical world out there, and so anything that helps shows transparency and authenticity will allow you to build trust and help to increase customer loyalty.
It’s been seen that personal brands perform much better on social media than company brands, regardless of the platform.
LinkedIn definitely favours activity on a personal profile and so you will see a lot more reach when you post via the CEO’s page.
Therefore, you can increase the company’s brand visibility and reputation as the CEO or other business leader interacts with content on LinkedIn.
This is also the case on other social media platforms.
For example:
Grace Beverley has 1M followers on Instagram
Tala has 366k
Richard Branson has 12.4M followers on Twitter
Virgin has 247k
Elon Musk has 145M followers on Twitter
Tesla has 20M
Building your network through your personal brand
You will have heard of the phrase “your network is your net worth”, and as cheesy as it is, it has some clout.
Being active on a platform like LinkedIn means that you can easily develop yourself as a thought leader, sharing valuable knowledge, insights and experiences.
You can establish yourself as a go-to expert in your industry, and increase your network as a result.
LinkedIn is still the most professional platform, especially for B2B activity and CEOs can quickly build a strong personal brand using this platform alone.
By building this personal brand in front of other CEOs, potential customers and investors, CEOs can build out their personal network and improve the company’s brand reputation at the same time.
Personal branding helps talent acquisition
Just like how customers care about who the CEOs of companies are, potential employees are most definitely looking to work for leaders they respect.
We’ve been in a strange recruitment time for a while, suffering through the Great Resignation and the whole Quiet Quitting fiasco.
So, it’s more important than ever to attract the right talent to your company and keep them there.
By having a strong personal brand, where you clearly share stories aligning with your values will attract talent with similar values.
Moreover, if they’ve been following you for some time, they will know what you’re about and what your company’s goals are, meaning they will fit in a lot quicker.
So, how should you get started with personal branding?
Personal branding can be overwhelming, especially if you’re not too active on social media (and you don’t like it!).
Our recommendation is to start with LinkedIn only, as it’s the platform to reach the most relevant people and build up meaningful connections.
Create a plan of what you want to achieve by posting, who you want to speak to and how this will benefit the company too.
Then, don’t be afraid to play around with different formats, but make sure you check the analytics to see what’s working and what’s not.
But remember, this stuff takes time, so don’t expect to go “viral” right away. It’s usually better not to anyway, but build up things bit by bit instead.