brandknewmag.com
30
The
Complete
A to Z Guide
to Personal
Branding
Seth Price
Ever since Tom Peters laid out a modern “personal
branding” road map in Fast Company in the late 1990s,
the concept has been in full swing. The revelation was
that we could be an individual powerhouse, separate
from the corporate umbrella.
So much has happened since: blogging, social media,
the advent of online video, and the explosion of content
marketing.
Nevertheless, nearly two decades later, most companies
require a strict separation of business communication
and personal branding, with the job of social interaction
relegated to a few chosen spokespeople or PR handlers.
Meanwhile, those brands are missing out on the
collective connections and expertise of the very people
they’ve hired to be a crucial part of their team. But all
that is about to change. Those who fail to embrace the
empowered individual brand will miss out on the positive
impact that employee advocacy has to offer.
Like most marketers, I spend a lot of time trying to
do more with less. Lately, though, I’ve become more
aware that I’m surrounded by a team of super-smart
professionals who were recruited and hired because they
can add value to our startup. This realization got me
thinking about what it means to empower the individual
brand in concert with a company mission.
I found lots of great examples, such as IBM; its 300,000
employees are encouraged to share and publish online,
and MarketingProfs, where individual subject-matter
experts are invited to share with and teach an audience
they may not have been able to reach without the
power of the community. That is what building a brand
is all about: mutually beneficial relationships between
organizations and their members.
To explore this topic further, I recently collaborated
with online powerhouse and fellow MarketingProfs
contributor Barry Feldman of Feldman Creative to create
“The Complete A to Z Guide to Personal Branding” (see
the infographic, below)—to help people and companies
dive into the wonderful world of personal branding.
If you haven’t incorporated personal branding into your
marketing strategy by now, you’re missing out on a
world of value that your team is more than willing to
contribute.