In a world full of brands competing for our attention, why should we make it personal?

Like it or not, we all have a brand out there in the world. ‘Personal branding’ is just another marketing buzzword that really means how you present yourself and create a reputation that highlights your strengths, values and personality. In times gone by, this may have manifested in what your friends and work colleagues thought about you. These days, the world of personal branding is amplified online. While we may not always agree with everything Jeff Bezos’ does, he aptly says: “It’s what you want people to say about you when you’re not in the room.”

So, what do you want that to be?

This isn’t a vanity exercise either. 82% of people are more likely to trust a company when their senior executives are active on social media, so there are very good reasons for why this needs to be on your radar (Edelman Survey). In this blog, we want to show you how to shape your personal brand to your advantage, and integrate it into your wider businesses marketing efforts. By building trust, and creating a competitive advantage, it can amplify your organisation’s profile and make your content stand out from the crowd.

Building Trust

Today, more than ever, people want to connect with brands and shop with companies that align with their values. According to Sprout Social, 64% of consumers want brands to connect with them on a personal level. One powerful way to achieve this is through your own, your founder’s, or your CEO’s personal brand. In fact, 70% of people surveyed feel more connected to brands with CEOs and leadership teams who are active on social media.

In this digital age, authentic human experiences hold more power than ever. Prospective customers want to build a relationship with you, in order to know, trust, and like you, before they do business. By putting yourself out there, you offer transparency, allowing people to understand who you are and why you do what you do – helping them decide if they want to work with you or not.

This personal connection is arguably one of your most important assets. When customers can see and connect with a real person, it builds resonance for the products and services you offer. They see the people that are behind a business or a charity, which helps to cultivate trust.

As you start your own personal branding journey, at the very least, just ensure you are visible. This could be as simple as liking, commenting on and reposting the content going out through your business page. You should also engage with the content that is being published by people or organisations that you want to be associated with.

Additionally, by positioning yourself as an expert and establishing a voice in your industry, it helps to demonstrate a level of success, fosters credibility and builds authority. This visible expertise reassures prospective customers that they are dealing with knowledgeable professionals who are leaders in their field. In turn they will be reassured about the service or products that you provide.

Simply showing up on social media demonstrates that you have the time to engage in marketing and are on top of your work. And by further sharing insights and engaging with the community, you reinforce this fact, strengthen your personal brand and build trust with your audience.

Competitive advantage

There are a number of competitive advantages by working on your personal brand. There is more noise online than ever before, and consumers increasingly need more experiences (touchpoints) before they trust you enough to do business. Google released a study looking into the variety of modern consumer journeys. Its findings show that the average consumer journey now involves anywhere between 20 and 500+ touchpoints.

This all depends on the sector you work in, but regardless, it’s still a lot! Your future customers need an increasing amount of interactions, and having a voice through your personal brand will undoubtedly support this.

When we’re talking about social media, we can’t not bring up algorithms. Whilst we know company social media profiles are important, in our experience and according to Linkedin Blogs, personal profiles tend to see better organic growth and engagement than company profiles. LinkedIn’s algorithm is designed to maintain the quality of its platform and the phrase ‘people by from people’ holds true in a digital sense. Ultimately, opinions coming from a person are by nature more likely to gain traction, and so the algorithm likes to push this type of personal content so it reaches a wider audience.

The good news is you can use personal profiles to amplify the content on your business or charity page, by commenting and resharing. Not only is it a chance to add your voice to the conversation, it’s ultimately helping to push your company’s content further. Therefore, have a think about how you and your team can integrate your personal brands into your overall brand and marketing strategy. By sharing content through personal profiles you leverage the social side of social media, which boosts an organisation’s posts ratings on the algorithm.

It can also be said that people are more likely to remember things that are put forward in a creative way, and have an opinion behind them. Using your personal brand you can infuse more personality into your posts and articles, which can help them to stand out and do well.

For example, it’s no secret that our founder Ed is obsessed with football. By referencing his passion in some of his posts they become a far more engaging and original read, and the algorithm recognises that.

By clearly communicating who you are and what you stand for, you attract clients who align with your views and are more likely to do business with you. You can advocate for your passions and the type of company you work within. We’ve written a whole blog about Brand Activism which goes into more detail, so we won’t repeat it all here. Ultimately it means putting yourself out there to give prospective customers a deeper level of understanding about who you are, which will draw the right people to you and repel the wrong ones.

In the book Content Fortress by Martin Huntbach and Lyndsay Cambridge, it talks about how content can be used in a way to protect your time, and show who you are in order to create more meaningful interactions with new leads. By having your personal brand out there and producing content that aligns with the ethos of your business or charity, it acts as an extension of your organisation’s brand and will elevate your marketing activity.

The bigger picture – With all the brands that already exist, do we really need to be branding ourselves?

Personal branding as a concept has grown a lot of momentum in recent years. Thanks to platforms such as LinkedIn, there are more direct ways for people within a business or charity to be heard. Many of the CEO’s of today have gathered a following for themselves, well-known individuals that come to mind are Steven Bartlett, Elon Musk and Richard Branson. Love them or loathe them, they all have very strong personal brands, which have ultimately become synonymous with the companies they run.

At The Discourse, we advocate for the idea of highlighting the individuals within a company. Not only does it champion the hardworking people behind a brand, it also ensures your leaders are visible, providing greater lines of communication and accountability. Studies suggest that just 20 firms are behind a third of all carbon emissions, taking a look at the list, many of their CEO’s and investors are invisible. The anonymity of these major corporations, conceals responsibility and allows people and decisions to hide behind a corporate brand.

Personal branding promotes a culture of openness and responsibility, enhancing corporate governance, which on a smaller scale holds us all accountable to the public discourse. Thus, while personal branding might seem like a modern trend, it can take a more important role in the future, driving accountability and fostering a transparent business environment.

Crafting an effective personal brand

Creating a personal brand is not about putting on a persona; rather, it’s about finding the most genuine and authentic aspects of yourself and presenting them to the world in a likeable and relatable way.

But what should you communicate? When it comes to personal branding, we recommend that you keep to subjects that you know about and are interested in, so you can add value to the conversation rather than just adding to the noise. Ask yourself what you’d like to be known and remembered for? The answer may not always align with your industry or the products you sell, but it should definitely not conflict with company values and the overall business strategy.

Within The Discourse team, we have developed expertise in specific areas of our work – take our Creative Director and Co-Founder Issy Cheung. Her experience sits firmly within branding, so the blogs she has written such as The Anatomy of a Brand, How to Name a Brand and Brand Strategy for Purposeful People, lean on this passion and knowledge. Likewise, the events she attends and her LinkedIn posts all align with these interests. Anyone that Googles her or visits her LinkedIn profile, can get an immediate and clear sense of who she is.

Building your personal brand and amplifying your business content can happen at the same time. Like we mentioned earlier, bringing your opinion to a post that’s published by your business or charity will be a good thing for both sides. It helps increase awareness around the post as well as giving you a topic to anchor your thoughts. An important thing to note is try and do this activity within the first hour of the company post. Engagement in this period is far more likely to get noticed by the algorithm so plan out your reposting schedule alongside company posts.

To help you on this journey, we’ve created a worksheet to help you identify some of the content you need to get your personal brand started. To access the worksheet please send us your details and you’ll be directed to the download page.

Conclusion

We hope you’ve learned more about personal branding in this blog, and are empowered to use it to your advantage. If you can take away something from this article, it is to be thoughtful, consistent and visible, so use these points as your guiding principles. It costs nothing to engage with and share the content being published on the page of the organisation you belong to, and will allow it to perform better.

At The Discourse, we have been designing incredible brand identities, websites and content marketing campaigns for businesses and charities for well over 5 years. Our clients typically spend from £5k to £20k on brand strategy and design, website projects range from £5k to £20k depending on size and functionality.

Content strategy and production can vary heavily depending on the type of organisation and your internal resources. Typically speaking, we’d expect clients to spend in the region of £5k to £10k on their initial strategy and tool kit, with between £1k and £3k per month on ongoing support.

We’re passionate about this topic and we’re keen to help you along the way. If you’re ready to take your business or charity to the next level, you can get in contact today via our contact page or by emailing us at: hello@thediscourse.design